Today we got our 150th order in our online shop modes4u.com! That is really great! YAY! The 150th order is from a lady in Freiburg, Germany. Thank you!
The first 50 orders took almost 6 months, the next 50 orders almost 3 months, these last 50 orders took only 2 months and 3 days. I expect to get to the 200th order in around 1.5 months. I will keep you posted.
Today I read a report in South China Morning Post, a local Hong Kong English newspaper about Hong Kong being the 4th most expensive city in the world. WOW! But no wonder, proprety prices here are really crazy. Since the Financial Crises the prices went down a bit but they are still extremly high. Our office is located a bit outside of the city center and therefore we could make a good deal (based on Hong Kong prices). But we could never afford a office in the city center. Below you can see a chart of average prices of renting and buying an apartment in Hong Kong. Office space is even more expensive! Can you imagine that?
Hong Kong 4th most expensive city
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 found a new factory from Thailand producing Monster Dolls. They are super cute kawaii or naughty or just really funny dolls and are made with really good quality. They come in different sizes and can be used as a cellphone charm, key chain, attach it to your bag, inside your car or any other idea you can think of.
Here are some pics of my favourite Monster Dolls:
One Eye Monster Doll
Flower Heart Monster Doll
Cute kawaii Monster Doll
Monster Doll Bear
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 we got new kawaii stationery products delivered. They are super cute, have a look at some pics:
kawaii eraser
Kawaii Cloud Eraser
Kawaii Kitty Eraser
kawaii memo pad
kawaii keyboard sticker
kawaii keyboard sticker
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
We decided to work with a different Credit Card Provider together as we had so many trouble with Moneybookers. Our first choice was Worldpay as they are worldwide well known and seem to be very professional, secure and reliable. We integrated it a few days ago and today we got our first 2 customers paying with Worldpay. Everything went smooth without any error messages or bugs so the Worldpay credit card payment module should work now. I am glad that this is finally installed and working. We had quite a few transaction errors and therefore lost customers and orders because of Moneybookers. This should not happen anymore now.
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.
