Pekalongan City is famous as Batik City. In this city, many batik artisans and SMEs can be found, each of which has its own peculiarities. Even Pekalongan has a typical batik motif, namely Batik Jlamprang. The batik culture in Pekalongan City is so legendary that Pekalongan is dubbed the World Creative City. To facilitate the development of batik SME business, many batik SMEs in Pekalongan City establish batik SMEs association. One of them is the Kampung Batik Kauman Association and Kampoeng Wisata Batik Pesindon. The association aims to provide independent parties that bridge the deliberation between the Pekalongan City government and batik craftsmen. In addition, this batik association also makes it easier to coordinate exhibitions, establish a website to display members’ profiles, and so on.

The Pekalongan City Government also highly appreciates the establishment of batik SME associations. On several occasions, the Pekalongan City Government always involves the Batik SME association in the policy-making process related to environmental health, urban planning, and others. Not only that, the Pekalongan City Government also facilitates various forms of batik marketing initiated by the associations. This is manifested in the form of batik exhibitions and the establishment of a special e-commerce platform in Pekalongan City.

However, this batik SME association still facing numerous problems that are suitable as the development focus of the Kosabangsa program. One of the problems is the dilemma of using chemical dyes that are not environmentally friendly. The Pekalongan City Government itself has conducted extensive discussions with batik SMEs to advocate the use of natural dyes. However, this cannot be done due to operational constraints. This problem will be the focus of this community service program.

To achieve an environmentally friendly batik production process, the Kosabangsa Community Service Team assisted the association member on how to utilize batik dye machines, batik heating machines, and cow bone powder, which is in line with the technology offered by the Universitas Sebelas Maret Counsel Team (UNS) chaired by Prof. Dr. Rahmawati, M.Si., Ak.

Prof. Rahmawati said that the production process using this technology is expected to overcome the environmental pollution problem due to batik dye waste and production processes’ inefficiency in Kampung Batik Kauman and Pesindon.

As for the problem of the lack of variations of new batik motifs in Kampung Batik Kauman, the Implementation Team conducted training and assistance to create new batik motifs by considering art management in its creation. This was done with the assistance of the UNS Team which has created a new batik motif technology, namely Kupu Tinebar, which has been registered with IPR.

The training and mentoring are expected to bring up new variations in batik motifs that can follow the advances in fashion trends but remain instilling the characteristics of Pekalongan batik. Furthermore, particular to the business management problem, the Implementing Team held bookkeeping training and mentoring on how to establish Kampung Batik Kauman dashboards. Meanwhile, in Kampung Batik Pesindon, the team proposed to conduct training and assistance on the use of e-commerce applications, google ads, and Facebook ads in accordance with the technology offered by the UNS Counsel Team.

In addition, there will also be training on trademark registration for both Kampung Batik Kauman and Pesindon. This is because many batik artisans have yet to understand the importance of trademark usage. After creating a brand, the team will also conduct brand utilization training to create advertising content and product packaging.