This month I am busy testing our new software. Until now we used a software from Germany called Afterbuy to handle our product database, customer database and our orders. As we were growing bigger we got to the limits of this software. We decided at the beginning of 2010 to change to a new software. We tested different commercial software for 1 month but couldn’t find anything suitable for us and our business model. Therefore, Alan, my husband, who is a very experienced programmer, started to program a custom made software for our business. It was a very big decision for us because we are only 3 people working fulltime for this business, me, Alan and one packing staff. So one person spent his whole time on programming and I had to take over managing the business which was growing significantly the last months. It was really hard work but Alan finally finished the software at the end of July and we started testing it this month. As there are still lots of bugs and changes, we have to run both software at the same time which means double work for me. But we plan to shut down the German software at the end of this month and only use the new software. I can’t wait for this to happen because it will make a lot of my work easier, faster and more efficient. I would like to thank Alan for this great software! THANK YOU!!!

We got lots of new products and therefore had to expand our warehouse space. A huge load of Tenshi Neko, Akuma Neko and Mimori bags arrived the other day. We also received lots of new Japanese fabrics for the coming Autumn/Winter 2010 season, including some really cute Halloween and Christmas fabrics from Japan. Our packing table was also upgraded and packing is more efficient now. We put a whole shelf on the table for all the envelopes and plastic bags. On top of the shelf is a bubble wrap roll fixed,  so our packing staff can easily pull down some bubble wrap for packing. I took some pictures after we finished setting everything up and looking tidy again. Have a look at the pics here:

our new packing table

lots of new Japanese fabrics

Tenshi Neko, Akuma Neko and Mimori bags

Today we received 2 long awaited orders of Japanese fabrics from Kokka and Cosmo. We are so excited, there are so many new cute and awesome prints like Alice in Wonderland, kawaii animals, matryoshka, skulls, flowers, Christmas fabrics and Halloween fabrics and many many more. One of my favorite fabrics are definitely the kawaii Christmas fabrics by Cosmo, they are just too cute We took some pictures of the fabric bolts, so you can enjoy them as well

lots of bolts of Kokka fabric

cute fabric from Japan by Cosmo

I will be on holidays from 12th of July until 19th of July! Daily shipping will continue as our packing staff will work as usual. I am looking forward to relax a bit and recharge my batteries. I know already that I will return with lots of new ideas and a huge motivation for improving my business I hope everyone else has a nice summer as well. Take it easy, take a dip in the nearest lake/ocean/pond/pool and enjoy the sun!
Yours, Sandra

We updated our ‘About us‘ page on our shop because we haven’t uploaded any new pictures for a while. We now have all staff pictures included + some pictures of our office and warehouse. I hope you like the photos and the little insight into our company. Our office is actually getting really crowded now, I guess we need to move to a new office in a couple of months because we are getting more and more items and we need lots of space to store them. Here is the link to our new page: About us

our office

We had a fun DIY day in our office today. Pui Chi, my sister-in-law, came to our office to start her own new project. We work together with her to help her make her own chop collection and she will also make some buttons for our shop. We ordered all the machines and equipment already and today we tried out all of them. She made some really cute buttons with some leftover Hello Kitty fabrics and Japanese fabrics. Then we tried out the chop machine. I was really surprised, the chop making machine is amazing. The quality of the final product is really, really good. I documented our day with some pictures:

Hello Kitty buttons and strawberry buttons made by us

cute button made with Japanese Kokka fabric

first step to make a chop: we designed it on a computer, then printed it on special paper

next step cutting out the chop sponge and transfer the image onto the sponge with the special machine

we dropped a few drops of ink onto the chop sponge and started testing. The result is very nice and very detailed.

We ordered some more shelves for our office so we can expand our warehouse space and stock more products. We totally ran out of space and had to get more shelves. I took some pictures to show how hard we worked today

the first few new shelves are standing

we plan to expand our fabric section

all Kutsuwa products (DIY clay sets) got their own shelves

after we finished: the fabrics have more space now and we are ready to receive the next fabric orders

more space for our Kokka fabric bolts

part of our stock + the packing area

me working on my desk (on the left side is Pui Chi, my sister-in-law who was making buttons in that moment)

The official Hong Kong distributor of Re-Ment visited us at our office today because we are very interested in selling Re-Ment products in our shop. If you don’t know who or what Re-Ment is: Re-Ment is a famous Japanese company making miniature sets of food, licensed characters, animals and more. They would fit perfectly into our collection and we are sure our customer will love them as well. Of course we plan to order from Re-Ment directly in the future (we usually order directly from the manufacturers without any middlemen involved), but for now, we want to test the market and order smaller quantities first. Below you can see some of my favorite Re-Ment sets:

miniature kitchenware set with pandas

cute miniature gingerbread houses

Alice in Wonderland keychains

miniature animals baking yummy food

very realistic looking miniature sushi

my favorite: very cute miniature cake charms

Re-Ment miniature set with strawberries

10 different sets with the strawberry theme

Today I was finally able to contact Cosmo Fabrics in Japan. I was looking for their contact details for a long, long time because we really wanted to sell their really cute fabrics. We don’t order our fabrics from wholesalers or distributors but only directly from the manufacturer, therefore I was looking very hard to find the maker of all those cute, kawaii fabrics. I am sure fans of Japanese, kawaii fabric have seen them before and know why we want them so badly. We got a lot of customer requests to stock them and today I was able to contact their sales department in Japan. Without knowing Japanese it is almost impossible to find any Japanese manufacturer. Cosmo and we will work out the details now and hopefully a first order of Cosmo fabrics will arrive soon. I will definitely keep everyone updated here on our blog about any news.

We booked tickets for Tokyo, Japan today! We will be in Tokyo from 16th April till 19th April 2010. Alan, my husband, and I are going together and it’s our first trip to Japan. We do have some Japanese suppliers but we do all our business over the internet. Therefore, we never had to come to Japan to visit them in person. A few suppliers we know in person because they visited us in our office in Hong Kong, like for example our contact person for Kamio, Crux, Q-Lia and more. Our plan is to do some sightseeing, see the beautiful cherry blossom and eat lots of good food. We are big fans of sushi and eat a lot of it in Hong Kong. But of course, we also plan to check out lots of shops and products to see the latest trends in Japan and find new suppliers. I will definitely write a blog post about our trip including lots of pictures when we are back from our trip. I can’t wait to go!