The writer of the blog www.cuteboo.com talked about our products in our online shop and recommended them to her readers. Therefore, she deserves a backlink to her blog

I got a new newsletter software which I can connect with my software Afterbuy. We use Afterbuy for the online shop, managing eBay auctions, our product database and handling the purchases. I was on the lookout for a suitable newsletter provider for a while and I decided to use CleverReach. After testing and trying out all the functions I wrote our first newsletter for our customers. It took a while to set up a nice design and write the whole newsletter but the coming newsletters will be much faster written as I can save my newsletters as templates. I hope my customers enjoy this service and get informed about new products first and special sales that only our newsletter subscribers can enjoy.

If you want to sign up for our newsletter and be the first to see our newest items and get special discounts, please sign up on our website (lower right box). I plan to write regular newsletters for both our end customers and our wholesale customers.

And here comes the 3rd order in our online shop. This time a lovely lady from the UK ordered some items in our eBay-shop. I offered her free shipping if she orders in our online shop instead. So she did She called me later because she had some questions about our payment terms. I helped her to pay and the items will be shipped tomorrow. One more happy customer

Today we got a delivery from our factory in Thailand with lots of new Tenshi Neko bags. This time we also ordered some new items from Akuma Neko and Mimori. Both are new brands and were just released in Asia. Akuma Neko is the naughty boyfriend of Tenshi Neko, but really cute too. Mimori is a japanese girl who is always smiling and having fun. When my supplier sent me the newest catalog and I saw these bags, I just had to order them. Have a look at some of the bags here:

This is Akuma Neko, Tenshi Neko’s boyfriend.

Mimori, the japanese cute girl.

And one of the newest bags of Tenshi Neko.
Isn’t she cute as a little queen?

A few days ago I found a factory for some cool voodoo dolls. I think they will fit perfectly into our collection and I am sure our customers will like them. The factory has hundreds of designs available but i think around 20-30 designs fit to our items. There are characters like Ninja, Devil, Angel, Dracula, Batman, Mummy, Killer, Wizard, Witch, Samurai, Pirate, Sagai, Demon and many more. Today I got some samples and here is a picture of them. Anyone interested in them, please contact me by e-mail. I will write an update here in my blog when we have them in our online shop for retail orders. They are available for wholesale orders from now on.

Wow, today we received already our 2nd order from our new online shop. Another lady from Germany bought our Tenshi Neko bags. They are our top sellers on eBay as well. Keep ordering people and you will make me happy

Today, Don from GMtee came by at my office to say hi. I found his blog on the internet and contacted him as he is doing something similar like me here in Hong Kong. He is the owner of the brand “GMtee” and also has his own online shop and eBay shop. They are selling Asian inspired clothes with prints like dragons, Buddhas, Ninjas, famous chinese warriors etc. Don is an expat like me living in Hong Kong, but he came to Hong Kong much earlier than me (ok, he is older too). We met to discuss a possible business collaboration and to get to know each other better.

We came up with some interesting ideas how we can support each other’s business, for example

• promote each other’s online shop in our newsletters to our customers (wholesale/retail)
• exchange banner/link in our online shops
• exchange flyers which we will pack into the parcels for our customers

Furthermore, we could also collaborate manufacturing our own designs at factories in China. He has a very good relationship with a factory who produces high quality t-shirts, sweaters and long sleeve shirts for him. He brought 2 shirts for me to check out the quality. I have to say, the quality is really incredible good (very soft, heavy cotton) and the print is a high quality print as well (thick, soft print). So we could share the MOQ (minimum order quantity) for the t-shirt material.

I think we small business owners should support each other and help where we can. Anyone else interested in a business collaboration with my company? If yes, email me.

I got this cute t-shirt from GMtee

Philipp, my friend from Germany, who lived in Hong Kong before and is now living in Thailand (Koh Samui) visited me today in the office. He came to Hong Kong to discuss a new project with Alan and me. They are interested in getting a similar online shop like ours from us. Christan, another German who works with Philipp, prepared a design layout and we discussed their plan. Alan will be responsible for the programming part while Christian is doing the design.

They want to sell their mp3 player in their new online shop and they are very keen in getting our online shop template as Alan invested lots and lots of time in improving the XT-Commerce standard shop. XT Commerce is a very successful online shop template from Germany and you can get it for free. But there are some disadvantages: First of all, there were a lot of logic bugs, programming bugs and a horrible English template (they translated the German template word by word into English). Second, the template doesn’t have any kind of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so your shop will be listed at the back of search result pages. It is crucial for online shops to be listed on the first page for important keywords to be able to get new customers. So Alan spent night after night (he has a full time job during the day) on changing the template and make it more attractive for search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

And I must say: IT WORKED! Our online shop was almost fully indexed after just 2 weeks being online. Furthermore, we are listed for many important keywords on the first page, sometimes we are even the number one! From ZERO to page 1(!), what a great result!

So Philipp is even more keen to get our template now But he has to pay good money for that. haha. But it will be worth it, I am sure about that. So anyone, who may be interested in getting his/her own online shop with a fully SEO optimized template, please check out SEO-Expert or contact me (in English or German) and I will forward the details to Alan.

FINALLY, our online shop www.modes4u.com is online and ready for orders, just in time for the Easter holidays. The shop was officially released on Thursday, 20.3.2008. We have quite a lot of products online now but there are still items missing because we got new stock that we haven’t taken pictures of yet. So visit our online shop frequently for updates and new products.

We have a great offer for our online shop customers: Shipping costs for small (low weight) items are just 3 Euro per item, big items (heavy weight) cost 5 Euro. This offer is valid to any country worldwide. Additionally, for any order worth 60 Euro or more we offer FREE SHIPPING! Isn’t that great?

I wish you Happy Shopping and lot’s of fun in our online shop!

xoxo Sandra

Hello,

this is my first post on this blog. I would like to write about my company modeS Group Ltd. and all the interesting things happening while trying to make this company successful and bigger.

What are we doing? modeS Group is an online retail/wholesale company for fashion (garment and accessories) for the following styles:

emo, rockabilly, rock, gothic, batcave, punk, skull, kawaii etc.

We have some brands as well: Pucca, Tenshi Neko (similar to Hello Kitty), Nightmare before Christmas, Minmie, Living Dead Toy, Guru Gala, Mimori, Akuma etc.

We started with a few eBay accounts, example modes4u, and quickly realized that eBay can’t be the future as the fees are ridiculously high, customer usually “difficult” and the profit margin just too small. So i looked for different opportunities and found the wholesale market. Shops and wholesalers in Europe/USA are looking for new suppliers with good prices and we can offer that as we order all our items directly from factories in China and Thailand.

So, that’s it for my first post. I will write in more detail about the different products we have, about wholesale and online-retail etc. later on.

For now, have a nice day.
Sandra

that’s me, Sandra Boch