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Tools to Liveby

In such a short period of time, Karen Yang has achieved what I've been dreaming for so long, I hope to visit her shop Tools to Liveby soon.  But of course she would be facing a whole new set of accompanying problems she couldn't have imagined before, I presumed.  It will be interesting to interview her, let's see.

 

What's In My Pencase - December 2012

Porn: was on Flickr Explore on 5th December, Things Organized Neatly on 24th December.

Content: candy design & works, merchants & mills tape measure and scissors, scription gtd tap mod, koh-i-noor eraser, mt tape, fishing reel tape measure, Muji scissors, cutter and glue stick, charm, magnifier, Kaweco al sports touch, pilot Capless fountain pen, staedtler 925 mechanical pencil, tascam audio recorder, 8 scales in one body. Beneath: Moleskine large grid journal, saddleback leather cover.

Head over to the Flickr photo, hover your mouse over the objects to see which is which.

Here Are Some Excuses

You must be waiting anxiously for the Chronodex July-December version to come out, believe that I'm working on it and to be released definitely this week.  In the mean time, here's the excuses of being late.

Excuse 1: Obsession with Tri-Eye iPhonography

Can't stop, it is heavy, it is huge and it is fun.  Usually when people I met get interested in the monster, I got chances to take their "The Dog" photos.  Here's Claudia from Staedtler, whom I met in Shanghai a few days ago.  She is going to spend the next 6 weeks in China, it is a long trip.  Since I didn't go to Paperworld this year, I got good updates from her about Staedtler's new product release schedule from 2012 up to 2013.  She speaks fluent Mandarin coz she studied in Beijing some time ago.

And yes self-portraits is fun too with Tri-Eye, here's me in my own toilet.

I forgot to bring my shaver to Shanghai so I accumulated an ugly 5 days worth of beard, kids took fisheye photo of this begger just last night.

Yes kids, they are losing their teeths, in a healthy way.  Desserts are most welcome to them.

So excuse 1 the obsession continues everyhour, business or personal, it doesn't matter.  Here's Mr. Flury the inventor of Cyberclean.  Somebody said "I'm afraid of his nose poking me if it were a 3D photo".

Excuse 2: Shanghai Frequent Visits

We are going to have a new store coming up soon in Shanghai, our second store there (already 12 stores in Hong Kong and 6 in Taiwan).  Management is sending long emails coz they haven't seen my input enough, yeah yeah yeah I'm working on it, I don't want to hand in rubbish just to shut them up but seems like I have to.  Anyway, I'm confident my current composite of the Stationery section is interesting and strong, I just have to make it easier for people around me.  So, I am travelling there a week or two every month.

The last Monday I bumped into The Amazing Race season 21 first shooting.  They arrived Shanghai the same time I did, it was their first stop of the season and it was in Shanghai.  The camera men were super sensitive soon as I raised my iPhone, a few crazy fans were in Shanghai too, I saw them running around with the crew taking pictures and posting to Reality Fan Forum in real time.  Interesting encounter.

For a stay of just 5 days, the schedule was completely full, meeting after meetings.  Just so happened there was the 106th China Stationery Fair and I went there between meetings, not enough time to see but I got a sense that the show is nice despite the fact that import products are a little rare and usually arrives 6 months to 1 year later than the rest of the world.  Damn China import regulations and customs (sorry, don't ban my blog, I'm just saying it is not efficient).

Shanghai is definitely changing a lot and very quickly, IMHO it is one of the fastest changing cities in the world, after Seoul and Tokyo.  I managed to stop by some of the smaller shops and found inspirations every time.  Well, I just borrowed the toilet in this interesting wine cellar/bar, never had the luxury to enjoy a drink, must find time in June to do that.

Excuse 3: Experiencing for the Future Categories

Things won't be exciting at all if I were to order products from catalogs only.  Yesterday's merchanise makes today's sales, many lacks the vision to create a future category thus constantly being bugged by management for lack of 'concept'.  IMHO, the only way to create a future is to explore and experience as much as possible, inspirations will come.  We have so much to learn from other creative people.

Thanks to Petit Morpho, a tiny place which the owner is obsessed with organizing art/craft exhibitions, I had a chance to learn from famous Japanese rubber stamp crafting artist Ms. Tomoko Tsukui (津久井智子).  She has a pari of super steady hands and published several books (in Japanese) about rubber stamp crafting from erasers.  Ms. Tomoko works for the original rubber stamp crafting supplier Hinodewashi and came to Hong Kong for promoting the art.

2 weeks ago, I brought my kid to the event and learned some basic skills and it was great fun for both of us.

