Over the next few weeks we will be updating you about the latest events from TBI, focusing on the collapse of this language chain in Indonesia’s second biggest city, Surabaya. In this post we want to start with TBI West Surabaya, a disastrous TBI franchise school which has gone bankrupt in recent weeks. We have…
Recently I went online to check the TBI website and found that one of their schools had closed down. It is hardly the first time this happened. The last TBI school to go belly-up was TBI Sudirman. TBI Cengkareng folded a few years before. Likewise, TBI Semarang went bankrupt in 2012. Furthermore, TBI Malang closed…
In this final part of this four part series of posts on TBI’s organizational structure- one which we have shown has been plagued by rent-seeking practices which have sapped the energy and competitiveness of the company from the start- we look at the real reasons for Mariam’s ouster in late 2015. Why was the TBI…
TBI is a company which has now had a lost half-decade or more. Between 2006 and 2010 a large number of new franchise schools opened under the guidance of Retty Setiawan, but in 2010 she was forced out of the company by Luke Preece, an Australian con-man who claims to have a degree in Geology…
In our last post about Preece, TBI’s bogan Machiavelli, we showed a photo of him handing out certificates at TBI Bali. Let’s use that as the starting point for the second part of this update. Specifically, let’s start with this question: How did we know that he was now at TBI Bali in the first…
“More on Luke Preece please. It’s very interesting. I knew him when he was making lunches for TBI Dago. What’s he up to now?” This request found its way into our inbox a few days ago, and we haven’t had the chance to respond to it until now. After all, we thought we had tirelessly…
During the sorry years of 2010-2011 when Luke Preece ran amok at TBI and ensured that all the other ex-pat managers at TBI were fired (dooming the company to its present funk of stagnation and rapidly shrunken market share), he was helped by Lilies Augustin, a self-confessed former bankrupt, who he installed as Marketing Manager…
In order to see how far TBI has fallen in the world, you just have to think about their policy of the never-ending promo. Every single month they are offering some sort of giveaway, bargain, discount or promo to their schools, which sets them apart form more professional outfits such as Wall Street and the…
During my final year working for TBI Kelapa Gading, I became aware that the main franchisee/owner, a man by the name of Djalaludin Djaprie (or sometimes Jaladin Japri), was a major player in the palm-oil plantation business, which has had such a devestating impact on the ecology of Indonesia. In light of the massive forest…
The earliest theme of this blog was corruption and collusion within a small clique at TBI who we dubbed ‘The TBI Mafia’. We identified the core of this group as four or five people: Mariam Kartkatresni, Ashley Platts, Luke Preece, and Luke’s cronies Lilies Agustine and Scott Martin. We documented how these five had constantly…
tbilanguageschool 