Sampoerna's History

The story of Sampoerna begun in 1898 at The Fujian Chinese Village of Anxi. In the late spring, the father of Sampoerna’s founder - Liem Tioe bought himself, his 6-years old daughter and 5-years old boy a passage on a cargo boat, sailing south to Indian Ocean. His late wife, Tan Sie Nio passed away during previous winter. Her death urged Tioe to seek for a milder climate, promising future and new life for his young family member. During the voyage, the ship stopped at British Colony of Malaya. For financial reason, Liem Tioe allowed her daughter to be adopted informally by a Chinese family in Singapore. Liem Tioe and his young son, Liem Seeng Tee, continued sailing east to Surabaya, East Java that previously known as “Port City”.

Like most Chinese immigrant in Indonesia, Liem Tioe fell by malaria or cholera, six months since his departure in East Java. Realize his imminent death, Liem Tioe hand his son to be adopted by Chinese family in Bojonegoro, East Java. The family raise Seeng Tee with their best effort despite the harsh colonial condition at that time. Although there was no formal school, Seeng Tee’s adoptive father give him knowledge of Chinese Mercantile system. He believed it will beneficial for Seeng Tee’s future life. Seeng Tee also learnt how to speak Mandarin and Hokkien dialect.

At his 11th age, Seeng Tee began to work on the Railroad and he’s being homeless. He started out hawking food carried in a sarong to travelers in the Lower-Class compartment journeying between Jakarta and Surabaya. The next years, his family fascinatedly listening when he told about his journey over the years.

Young Seeng Tee worked solidly on the trains for 18 months without a day off. The effort becomes fruitful, he bought a used bicycle from his moneybox. The bicycle helped him to start a new business around Surabaya. During his time in Surabaya, Seeng Tee courted a 16-year-old Hokkien girl named Siem Tjiang Nio who lived with her parents near the center of the city. Her parents dissented her plan to marry an older man with neither schooling nor stable family background. The lovebirds end up disappearing to married in spring 1912. Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio began their marriage live in scattered neighborhood on Jalan Gang Gembong, under a bridge.

Soon after his marriage, Seeng Tee got a regular job in Lamongan, a small city 45km west of Surabaya. He was blend and roll for small cigarettes manufacture. This is his first touch to the tobacco industry in East Java. The owner had notice Seeng Tee natural gift in blending Indonesia tobacco. Here’s when Seeng Tee first entrepreneurial dreams began to materialize.

Within six months of marriage, Seeng Tee and his wife had saved enough money to rent a small stall in Surabaya on Jalan Cantian Pojok to sold foodstuffs and tobacco products. In addition to the shop sales, Seeng Tee peddled tobacco products from the back of his bicycle through the streets of Surabaya to both retailers and wholesalers. Took the benefits of flooding traffic near the construction of a new bridge, Seem Tee’s volume of customers grew and the business started to prosper.

In the meantime, Tjiang Nio has never been idle herself. She continued to contribute to family finance by making cakes and selling them in front of their home in the evening. It was the house that began to grow their first two boys, Swie Hwa and Swie Ling.

A tremendous opportunity appeared in early 1916. Seeng Tee was faced to an opportunity to buy a big amount of assorted tobaccos from a trader who had gone bankrupt. The only problem was, he ought to settle the purchase the day after. With a bowed head, Seeng Tee came home and told his wife about losing such a deal. Generously, Tjian Nio pulls out all her savings from selling cakes and handed to her beloved husband. From that beginning, their little family set sail to developing tobacco business.

In addition, they put other spices such as chocolate, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves to the tobacco blend. This blend was hand-rolled into cigarettes at a small-manual machine. Seeng Tee and his wife soon realized that their hand-rolling rituals took more time and detracting chance of selling a higher margin product such as consumable goods. Tjiang Nio felt that customers might prefer to buy pre-rolled products in the most popular blend combinations. This hunch proved correct and the business expanded quickly with the availability of pre-rolled conventional white and clove or “kretek” cigarettes at the family stall.

