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Japanese fabrics arrived at the office

by modes4u July 23, 2010

Today we received 2 long awaited orders of Japanese fabrics from Kokka and Cosmo. We are so excited, there are so many new cute and awesome prints like Alice in Wonderland, kawaii animals, matryoshka, skulls, flowers, Christmas fabrics and Halloween fabrics and many many more. One of my favorite fabrics are definitely the kawaii Christmas fabrics by Cosmo, they are just too cute 😉 We took some pictures of the fabric bolts, so you can enjoy them as well 🙂

Japanese fabrics arrived at the office 1

lots of bolts of Kokka fabric

Japanese fabrics arrived at the office 2

cute fabric from Japan by Cosmo

July 23, 2010 0 comment

DIY day in our office

by modes4u May 11, 2010

We had a fun DIY day in our office today. Pui Chi, my sister-in-law, came to our office to start her own new project. We work together with her to help her make her own chop collection and she will also make some buttons for our shop. We ordered all the machines and equipment already and today we tried out all of them. She made some really cute buttons with some leftover Hello Kitty fabrics and Japanese fabrics. Then we tried out the chop machine. I was really surprised, the chop making machine is amazing. The quality of the final product is really, really good. I documented our day with some pictures:

Hello Kitty buttons and strawberry buttons made by us

cute button made with Japanese Kokka fabric

first step to make a chop: we designed it on a computer, then printed it on special paper

next step cutting out the chop sponge and transfer the image onto the sponge with the special machine

we dropped a few drops of ink onto the chop sponge and started testing. The result is very nice and very detailed.

May 11, 2010 0 comment

Expanding our warehouse space

by modes4u May 3, 2010

We ordered some more shelves for our office so we can expand our warehouse space and stock more products. We totally ran out of space and had to get more shelves. I took some pictures to show how hard we worked today 😉

the first few new shelves are standing

we plan to expand our fabric section

all Kutsuwa products (DIY clay sets) got their own shelves

after we finished: the fabrics have more space now and we are ready to receive the next fabric orders 🙂

more space for our Kokka fabric bolts

part of our stock + the packing area

me working on my desk (on the left side is Pui Chi, my sister-in-law who was making buttons in that moment)

May 3, 2010 0 comment

Meeting with Re-Ment distributor

by modes4u April 15, 2010

The official Hong Kong distributor of Re-Ment visited us at our office today because we are very interested in selling Re-Ment products in our shop. If you don’t know who or what Re-Ment is: Re-Ment is a famous Japanese company making miniature sets of food, licensed characters, animals and more. They would fit perfectly into our collection and we are sure our customer will love them as well. Of course we plan to order from Re-Ment directly in the future (we usually order directly from the manufacturers without any middlemen involved), but for now, we want to test the market and order smaller quantities first. Below you can see some of my favorite Re-Ment sets:

miniature kitchenware set with pandas

cute miniature gingerbread houses

Alice in Wonderland keychains

miniature animals baking yummy food

very realistic looking miniature sushi

my favorite: very cute miniature cake charms

Re-Ment miniature set with strawberries

10 different sets with the strawberry theme

April 15, 2010 4 comments

1st day of our new staff member

by modes4u February 22, 2010

Today is the 1st day of our newest addition to our team: Her name is Bonnie and she will work with us together in a fulltime position. So we are now a team of 3 fulltime staff. She will be responsible for packing all your orders and ship them. She will also take care of some office related work like scanning documents and pictures, helping with the wholesale catalogs, buying office supplies and other related work. Welcome to our team Bonnie!

me teaching Bonnie how to pack the orders

February 22, 2010 0 comment

New cutting tool for our fabrics

by modes4u January 29, 2010

We purchased a new cutting tool for cutting our fabrics faster and more efficient. As our number of fabric orders increased significantly over the last weeks, we decided to order a professional automatic fabric cutting tool. We fixed the tool onto the floor because our floor tiles are exactly 0.5m wide, so they are perfect as a measuring tool for our fabrics (all our fabrics are sold in 0.5m increments). The fabric cutter is very easy to use. It is electrical, so you only need to turn it on, put the fabric correctly over the metal blade and push it slightly and it cuts the fabric perfectly and clean. It is so easy to use, you can cut the fabric with one finger only! What an improvement to our previous manual hand fabric cutter. I took some pictures of the tool below, so you can see how it looks like (the counter is counting how many fabrics you cut on that day):

our old hand fabric cutter

our new 'toy': an automatic fabric cutter

closeup of the fabric cutter including counter

January 29, 2010 1 comment

Sponsor fabric for charity

by modes4u January 17, 2010

We were contacted by a German seller who is organizing a special promo bag auction on Dawanda (the German version of Etsy) for a charity project called “Atmenreich”. They take care of children during the day who have respiration illnesses (lung etc.). Of course we agreed to join this project as it is for a good cause. We will sponsor some of our Japanese fabrics and send it to the seller. They will then sew some cute bags with those fabrics and fill it with lots of cute things from other sellers in Germany. These kawaii promo bags will be sold in April on Dawanda.com. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this will be a successful charity project.

we are mentioned on the first page of the flyer as the fabric sponsor (name: Kawaii-Planet, our Dawanda shop)

the list of all the other sellers who join the charity promo auction

January 17, 2010 1 comment

3rd Newspaper Report about me

by modes4u February 24, 2009

Coincidentally I found out that my interview incl. my pic was printed in another newspaper this week. The name of the newspaper is “Vorarlberger Wirtschaft” and is an economy newspaper mainly talking about the Austrian economy. They used the same interview and wrote a new text about me. The article is about my university in Austria “Fachhochschule Vorarlberg” and they mention me in the report saying I am an “entrepreneur in Hong Kong managing her own business” and have a “successful international carreer“. Sounds really good to me 😉 I didn’t know that my interview is going to be printed in another newspaper but today my sis sent me an email telling me that her boss just gave her that newspaper and told her that her sis is in the paper. Otherwise I may have never found out about that. Thanks sis. Here is a link to the complete article (in German): Interview

interview economy newspaper

February 24, 2009 1 comment

Interview Successful Austrian Women

by modes4u February 15, 2009

This week I had an interview with a local Austrian newspaper about the topic “Successful Austrian Women“. They interviewed me about my move to Hong Kong, opening my own business here and managing life overseas. The interview was published today in the newspaper called “Wann & Wo“. I got the interview request after my interview about my “after-graduation-experience-in Hong Kong” was published on 1st of February. If you want to read the full interview, please click here. It’s in German and talks about my move to Hong Kong, starting my own business in December 2007 and my online shop modes4u. They also wrote a bit about my personal life, that I live on an island, speak Chinese (Putonghua) and visit Austria once a year during Christmas.

Interview

February 15, 2009 0 comment

My 1st Newspaper Interview

by modes4u February 1, 2009

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 😉

wannwointerview

February 1, 2009 1 comment