We have been a Gold supplier on Alibaba.com for 2 years now and we decided to stop promoting our wholesale business there. We are just too busy with our existing customers and our retail shop and don’t have the time anymore to accept any new wholesale customers. Therefore, we decided to shut down our Alibaba Gold supplier account and focus on our online shop instead. I am sure we will not regret this decision.

we got this Gold Supplier badge from Alibaba

Today a very good customer from France visited us at our new office. They placed a few orders already and wanted to finally meet in person and discuss future collaborations with us. I also showed them some items from our showroom and they took them with them to show to their customers. My customer is a buyer for big companies like Carrefour in France, therefore this business opportunity is really great for us and them as well. I am really looking forward to keep working together with them in the future.

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.

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

Today we got a suprise visit from France. A couple rang at our office door and introduced themselves as shopowners from France. I was surprised as I have never heard from them before and they didn’t even announce their visit with a phone call. We invited them in and they told me that they would like to buy my Tenshi Neko bags and wallets. I showed them some Tenshi Neko bags and Tenshi Neko wallets and explained our usual wholesale procedure. They left me their contact details so I can send them my wholesale catalogs.

They were really lucky to meet us because its Chinese New Year and therefore a public holiday. We decided to work today (we are so hard working) and catch up on some work. Lucky them

We worked very hard on adding this. From now on, our wholesale customers (retail shop owners, online shops, wholesaler etc.) are able to create a wholesale account on our website and then they will be able to login and see our items with wholesale prices. This way, they are able to see our current stock, detailed photos, quantity, prices etc. and can order directly online. It is much more convenient than any other way like catalog orders or by email, fax etc. I wish I could order like this from the manufacturers and other suppliers we have.

Anyone interested in ordering from us in bulk? There is NO minimum order quantity, just a minimum order value of 300 Euro (or 474 USD) per order. More detailed wholesale information can be found here: Wholesale Information

Our items are suitable for shops selling kawaii, Japanese, Asian, Rock, Rockabilly, Emo items and other cute, crazy shops.

We met with the Japanese boss from San-X Hong Kong today. He is very interested in working together with us as San-X is only focusing on the Asian market at the moment. He wants to expand their products to Europe and North America and we are the perfect partner for them because our wholesale and end-user customers are mainly from Europe, USA and Canada. We have quite a lot of contacts to shop owners who could be interested in selling these products. So we will act as an Official Wholesaler for their products to European and North American markets.

So, if you are interested in buying San-X products in bulk, please contact me by e-mail and I will send you the Official Wholesale catalogs with all their current products including Rilakkuma (Relax Bear), Mamegoma (little seal), Monokuro boo (a black & a white pig), Tarepanda (lazy panda) and many many more. We will also keep a big stock for our online shop and to be able to send out wholesale orders quickly.

I was looking continuously for new products that I could sell in my eBay shop. I tried out many different things and of course I also made some mistakes.

I got cheated by a wholesaler selling me “authentic” Emily the Strange T-Shirts. I didn’t know the brand in 2005, so I couldn’t recognize that they are fakes. I just liked the designs and quality of the shirts. The wholesaler advertised them as leftovers from the factory and “proved” that by the cut labels inside the t-shirts. They said, leftovers in the factory are marked with this cut to make sure, no one can sell them as “new” items in a shop anymore. That was b**s**, but I believed them.

Later on, a company sold me some fakes from Juicy Couture, Miss Sixty and Rock & Republic. I was too excited that I found a hot brand supplier to realise that the prices are way too low for these brands. Luckily, I could get rid of the Emily shirts, the Juicy Couture and Miss Sixty items quite quickly (of course eBay cancelled my Emily auctions, too many fakes there). I dropped the Rock & Republic Jeans into a container for poor people in need. I hope they are happy with getting some brand new jeans At least I did something good to humanity, though I lost some money with them. I also bought some Harrods bags in the market as they were so popular among Hong Kong people. They sold quite well, but I decided that I don’t want to have anything to do with fakes anymore, so I stopped buying and selling them as well.

Juicy Couture Hoodie

Emily the Strange t-shirt

small cut in the label (through the name “Emily”)

Harrods bag

In 2006, I heard about shops selling leftovers and overstock from factories in China. Many people confirmed that they are authentic items, so I started hunting around Hong Kong to find something suitable. Indeed, I found shops selling some branded stuff, but they also had fakes. So it was really hard to figure out which item is authentic and which one is a fake. I tried out some items from American Eagle, Scary Mary, Pucca, Paul Frank and Phat Farm. That stuff wasn’t suitable for selling because I wasn’t sure about their authenticity, so I quit this idea very quickly.

Scary Mary t-shirt

Coming Up:
How I finally found the right products for my online shop and for my wholesale business.