I signed the contract for the lease of a new office last evening. Wow, it happened so fast. My husband’s auntie, who is a property agent, called us a few days ago and said that there are some offices available in the area of our current office. Of course I agreed to check them out in the hope to get a better deal. And I really did find one. It is a bit smaller, but the area is much more useful because it doesn’t have a long corridor like the current one (which just wastes space and therefore money). The standard is much better because it was just renovated, so everything is new and clean. The whole office is very bright and I have a great view over Kwai Fong. It’s cheaper too And the best part: the new office is just one floor below the current one, but facing a different direction!!! How cool is that! We only need to move one floor down. I can’t wait to move into the new, bright office at the end of this month.

Here you can have a look at my new office:

this is my new office

We now have a Fan Page on Facebook too. On this page we present new products, offer special offers only for our Facebook Fans (discounts, free gifts and more) and keep our customers updated. Additional we publish all our product pictures there, even if they are already sold out. You can comment on these pictures to show us which items we should restock. Click on the pic “Find us on Facebook”, you will be redirected to our Facebook page and you can become a Fan there. From now on you will be the first being informed about offers and news from us.

Exactly one year ago we moved to our new office in Kwai Fong, Hong Kong. We are still in the same office and have lots of space. Because of the Financial Crisis we may even be able to negotiate a lower rent for the 2nd year. Alan will call the landlord today and see what is possible. We may get a 50Euro-100Euro lower rent. Yay. At the moment, it’s still just me working there full time and Alan coming in every other evening. But we are planning to get me an assistant soon as the workload is getting more and more. I hope I can find someone suitable. I read that the Hong Kong government will support companies who offer internships for graduate students from August 09 on by paying 200Euro per month for their salary. They want to support companies during the Financial Crisis and prevent students being stranded after graduation. I think that’s a great idea and also a good opportunity for me to finally get an assistant.

Coincidentally I found out that my interview incl. my pic was printed in another newspaper this week. The name of the newspaper is “Vorarlberger Wirtschaft” and is an economy newspaper mainly talking about the Austrian economy. They used the same interview and wrote a new text about me. The article is about my university in Austria “Fachhochschule Vorarlberg” and they mention me in the report saying I am an “entrepreneur in Hong Kong managing her own business” and have a “successful international carreer“. Sounds really good to me I didn’t know that my interview is going to be printed in another newspaper but today my sis sent me an email telling me that her boss just gave her that newspaper and told her that her sis is in the paper. Otherwise I may have never found out about that. Thanks sis. Here is a link to the complete article (in German): Interview

interview economy newspaper

This week I had an interview with a local Austrian newspaper about the topic “Successful Austrian Women“. They interviewed me about my move to Hong Kong, opening my own business here and managing life overseas. The interview was published today in the newspaper called “Wann & Wo“. I got the interview request after my interview about my “after-graduation-experience-in Hong Kong” was published on 1st of February. If you want to read the full interview, please click here. It’s in German and talks about my move to Hong Kong, starting my own business in December 2007 and my online shop modes4u. They also wrote a bit about my personal life, that I live on an island, speak Chinese (Putonghua) and visit Austria once a year during Christmas.

Today our Amazon Shop was finally released after a last check up by Amazon. You can find us on Amazon Germany here: Kawaii Welt. “Kawaii Welt” is the shop name and means “Kawaii World” in German. For the moment, we will sell our Tenshi Neko bags, Mimori items and our products from San-X with Rilakkuma and Mamegoma. If we get a good feeling with these items, we will start adding more items, especially from our kawaii line. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a successful start on Amazon Germany. I will keep you updated about success or (hopefully not) failure in the near future.

I received a call from Amazon again today. This call was arranged in advance to help me listing our products on Amazon. The guy on the phone explained me how to set up the Amazon Seller Account and how to create the Excel file with our product data. I was glad that he called. This way he could answer all my questions and I could set up everything without any problems and delay. We never got this kind of service or support from eBay. Luckily we don’t sell there a lot anymore. Our items should be online on the Amazon site within the next days. YAY!

Today I had to scan all our products with a bar code to update our database. The reason behind this is that Amazon requires all items to have EAN numbers to be able to list them on their site. We haven’t used bar code scanners till now so I had to scan all our products today. Luckily that work is done quite quickly if you have a bar code scanner. Very soon we can upload our products to Amazon, I can finally see the end

This week I was interviewed by an Austrian local newspaper called “Wann & Wo” about my life abroad. My university in Austria contacted me and asked if I would be willing to give an interview based on my experience after graduating from university and starting my own business in Hong Kong. I agreed and today the newspaper printed my interview. Here is a link to the page for anyone interested in reading it: Wann&Wo-Interview. Keep in mind, the interview was deducted in German

This evening Amazon Germany called me unexpectedly. Amazon offered us to sell our products on their website and we decided to join them. They have quite a few requirements to be able to open a seller account there, so it took us a while to prepare everything, incl. a German bank account, EAN numbers for the products, high quality pictures with white background etc. Finally we got everything together and I sent them an email today to ask for further assistance. And I got a call promptly back and a nice guy explained me everything. That would have never happened with eBay. That’s a good start, let’s hope we will be successful there as well.