I wrote a couple of days ago that we received a new delivery from Japan. Finally, we finished adding all products to our shop. It took us very long this time because we had a few other deliveries at the same time and had to take literally hundreds of photos and write descriptions for all those products. You can imagine, that is a lot of work. But we are finally done and all San-X stationery is available online in our kawaii shop. There are lots of new plastic file folders, cute letter sets, pencil cases and pouches, pencils, rulers and bento boxes:

French bakery A4 plastic file folder pâtisserie

Kamonohashikamo ducks A4 plastic file folder hedgehog

Sabo Kappa Cactus A4 plastic file folder flower shop

Rilakkuma bear Letter Set strawberry from Japan

checkered Duckling pencil case by San-X from Japan

green duckling San-X glitter pencil from Japan

cute pink Rilakkuma bear ruler with strawberry Japan

pink Berry Puppy San-X pencil poodle with cookies

Sugarbunnies Bento Box 3 pcs Lunch Box Rabbits

Today I received a call from a man in Hong Kong who wanted to order Japanese food from us. As he didn’t speak English, I passed the phone to my colleague and he found out that this person saw our Japanese erasers on the web and thought we are selling Japanese food in Hong Kong. We had a big laugh afterwards. Our Japanese Food erasers look so realistic that people think we are selling real edible food. Now that is a funny story I will remember for a long time

Japanese Food Soba eraser from Japan by Iwako

Chinese noodle soup eraser from Japan by Iwako

Tuna Sushi eraser from Japan by Iwako

red mini snack eraser from Japan by Iwako

Dorayaki pancake eraser from Japan by Iwako

Green Tea eraser from Japan by Iwako

We worked on a new slide show for our front page in our shop during the last few days and we finally finished it today. I am very happy with the result because it shows very nicely why a customer should buy in our shop and what benefits he/she has. We also included some really nice and fun pictures of our business. The 5 main benefits are:
1) Safe Shopping
We provide safe shopping by using SSL encryption in cooperation with secure payment providers like PayPal, VISA and MasterCard. We do not store any sensitive information on our servers. The payment process is done on a secure, encrypted website directly provided by our bank and PayPal.
2) Free Shipping
We offer the lowest international shipping costs possible, so you can enjoy shopping with us even more! Buy items worth 60€ (US$78, £54) and we ship your order worldwide FOR FREE!
3) Big Community
We have a big community fan base on Facebook with over 16,000 fans! Get the latest news, giveaways and gifts and “like” our Facebook Page now!
4) Import from Japan & USA
We import the latest high quality products directly from Japan, USA, Korea… and offer them for a very attractive price.
5) Ready to Dispatch
All our products are in stock. When we get your order, we will ship it within 24 hours and every order comes with a FREE GIFT!

our new front page

We ordered some new Japanese fabrics from Lecien. They have a few new designs which are really adorable, including panda bears, deers, bunnies, poodle, strawberries and more. They are all lightweight cotton fabrics perfect for quilting or any other cute project you can think of. We received those fabrics on the same day the earthquake happened. Lucky for us, they arrived before that and we don’t have any order which is supposed to be shipped right now from Japan. Japan closed its ports and I am sure there will be some shipping delays for products we ordered. I totally understand the situation in Japan and we have to be patient waiting for new products. The most important thing is that our customers don’t have to be patient because all our products in our shop are in stock and there are no shipping delays from our side!

white kawaii Bambi fabric with glitter from Japan

white kawaii panda fabric with black hearts Japan

pink kawaii panda fabric with black hearts Japan

white big panda fabric with pink hearts Japan

black big panda fabric with red hearts Japan

pink Japanese fabric bunny doggy strawberry flowers

green Japanese fabric deer squirrel bunnies

colourful stripes fabric strawberry flowers mushroom

Today a huge earthquake followed by a tsunami happened in Japan. We heard the news quite early and kept checking for updates while we were in the office. In the afternoon my mum called and asked me if we are ok. She knows that Hong Kong is far from Japan but she still wanted to make sure that everything is alright. For everyone: We are ok! Hong Kong is really far away from Japan and we didn’t feel anything. We are really lucky here, Taiwan and the Philippines protect us from strong typhoons and we are also not near any earthquake hit region. Our business will continue as usual and there are no delays in shipment. I really hope the people in Japan are safe and recover quickly. These news are just too horrible.

