Today we had an appointment with Kokka who is the leading fabric manufacturer in Japan. They have lots of really cute and beautiful fabrics, so I contacted them in Japan and introduced our business to them. They were very interested in working with us together, so they set up a meeting with us in Hong Kong. Luckily, they have a Hong Kong office, so we didn’t need to fly to Japan for the meeting (although I would have really enjoyed a trip to Japan haha). We met with the boss from Japan, who is a really nice and friendly guy and his staff member, who his responsible for their Kokka customers. They showed us a lot of fabric and I was so excited. All these super cute, very detailed and amazing quality fabrics. I was immediately convinced that these fabrics are perfect for our shop and our customers. Everyone will just love them. The print and the colours are so detailed and clear, just incredible. So I chose all my favourite designs and they will prepare the swatches for us and send them by courier to our office tomorrow. I can’t wait to show these fabrics to our customers and order some fabric for our shop as soon as possible.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my husband quit his job to join my business full time and therefore we had to get him an office table as well. He was so looking forward to that, because he really wanted to have a very big table for his own work space. So we went to Ikea and ordered a big corner table for him. I took a few pics while he was assembling the table in our office. As you can see, he is super happy now (the position of the table is not the correct one, we will move it to it’s right position once he starts working).

Alan assembling the table

Happy behind his new office desk

I was looking for a supplier for the popular fancy stationery brands from Japan for quite a while now. These brands are: Q-lia, Mind wave, Crux, Kamio, Coolpool, Cram Cream etc. I wanted to order directly from Japan to make sure that we get the best price possible and also the newest items as soon as they are available. It took me really a long time to finally find a direct business contact in Japan for these brands. They even have an office in Hong Kong to present the brands and I set up an appointment to check out their office, talk about how to work together and most importantly, see their products. So today, Alan and I went to their office, which is surprisingly just a 5min drive by taxi from our office, and met with the boss. She was a very nice lady and we talked for 2 hours about our future collaboration and she also gave us tons of catalogs with all the super cute stationery items inside. We also visited their warehouse and picked up quite a lot of items to put them quickly into our shop. We are going to order from them very often from now on because these cute, kawaii items are just the perfect match for our kawaii shop. And the quality is just amazing, no comparision to the China made items. If you have a business and are interested in wholesale prices, please contact us by email for the huge wholesale catalog. The items can be shipped directly from Japan to your company.

cute pink Kamio memo pad

kawaii Japanese memo pad from Crux

cute animal erasers from Japan

Today my husband finally quit his fulltime job as a Project Manager in a IT department. We are so super busy with our online shop modes4u.com and our wholesale business so we decided it is time for him to quit and join my business. We were planning this for a long time and the day has finally come. He will join me on 1st of October 09 and at the beginning he will write lots of new small software programs for us to make our work easier, more efficient and especially faster. There are a lot of work steps that are really time consuming and repetitive so this software should help us with that. He will also take care about our shop and write some new cool functions for it. I can’t wait for him to start working with me together in our office. It will be lots of fun

YAY today we got our 100th follower on Twitter. Very excited because I just started there for a little while now and I was so surprised that people started adding me without me doing any advertisment about my Twitter account. To follow me, please click here: modes4u on Twitter I write about small bits and pieces about my business, news, new products and life in Hong Kong as a foreigner.

Follow us on Twitter

This morning I saw a truck bursting into flames right around the corner of our office. I passed the truck while I was on the bus as it just broke down. There was some white smoke so I thought, it just overheated. When I walked back from the bus stop to get to my office, I saw the first fire engine arrive and black smoke coming from the front of the truck. I went closer to have a look and the truck just started to burst into flames. It was crazy, the truck was in the middle of a busy street and they had to block all lanes during morning rush hour. The fire got quite big and burned out the whole front of the truck. I took a little video while I was standing there, check it out:

We are on Twitter now as well. I am writing about daily news and chatter from my office and about the shop. I also write a bit about things going on in Hong Kong. This is a great way to keep in contact with customers and build up better relationships with them. So, please follow me on Twitter.

Oh my god, I almost forgot to announce that we closed down our eBay shop this month! I am so glad about that for various reasons: First, the eBay’s fees were just too high, second, since they changed the sorting algorithm we didn’t sell that much anymore because no one could find us. Our online shop customers are also soooo much more relaxed and easy than the usual eBay customers. We save a lot of eBay fees that we can use for other promotions now like for example Google Adwords. I am so excited and looking forward to an ‘eBay hassle free” future of my online shop. YAY!!! It’s every online shop owner’s dream to be independent and not have to rely on eBay. We finally did it!

Some people asked me to add more pics of the office after our move was finished. So I took some pics today in my office and you can see them below. As you may recognize, there is still some empty space. We plan to buy some more shelves as we are buying more and more products and expand our stock. We will also buy 1-2 tables for my husband to work here and for taking pictures of our products.

this is my table where I work

some of our shelves filled with products

our new office, still being a bit empty

We moved during the weekend to our new office which is just 1 floor below our old one. So it was quite easy and not too much work to carry the things downstairs but still lots of packing involved. And I hate packing! I rather unpack and organize the new office than pack the things in the old office. Therefore my husband did the packing and moving and I did the unpacking. On sunday his family showed up and helped us. That was so nice. They said “We are family, of course we help” in their broken English I just love them. Below you can see some pic of our new office while it was still empty. I also added a video of the office which also shows the very nice view we have now.

our new office space

great view from our office

We invited everyone for Yum Cha (= Chinese tea lunch/dinner) after finish moving

my husband & me in the restaurant enjoying some good Chinese food