Illustration by bleuhmeuhdesign

I wish you all a Happy New Year 2009! We are back in office now after arriving back from Austria where we spent our Christmas Holidays. I hope you all had a good start into the new year and have lots of resolutions to focus on Be sure, I have lots of goals for our cute kawaii shop for this year and I can’t wait to start.

All the best,
xoxo Sandra

The writer of the kawaii blog “Kawaii Gazette” was so kind and added our online shop to her link list. In return I would like to mention her blog here. Have a look: Kawaii Gazette

She writes a lot about kawaii items like Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma and other cute characters from Asia. But be aware, she writes in Italian

I got a new source of some suppliers in China and they have only bank accounts in China. So we had to get a Chinese bank account ourself. First, we opened a bank account at China Merchants Bank in Hong Kong and then Alan went to China and opened another account there at the same bank. Really complicated, but these banks here work like that.

We tried to use the internet banking today but it didn’t work. So we called to the Hong Kong branch and asked why and they said, we can only have one internet banking for each ID. Now, that is stupid. Alan has to go to the Hong Kong branch again and apply to connect these 2 accounts together so we will be able to transfer money from Hong Kong to China and then from there to our suppliers. Such a complicated procedure but, on the other hand, the fees are really low. So, who complains? I can’t wait to get this working so I can order lots of new items for my kawaii shop.

Today I could pick up my new visa at the Immigration Office. As my nationality is Austrian I need to apply for a visa to be able to live and work in Hong Kong. My first visa was valid for one year only, this time I got a 3-year-visa which is really cool. I only had to hand in 2 sheets of paper to apply for the extension of my visa. It’s so easy, unbelievably. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to get a visa as a foreigner in Austria. After 3 years, I will get another 3-year-visa and after that I will be able to apply for a permanent residency in Hong Kong.

Have You ever seen a more impressive Immigration Office?

Today we started with our new project of taking pictures of all our new products. Yesterday I met with a design student whose hobby is taking photos and discussed with him the details. Now, he and a friend of him are taking pictures of all our new products.

We got lots of new products the last few weeks but never had time to take care of them. Now they are busy taking photos of hundreds of products. I also told them to take pictures of our clothes with the new mannikin we got. It will present our clothes better than before. I can’t wait to see the final pictures. It should take a few days for them to finish and then Markus will take care of the editing.

Today we finally finished our big “photo editing” project. We decided a few weeks ago to edit all our existing product photos to make them look more professional. I employed a part time student to do the job for us. He was able to edit all of them within a few weeks. It’s such a big improvement, looking at the pictures now, they look so much better. It was a big project including a couple hundred of photos but now it’s finally done. Thanks to Alan (photographer) and Markus (editor) for their help!

Coming up next: Taking pictures of all our new products we just received and editing them as well. Will be lots of work again but I will get some help from some students again.

Today we had a visit from Marcus. He is a student at a Fashion Design College and has some really interesting t-Shirt designs. We talked about a possible future corporation and told him what we are looking for. We need more clothes, especially men-clothing in our shop, so we want to work together to develop some new interesting, unique designs that fit to our current collections. We gave him some input and he will start doing some sketches and show us later on. I’m very curious about the result of this corporation and I am quite sure you will see his t-Shirt designs in our shop soon. I will keep you guys posted about the results.

one of Marcus’ t-Shirts

I received a threat on my blog from a Chinese guy, threatening me that he will destroy my business if I keep on writing critically about the Chinese government. The comment was made on my post about the visa problems many foreigners have after the Chinese government suddenly changed the rules for entering China. Some people are really just ridiculous. The complete comment was:

“DO NOT CRITICISE OUR GOVERNMENT OR WE WILL SHUT DOWN YOUR WEBPAGE AND BUSINESS.”

Interestingly the IP address from the writer is a computer In Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Now I am really scared. ha ha… His email address was a @china.gov - address. I guess he thought he can impress and scare people with that.

I am not the only one receiving threats from crazy Chinese, a friend of mine got a similar one: GMtee. He is selling t-shirts with the Tibetan flag on it and got the following email: “DO NOT SELL FREE TIBET T-SHIRT! DO NOT CHALLENGE CHINESE PEOPLE!”

Today was the Olympic Torch Relay in Hong Kong. As i was warned in advance about it this time I decided to stay at home and watch the event from my balcony until the bridge is opened again. I live in Park Island which is a small island right next to the beautiful Tsing Ma Bridge. The torch relay was scheduled to take place on the bridge around noon. I shot a photo with my camera:

As the air pollution was really bad today (poor guys who had to run and breath in that air), I attach another photo with the view from our balcony on a nice unpolluted day:

I went to the Gifts & Premium Fair the first time today. We were just curious what they are offering there and hoped that we are lucky and find something interesting for our shop. The fair was huge; so many halls. Every time I go to a trade fair I come back home with burning feet and legs. It is SO exhausting. You don’t realize it while you are there because there are so many things to see so you are totally distracted. But after leaving the premises you suddenly realize how many kilometres you must have walked. High Heels are a No-NO, you just wouldn’t make it through countless aisles of booths.

I was really lucky this time as I met a Japanese guy who is the official distributor of San-X. If you don’t know San-X, here is the official website. They have lots of cute kawaii-style characters like Rilakkuma (a cute bear) and Mamegoma (a baby seal). San-X didn’t have a booth there but the factory who is producing their products gave me the contact details. I will definitely contact them. Their items would fit perfectly into our shop.

Rilakkuma, the cute Relax Bear

Mamegoma, a baby seal

We also found a contact for a printing shop here in Hong Kong who could make low quantity of t-shirts for us. The printing quality is really good so that could be a useful contact in the future. We plan to make our own t-shirts soon. And low quantities are always welcomed. There was also a company who could make our prints on stickers, so our customers could iron the designs themselves onto their t-shirts. But I personally think the printing shop is more interesting because the quality is just better.