We got the biggest Michael Miller fabrics delivery ever! It tooks us a while to put them all in the shop because there were so many new designs and we had to take some beautiful pictures of each fabric + write descriptions etc. for each of them. Now they are finally online available in our shop and there are so many awesome new fabrics. I am so excited! We ordered lots of cotton fabrics and also new laminate fabric, flannel fabric and jersey fabric. This was the biggest order we placed with Michael Miller so far and I am sure we will place an even bigger order with them soon. Here are just a few of my absolute favourite fabrics we received:

Michael Miller knit fabric Dino Dudes cute dinosaur

Michael Miller flannel fabric Mini Mushrooms toadstools

Michael Miller fabric Periwinkle Fairies blue fairy

gray Michael Miller fabric skulls Skull Damask

Michael Miller fabric Delovely Damask white-red

purple Michael Miller fabric with flower lace illusion

Michael Miller flannel fabric Zoology zoo animal pastel

Michael Miller laminate fabric Dumb Dot turquoise dots

cute white Michael Miller fabric colourful Calico Cat

cute Michael Miller vintage fabric kitty Kitties

cute Michael Miller vintage fabric children playing

We finally received our order from San-X after waiting for 3 months plus a problem with crushed boxes. We checked all cartons carefully and fortunately all products arrived safely without any damages. Lucky us! We couldn’t resist and had to spread out the goods to take some pictures of them. It is quite tricky to do this because there are so many products and we have limited floor space. There are so many new cute letter sets, pencil cases, folder, ruler, pencils and bento boxes. The following San-X characters are included: Rilakkuma, Kerori, Kamonohashikamo, Sabo Kappa, Berry Puppy, Kireizukin, Kutusita Nyanko and Mamegoma. We tried our best to get as many products as possible on one picture. Because it was impossible, we decided to take a video as well and upload it to our YouTube channel. If you want to see more videos taken by us, please subscribe to our YouTube channel!

some of the San-X cartons

lots of cute San-X stationery from Japan

folders, letter sets and pencil cases

I got a letter from the Trade and Industry Department Hong Kong that they are organizing a mentorship programme for small and medium businesses. They find a suitable mentor for companies to help them and guide them through difficult decisions and future business plans. I was looking for something like that for ages! It would be so great to be able to talk to an experienced entrepreneur about our business and maybe get some tipps what we could improve or should change and how we can expand our business faster. The requirements are quite simple: you need to have a Hong Kong company, established for less than 5 years and have fewer than 20 employees. As we fulfill all requirements I immediately filled out the form and sent it out today. I do hope we will get a mentor who we can talk to about our business and trust him/her as well. I will definitely write about this mentorship programme again once I have some news.

I received a call from our cargo agent in Hong Kong who told me that they have a problem with our cartons. We are expecting a delivery from San-X Japan including lots of stationery items and he told me that some of the cartons got damaged and one got crushed. They took pictures of the cartons when they were unloaded from the container and sent them to me. I was quite worried because we are waiting for this order for 3 months already and I didn’t want to have another delay in receiving those items. So I took a risk and told them not to return the cartons to Japan and send them to us instead. I really, really hope the products inside the cartons are safe and not broken. I will write a post again once they arrived,

the carton that got crushed

delivery from San-X to Hong Kong

a couple of cartons got damaged

another box was damaged while being transported in the container

unfortunately shipping is not risk-free

We received lots of new fabrics from Michael Miller today. We were so excited, we had to take some photos to show you guys! I just love receiving parcels, I guess it reminds me of Christmas It is always so much fun to open all the boxes and see what is inside. The total weight of those boxes was half a ton (500kg ~ 1,100 pounds)! Can you believe that? Here are the promised pictures of the cartons:

lots of big cartons, the long boxes are for the laminate fabrics

boxes, boxes and more boxes. They were all super heavy

me hidding behind some of the new designs

these fabrics are just the new designs that arrived