Day 9 :
Today we were back into Canton on the train from Honk Kong yesterday, having had a well earned day off! Peri from our Xiamen office was at the show yesterday, and we joined her today to go round the halls.
The show was a different spread of suppliers, but we focussed mainly on Home ware textiles (towels, tea towels etc.), Sporting and out door recreation, as we have several projects ongoing for swimming and outdoors. These halls also exhibited a full array of exercise equipment through to full size snooker tables. How some of the stand ever got set up was a great effort, with some really impressive stand designs.
We have several customers to whom we supply stationary, which the 3 halls exhibiting offered a good range and quality of suppliers.
Tomorrow we will be targeting bags and suitcases, to see if we can find any new suppliers for our textile bag customers and we have a great project we are working on which I can’t tell you about! Top secret, but once complete you will be able to see on the blog. Watch this space…
DAY 8:
We have a good day today finishing off the last Halls of the Hong Kong fair. The exhibitors started packing away earlier as this was the last day.
Among others, we met a really interesting factory specialising in re-cycling materials and applying the raw material back into functional items.
They had done such products as ceramics made from , brush skin exfoliators from Apple pulp.
Beakers from 35% re-cycled glass, and coat hangers that were made from old exhibition carpet tiles. Plenty of raw material available for these! These items were excellent quality, and really well made. You could never tell they were made from re-cycled product, and in fact had a very high end look and feel to them. Its a great example of how re-cycling has come full circle to produce many different products from a whole host of waste materials…..really the way future for designers to consider new materials.
We are also working on a Mens health product pack, where we are looking for novelty games to include for the pack. Before we came out, Oliver one of our designers brought in a great promo item – THE TANGLE, which is a great item to mess about with, and perfect for this pack. We actually met the excentric designer behind this, who is a really nice guy from North America. This item has gone from a small promotional game, to furniture, lights, many different formats of the original tangle, and even used as educational training aids for children.
To date, the guy has sold 100 million tangles across the world. Really successful business story that proves innovation led products don’t have to be niche and still work in a mass market and volumes sales!
DAY 7:
Today we attended the Hong Kong Gift and Premium Fair, at the exhibition centre on Hong Kong Island. From a total of 5 halls we covered 3 largest, and need to return tomorrow to cover the main hall number 1.
The show comprises of worldwide exhibitors across all product and market sectors. We had particular interest in finding new textile, metal, toy and in particular keeping an eye out for any exciting products that we could develop or adapt to fit customers current ranges; or stand alone finished product that our existing customers could bolt onto their current ranges. We also visiting existing suppliers that we currently buy from, and a few that we have long term projects running with. This was a great show to have a catchment of clients in one area.
The Fair also has as a dedicated hall to foreign trade suppliers including Indian, Taiwan, UK, Germany, Spain and even Russia (the only Russian company exhibiting at the show) they had a fantastic range of gift items including risqué outdoor ‘love packs’ A great range of products we hope we can cross collaborate with some of our UK distributors we supply to. Some of these well thought out gift items
translate easily into other countries and languages.
Attached are images of one off the shows they have on. These also included magic, fashion and bands playing throughout the day.
Having collected many catalogues again today, and some great new leads, we hope to have a good finish tomorrow before heading back to Canton Fair Phase 3 on Saturday night.
DAY 6:
Today we visited a Printing factory specialising in large format colour box printing, supplying large USA customers. Our customer is developing a world wide map, that you can track your destinations where ever you have visited around the world…Its a great product that requires specialist final coating in production to make the product work properly.
Second factory was a Textile factory which specialised in picnic and cooler bags. This is part of a very cool project we are working on which combines plastics and Cooler bag
Third factory today was to a rapid prototype factory. As part of product development
Last factory today was a third alternative for the animal house covers we are developing. He was a small factory, but as initial quantities are low, we need to ensure the quality is perfect and smaller factories are easier to manage on quality when slightly smaller. This was the final option in addition to yesterdays factories.
We then took an 8.00PM flight from Xiamen into Hong Kong to visit the HK gift and premium show tomorrow.
Day 5:
Today we had a more than hectic schedule visiting 6 factories in the Xiamen region covering many materials and product types. Both Erny, Peri and Julian joined us from Xiamen and Quangzhou offices. The main Visits today were:
First off was a fabric factory, who are helping us to develop a range of Animal House covers external protective colours, for a UK client, ultimately destined for Pets R Us. This project has great potential for Sorcit, but is very complex as the assembly, stitching and production lead times are all against us on this one. We will have to stay diligent, with Peri and julian overseeing the project to completion.
We secondly went to see our current Plastic factory, where we have produced several plastic items in injection moulding. We are also developing new plastic items for new customers that are under development.
Metal Factory for Potting shed, working on a variety of new metal decorative items for outside. This has been a very long development project, designing quite a few items in metal plate; which sounds easy but has been a real challenge! Fortunately the samples we had been awaiting to see were really good, so we can now send them to the customer for final approval.
We then had 2 other visits where we are manufacturing our undercover Laptop sleeve. We saw production in this sewing factory, and it was quite a sight to see so much of our product being produced at one time. We also discussed the new animal house covers with them , so we can make a good decision on who we place these orders on.
Finally today, we went to see the Printing factory who is printing the undercover laptop sleeve.
The team this evening went for a Japanese office meal out, which was really great. Being at such great distance, all we tend to do is speak to the China team on SKYPE or email, and being able to spend time with them socially was really nice. We got to talk about things other than work for a change!
Tomorrow we are still based in Xiamen for the majority of the day, looking at more suppliers factories, and take an evening flight back to Hong Kong tomorrow for the Gift & Premium fair in Hong Kong which starts on Thursday. This fair comprises of suppliers in the gift sectors and sits between Phase 2 and 3 of the Canton Fair.