The new products brought good returns to continue their business. It pushed both Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio to work up to late at the night rolling the cigarettes. The blending and rolling process caused the room in the house full of tobaccos and equipment.

In 1913, Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio business had grown to the point where it was informally incorporated under the name of Handel Maatschappij Lem Seeng Tee, which evolved into Handel Maatchappij Sampoerna later. After World War II, the company settled the name into PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna. For Seeng Tee, it was important his products catered to all levels of the population. Hence, he struck into the low-class cigarettes market made from cheaper tobaccos and contained artificial flavors and fragrances.

Despite producing low-priced cigarettes, Seeng Tee’s true business was focused to manufacture and selling high-priced cigarettes from the finest tobaccos and natural spices. The core of the family’s production would continue to be colored cigarettes paper that was the fashion of that day. However, the practice of using colored paper may have been more driven by the lack of proper imported cigarette paper than by the desire of the kretek manufacturers to differentiate their products from the white tobacco brands.

As time goes by, Seeng Tee’s responsibilities shifted from selling cigarettes to trading raw material and packaging. Initially, he shipped tobaccos from Madura and Zanzibar cloves he bought from a local trader. Until he found Manado’s cloves less expensive than Zanzibar’s yet offer the same smooth taste as Zanzibar cloves. Originally, Zanzibar cloves were used for Dji Sam Soe formulas, yet as cloves harvesting improved, Indonesian resources were allowed to use for family’s blend specifications.

Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio also made white machine-made cigarettes such as Sampoerna Star, Summer Palace, and Statue of Liberty. Sampoerna Star itself is the first filtered cigarettes in Indonesia, while kretek products names were simply the blending number code such as “123”, “720” and “678”.

On 1921, Seeng Tee and Tjiang Nio’s third daughter named Sien was born, followed by her sister Hwee, born in 1926. On 1927, the family bought a house on Jalan Ngaglik no. 9. At that house which also a warehouse, he spent much of his time testing different blends and combinations of spices, including cloves. A year after, his third daughter was born named Kwang. 1932 was the year when Seeng Tee needs a more decent place for his business and family. It’s important for him to have the family lived in the factory, not to supervised the operation but to taught his children business. This family tradition is still remaining. It’s a rough search for him to find a perfect match to fulfill his needs until he decided to refurb a Dutch-supported old orphanage complex.


He has modified the building structure according to his needs; major business and a home for the family at the same place. The building consisted of numerous large single-story buildings built beside the main building that used to be an auditorium. Two residences located neighboring to the main building converted to the family’s quarter while the west residence occupied by Seeng Tee’s eldest son Swie Hwa and his family.

The other building (except for the central assembly building) were quickly converted into blending and hand-rolling space and printing, cloves processing and finishing processing by 1934. Now, the factory called Taman Sampoerna is a very busy place in crafting the finest product. Started on 5.30 in the morning, both men and women working hand-blending the ingredients. It was Seeng Tee favorites place to closely monitor the production process since he believes it’s the key of the company’s success. The factory itself operated seven days a week with 12 to 15 working hours depends on the demand from distributing agents across the archipelago.

At her first sight to the old orphanage, Tjiang Nio asked Seeng Tee what he planned to do with the huge central building. Seeng Tee explicates his plan to convert the central hall to a theater.

Sampoerna Theatre was built with the only rotating stage in entire Java. The stage gave dramatic and special effects as it was rarely seen at the time. As one of the exclusive venue in Surabaya, the theater was also used for Seeng Tee’s two oldest daughter wedding. Over the year, Sampoerna Theatre hosted a variety of acts, including Chinese acrobatic troupes from Shanghai and dramatic productions from Beijing and Hong Kong.

The theatre also equipped with a modern projector for the screening of western movies which was the most popular genre in East Java. The legendary Charlie Chaplin also paid the theatre a visit on his visit to Surabaya in 1932. The first president of Indonesia, Soekarno also familiar with the theatre to make a series of speeches in 1938 in order to support the Indonesian resistance movement. The Sampoerna theatre was continuously operated until 1961 when it finally be used for the hand-rolling operation.