#052 A week of constantly sending emails (28/05/2023)

Welcome to this week's journal. I'll just briefly tell you what I did this week.

RQ2 is nearing completion.

Re Quilt 2 is nearing completion, but it's already the end of May. To some extent, we've missed the peak summer season when people are eager to buy quilts (ideally, it would have launched in March). It's a real blow. I know my colleagues at the stores are anxious, and I'm very anxious too, but I really want to make everything perfect before releasing it. I don't want to make a product that I know I could improve. However, I'll consider this a lesson learned, because I'll start preparing future products earlier. After all, Re Quilt 2 is the first product in a long time that's truly ground-up and very different from what others in the industry are making. I think it's amazing (at least in my opinion).

Dinner with the young transportation company team

This week, Ben and I arranged to have dinner with a team from a transportation company. We discussed potential collaborations and got to know each other, as we're both relatively young companies and wanted to connect. They're a young transportation team, best known for their moving services. They've also used their own trucks and manpower to help elderly people and those in need. Some of you might guess which company they work for. They contacted me a long, long time ago to encourage me, which left a deep impression. We occasionally exchange text messages, and this week we arranged to meet for dinner. After listening to their presentation, I felt they had great vision and that as long as they persevere, they will definitely succeed. We might have the opportunity to collaborate in the future.

New product category Prototyping

Learning from the lessons of RQ2 (Re Quilt 2), products launching at the end of this year need to be addressed now. Besides the patent application we discussed two weeks ago, we've produced more test samples this week, ensuring every detail is perfected and resolving issues as soon as possible! This way, we won't have a huge time gap between one product and the next. Actually, I don't understand why, even though I seem to be constantly busy, outsiders might perceive it as if I haven't produced anything new in a long time. Sometimes I hate myself. It feels like I'm never doing enough, never working hard enough, never fast enough, never doing enough, even though I'm busy every day. I'll pay attention to this myself.

keep sending emails 

In response to new product demands, changes in the international situation, and the increasing difficulty in hiring for manufacturing in Hong Kong (there are fewer and fewer people who know how to sew), we need to plan for the future and how our production lines will be handled five years from now. The safest approach is to diversify production locations and raw material supplies to reduce risk. This need stems from the many unstable factors in the world that make it impossible to rely solely on one place for production: for example, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has increased electricity prices in Europe, making channel manufacturing very expensive for European manufacturers; and recently, the deterioration of Sino-US relations has led Western brands to decoupling from China, moving their production from China to other Asian countries, which has made Southeast Asian manufacturers extremely busy and unable to attend to the production of small companies like mine. I'm truly feeling my way across the river, having never faced anything like this before. So I read various books and interviewed supply chain managers from successful companies. My current plan is to establish cooperative production lines in several key regions: for example, one in Europe, one or two in China, one in Hong Kong to see if I can maintain it, and perhaps one in Southeast Asia, each responsible for different products. My task is to find out exactly what types of processes these countries' suppliers excel at, what natural resources and advantages they possess, and establish long-term partnerships with these factories. We currently have some partners, but it may not be enough, so I've been constantly sending emails and messages to find manufacturers to collaborate on new products. It's a bit like when I was job hunting a few years ago, constantly writing cover letters and sending emails. The truth is, as long as you don't give up, you will eventually find a job.

That's all for this week. See you next week!

P.S. Attached is a video of my cat playing with a failed RQ2 sample box.