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Singgih Susilo Kartono, a designer and entrepreneur, is a surprisingly contrarian figure. Soft-spoken and professorial in appearance, the 41-year-old Temanggung-based, Bandung Institute of Technology grad represents a new breed of businessman — someone who believes in balancing the worlds of commerce, ethics and sustainable development.

Pak Singgih is also a very real Indonesian success story, someone who’s risen to the top of the global design elite from an unlikely base in the small Central Javanese tobacco-growing town of Temanggung.

Slight of build and with his metal-rimmed glasses, Pak Singgih builds and sells gorgeously finished, sleek and yet simple wooden products under his brand, Magno Radio. His two-tone radios (made from pine and sonokeling, which looks like ebony) are irresistible and highly sought after. From the moment you touch one and start fiddling with its controls you know you’ve connected with something that is both a straight-forward appliance (a radio is just a radio, no?) and in some strange way a living entity.

Indeed, with his radios Pak Singgih is actually questioning the relentless and often fruitless quest for innovation. He presents us with an alternative to endless consumption, presenting us with products that elicit an emotional response. His radios, just one of his four products, are for treasuring. They’re also for keeps.

Moreover, they have won countless prestigious design awards and attracted immense international coverage, popping up in magazines across the globe from Wallpaper to Oprah, Blueprint, Vogue and Elle. Sold in select design shops in Europe, North America and Japan, the Indonesian market constitutes just 5 percent of his demand, though he acknowledges he could sell far more locally if he had the capacity.

His Magno Radio design workshop and production facility has 35 staff and is located in the village of Kandangan, just outside Temanggung.

The recently completed building is a hive of activity. There are young people at work — some in front of lathes, others busy cutting, polishing and finishing. Meanwhile his wife, Tri Wahyuni, sits patiently at her desk checking the wooden balls that are fixed on the radio antennas.

With its clean lines and bright, naturally lit work spaces, Pak Singgih reveals his fondness for the Scandanavian aesthetic, though to my mind there’s something very Quakerish about his village-based approach to arts and craft as well as his emphasis on functionality.

His small workshop is nestled in a ridge of hills facing the towering might of Mount Sumbing. It’s a bucolic if sleepy locale surrounded by exquisitely terraced rice fields and fruit orchards. It’s also an unlikely place to find such a high-level design practice.

“I was born here,” Pak Singgih explains quietly. “When I graduated from university I knew I wanted to return home and build a business in Temanggung.”

“However, it was a long struggle. I didn’t have money and there were many disappointments along the way. I literally started out from the bedroom in my parent’s house.”

Indeed his personal trajectory — small town boy goes to the city, returns home and makes good — is an integral part of Magno Radio’s DNA. The backstory imbues the radios with an added poignancy because for Pak Singgih reversing the flow of talent, money and resources to the cities is an important objective and one that he views as being absolutely central to Indonesia’s future development.

“Our cities are not sustainable. They devour resources, leaving the countryside denuded. We have to stop this. Our development needs to be more broadly based.”

Pak Singgih is also a committed environmentalist. His radios are made from plantation-sourced wood which is of course renewable. At the same time he’s also set up a nursery that churns out some 8,000 seedlings every year which are then planted in the nearby hills.

In his understated way, Pak Singgih is a restless and intense proselytizer. He is an advocate for fundamental change, taking his eco-friendly message to schools and colleges across his province and further afield.

“I can’t say I’m impressed by the way our country’s governed. We’ve neglected our human resources, which is why I’ve spent so much time nurturing my staff, trying to instill a combination of discipline and a good working ethos. If you want to succeed you’ve got to challenge the mainstream.”