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

A customer of mine sent me a photo of her apron today. She made it with fabric she ordered in my shop and resold it to one of her customers. Such a cute pink monkey kawaii apron, it’s really an unique special item. Thanks to Lacey from the US. I would be very glad to receive more pictures from my customers with products they bought from us and I would be very happy to blog about them too.

kawaii monkey apron

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.

Yesterday we got our 200th order in our online shop modes4u.com! YAY! The 200th order is from a customer in Canvey Island, UK. Thank you!

The first 50 orders took almost 6 months, the next 50 orders almost 3 months, the next 50 orders took 2 months and 3 days. The last 50 orders only 1 month and 14 days.  So we get already more than 1 order per day by average. I expect to get to the 250th order in around 1 month. I will keep you posted.

Today we celebrate the 1 year anniversary of our kawaii shop modes4u.com!!! YAY! Exactly one year ago we launched our new kawaii shop and it has happened a lot since then. The start was slow, as it is hard for every new online shop to get visitors, and more importantly CUSTOMERS. We invested a lot of time and effort into making our shop more “Google-friendly” and did a lot of internal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to bring our shop to the top search results in Google. It was a good decision as our shop is now listed very well for important keywords we have. Therefore, the number of visitors and customers grew steadily since the beginning and we are almost at the 200th order mark now. Another very good decision was to allow our wholesale customers to order directly online instead of ordering from catalogs. This way, our wholesale customers are able to see what items we have in stock right now and can make their bulk orders and get the items fast. I expect a lot from our cute shop for the 2nd year: A lot more visitors, customers and of course ORDERS.

To a great, successful and fun 2nd year!!!

Your modes4u-Team

I got a visit from 2 representatives from Alibaba.com today. Alibaba is the biggest sourcing website for finding suppliers in China and Asia. Until now we had a free account there to promote our company and products to possible customers in Europe and USA. We get enquiries almost every day but having a free account has a big disadvantage: the number of products is limited to 50pcs only. A friend of mine got a Gold Membership last year but never activated it because of personal reasons and he offered me to take over his membership for free. That is a really generous offer because usually these memberships cost around 40,000 HKD (~ 4,000 EURO) per year.  I promised him to send him a cheque if we find a lot more customers with this new account. So the guys from Alibaba came to check out my office and verify the business address. I will get the new Gold Member account within the next few days and I will be able to upload and promote as many products I have. Keeping my fingers crossed to find more potential wholesale customers for my business.

This week we got tons of new stationery items for our shop. I added a lot of products to our shop but still lots of items haven’t been added yet. There are lots of super cute envelopes, memo pads, badges, notepads and more. The designs include Hello Kitty, Blythe, Love Bunny, monkeys, bears,… Have a look at our new items and click on the pics to go to the shop listing.

We got some really super cute deco tapes. There are designs with cherries, polka dots, kitties, bears, strawberries, birds, mushrooms and many many more. Have a look at the pics and click on the pics to go to my shop.

pink strawberry bird deco tape

kawaii mushroom rainbow deco tape

kitty food deco tape

cute pink heart deco tape

kawaii pink cherry deco tape

bunny cupcake deco tape set

kawaii kitty mushroom deco tape set

pink cute deco tape set

cute bunny kawaii deco tape set

This week we got some new items we haven’t had before. We have now miniature clay items like fruits, flowers, animals, sweets, cakes, candy etc. They can be used for miniature craft-projects, miniature cakes, decorating cell phones, artificial nails, Nintendo, PSP etc. Please click on the pic to go directly to the product in our shop.

cute clay miniature fruit sticks

cute apple slices made of clay

kawaii miniature watermelon

miniature clay lime slices

mini roses for artificial nails

miniature chocolate cake slices

miniature gingerbread man

purple minature cake

miniature cherry cookies

An old customer of us visited me today in my office. He is from Germany and wanted to see our current products. Last year in April he visited me for the first time, I wrote about it here. He was our first visitor visiting us at our new office. Today, he ordered some items we had in stock and we may be also helping him to make a new online shop and optimize it for Google. His current shop isn’t suitable for Google and Alan will be able to optimize it for him. Alan is really knowledgeable about Google Search Engine Optimization and a very skillfull programmer. Anyone interested in Search Engine Optimization SEO, please have a look at his website: SEO Expert