We already wrote about Sandra’s and Alan’s cat staying in our office during their time in Austria. This week it was time for Miu to go home again. But she didn’t leave without having her big moment. And what a good one!

While being quite shy and careful at the beginning of her visit in our office, she got more adventurous with every day and explored every corner there is. Still our photographer Ho was quite surprised when he found Miu laying comfortably on his photo desk. He took advantage of the situation and took some cute pictures of our new super model with our stickers. Miu was quite a natural. Because she didn’t care about the camera and just relaxed. Perfect.

Now she has had her 5 minutes of fame and enjoys her home again. It’s probably for the best, as nobody would pay attention to our products anymore if an adorable real cat was in every picture.

perfect cat posing for the camera with stickers

Miu getting comfortable in front of the camera...and sleepy

our photographer Ho finding the new model in our little photo studio

Did you get some nice cards for this last Christmas? We certainly did, many of our business partners and suppliers sent us nice wishes for Christmas and New Year’s. It is so nice to get cute and pretty mail, we enjoy it a lot. The cards are so different, but all really nice, so we thought we share them with you. Which one do you like best? The first three cards come from Japan, the last two designs from Hong Kong.

Cute Christmas Card with all San-X characters wishing good luck

very nice and fine card from Japan with Japans Fuji mountain

bright and festive card from Japan

this one is obvious: Seasons Greetings from Hong Kong

a very artful card from Hong Kong wishing peace, hope & prosperity

We are surrounded by cute things everyday, but this one beats them all. We have an adorable visitor in our office at the moment. Our managing director Sandra is on Christmas holiday in Austria and all the remaining modes4u staff takes care of her cat. That super sweet animal really can’t complain about not getting enough attention, because everybody is stroking her constantly. Still, her favourite thing to do is sleeping. Her favourite spot for that is an empty box where she cuddles up and naps for hours. So cute!

Unfortunately this cat isn’t for sale - otherwise we would have bought it ourselves already – but if you can’t get enough of those soft purring animals, take a look at all of our cat products. In particular we added a lot of new Kutusita Nyanko items recently. That black cat with the white paws is really sweet.

Our office visitor in her new favourite spot

The cute cat sleeping (what else?) in one of our warehouse alleys

fluffy Kutusita Nyanko pencil case with cat

Kutusita Nyanko grey cat plush cellphone charm

kawaii squishy charm with pink cat

cute small stickers with many cats Japan kawaii

Michael Miller fabric Contented Cats with colourful cat

cute bookmark stickers colourful cats on roof Post-it

blue-white polka dots ballpoint with cat

Yesterday we got a really, really, really huge delivery from Japan. It contained 52 boxes of products by San-X! When we got the whole stuff off the pallets to take a look at it, almost all our office space was gone, everything was filled with boxes. We started unpacking yesterday, but it will take till the end of today until we finish putting everything on our shelves. From next week then it’s all about taking pictures and getting the products online.

So what’s coming??? Tons of Rilakkuma stuff, a lot of cute items from Sentimental Circus, pink rabbit Chou-Fleur and black cat Kutusita Nyanko.

our San-X delivery - doesn't look that much here on the photo

but then we started unpacking

and suddenly there was no room left in our office

but opening the boxes was really fun

It’s packing madness at the office. The last weeks have already been quite busy, but this week was the absolute climax of the year so far. There were just so many orders that almost everybody at modes4u was helping the packing staff to make sure that everything is shipped quickly to you guys. We are sending hundreds of packages per day and are working full speed. So your Christmas presents are on their way, thanks for all your orders. It’s great to see that you love our kawaii stuff so much. Don’t forget to take a look at our latest shipping days for Christmas if you want to make sure everything gets to you on time.

our package pile gets bigger every day

Last weekend we had a company Barbecue – at the end of November! Ok, for some of you guys this might be pretty normal,  but for many people all over the world it’s already freezing cold. Well, in Hong Kong it was still over 20 degrees Celcius, so we all met on saturday and had a nice Chinese BBQ. For our newest team member Bianca from Germany it was a whole new experience, because in Chinese barbecues everybody gathers around the grill and prepares his own food on long spits. And not only do you grill steaks and sausages, but also typical local food like squid balls or fish balls. We had a very good time together and especially enjoyed the highlight of the evening: self-made ice cream made by our boss herself.

modeS Chinese BBQ

a wild mixture of sausages, fish balls and marshmallow sandwiches on the grill

Maggie shares her food with Bianca

Maggie, Karen and Ho barbecuing their food

Yesterday we got a big box full of squishies, that we will add as soon as possible to our shop. All the female staff was super excited about the new delivery. Everybody gathered around the box and was rummaging through all the squishies for a loooong time. Well, there were really many different ones in there, so there was a lot to discover and look at. We have so many designs now, e.g. donut squishies and sandwiches, new Rilakkuma squishies (cute bread ones), Hello Kitty squishies, funny animals like bears and whales and more. In the end everybody got to pick one squishie for themselves. And guess what, everybody picked one from the Rilakkuma collection. Looks like we already have a favourite. Which one is yours?

The female modes4u staff with the new squishies

Today we got a Chinese Pool Table for our office and immediateley had to have a little game during our lunch break. Chinese Pool is very popular among teenagers and young people in Hong Kong and very similar to Pool Billard – it’s all about shooting little pucks into the 4 holes on the table using a cue. There are many different ways to play it and it’s really fun, as you learn it very fast. Even Bianca and I, who have never played it before, scored some points. We had a fun time playing it and had to drag ourselves back to work after lunch. But there is much to do at the moment, as we got new deliveries, e.g. new Japanese Washi Tapes, that we want to add to our online shop as soon as possible.

Chinese Pool Challenge in the office

It’s been a couple of months since we moved into our new office in Fo Tan, Hong Kong. Now we finally got round taking some new pictures of our warehouse and office, so that you guys can get an impression of how we are working over here. We really like this new place, especially as we have much more space than in our old office. The office is divided into the packing section where we pack all your orders, a photo studio to take good pictures of all our products, an office part for our staff and of course our big warehouse – the most important part. But as you can see, most of the shelves are already filled up with our products. Especially fabrics take up a lot of room and we will be getting even more of them in the next couple of weeks.

You can also find all the pictures on our ‘About us’ website, which we updated these days and where we introduce our team as well. We recently added a picture of Bianca, our new team member from Germany who is doing copywriting and PR for us.

All the shelves are filled with our kawaii products

really a lot of things

this is just a part of our fabrics selection

here we have more fabrics

the view from the back of the warehouse

A shelf with bags, DIY clay sets and more

The packing section where we pack all orders

our photo studio where we take good product pictures

me working on our website

Alan programming our website

Our staff Bianca and Maggie working on promoting our shop

Bianca from Germany joined our team this week. She just moved from Cologne to Hong Kong a couple of days ago and is very excited to be here. We welcomed her by taking her out for some Dim Sum, a very typical style of Chinese Food. You order a lot of different dishes that are served in small portions and everybody can help himself. As you can see, there was a lot of food on the table. Bianca really enjoyed that Chinese experience and tried as much as she could, although she didn’t always know what she was eating. The only thing she refused to try was a serve of chicken feet, a dish you can find a lot in Hong Kong. She promised to try at one point though, we will see if she actually does .

From now on Bianca will be helping us to support our shop and write a lot of texts for our website in German and English.

Bianca and I eating Dim Sum in the Chinese Restaurant

we really ordered a lot of food

The whole modes4u.com team in front of the Chinese restaurant