Ms. Tomoko carries a few boxes of her stamps, inkpad (she designed interesting sets of finger inkpads for accurate coloring) and signature stamps in various versions.  Why is there no man in any of these workshops and demonstrations?  They are probably playing with their cameras, iPhones or game consoles.  Oh perhaps their bikes....

Excuse 4: Ride Along

Social cause. Well, not as grand as it sounds, but I enjoyed the Ride of Silence 2012 event with a borrowed bike.  Yes that's an event with 80% male participants contrary to rubber stamp crafting's 100% female.  People close to me don't get enough of my attention and went sour sometimes, cut back or manage better I don't know.  I like the fact that we can ride together but in silence, for the same goal, well understood simple communications.  And I'm not talking about a bike ride only, figuratively rides to somewhere with companionship, just enojy the rides, explore without sourness.

Excuse 5: Researches

When a shop/place is good, you keep hearing things from people and you keep wanting to find out more about it.  What's the essense behind the apparent pleasant things you see?  People in their beta thinking mode usually cannot see deep enough, I prefer to find all angles from word of mouth, a visit and a time to sit back and think.

Fang Sou (方所) claims to be the best lifestyle store in China, many suppliers said great things about it, so I paid a visit there on a day trip to GuangZhou.  It is a bookstore with a fashion boutique, a stationery corner, a cafe, a home objects corner and an exhibition area.  Like it, although anybody with sufficient amount of money and connection can build one as easily, it is a noble attempt to composite such a mix especially in China.  It is a beautiful place to be.  I managed to stop by a few other interesting small shops in GuangZhou, all these researches help me to orient and pick the right sets of values to convey to customers when creating the next merchandise mix.

Excuse 6: Personal Projects

The best advice to a Gemini is probably "to focus", and I'm still meditating on it.  Leather projects for personal use and to gloat about are fun, creating something useful like GTD index cards and Chronodex to share with people is satisfying, blogging about products not available just yet is ..., ok some of these projects must go somewhere soon.

Excuse 7: Beautiful Hong Kong

Extremely proud of this city, such a great melting pot for many of the world-changing things to happen. Many wrote to me asking for interesting spots to visit, and I gave them a Google map if we have some common interests.  Some day our Tourism Board should have independent agents like me all over the place, equipped by the coolest map and stationery travel kit.... 

Excuse 8, 9, 10...: Skipped

Yup, I'm just giving you excuses, getting back to work now.  I hope you can have a sense of the "mess" I'm in.

Pony Brown's Visit to Hong Kong

We had a great time with Pony Brown's president, illustrator and the translator when they visited our Korean Stationery fair and met their fans in Hong Kong.  I was particularly happy to be able to chat with as many fans as possible, they all love the postive messages and cuteness of the main character.  One of the fan was upsetted by something this very morning, but when she found out Pony Brown's presence and came, she felt way better.  That's why we love to bring positive energy and pleasure through these events.

Contrary to many's perception, the person behind this cute character is a tall handsome hard-bodied guy Mr. Oh.  You can pretty much see the similarity of him and the character, cool from the outside, bright and positive but sometimes shy within.  We were expecting him to just give out signatures on postcards but for each of the fans whom came, he drew something special and worked very hard in details to make every stroke counts.  I believe fans were not disappointed, at all!

After the event today, we've brought the Pony Brown team to a seafood restaurant in Lei Yue Mun (鯉魚門) tonight and enjoyed a great time chit chatting.  What a lovely evening, nice weather too.

Last year when I visited Seoul, I found out their project with a Korean music instrument brand called Countess.  Upon Countess' request they made these lovely Ukulele prototypes!  They are finally available in music instrument stores in Korea now.  Excited about this cross over with music, Mr. Oh brought along 2 Ukulele so that we can gift them to Pony Brown fans through a small competition.

So far, Pony Brown is the most successful Korean brand we've brought to Hong Kong, I hope in the future we will have a lot more collaborations and bring more happiness, no matter how tiny, to many.

Realizing the hard work Mr. Oh and the team went through.... you know what, for the past few weeks they've only slept for 2 hours every single day, working hard on projects, so we admire a lot of the Korean speed and dedication really..... last night I decided to make personal gift to them, leather jackets for Cricket lighters, embossed with "PONY BROWN" and "city'super stationery" on them.  Took me hours to design and made, until 4am, but I'm happy that it was a perfect gift for them.  Looking forward to more PONY BROWN stuffs!

It Was An Idea 4 Years Ago

Tomorrow our friends from Korea will come to help out on a Korean Stationery Fair in our shops.  I'm especially happy that Pony Brown's designer Mr. Oh and president Ms. Lee will come and meet our customers and press.

The significance of this fair to me is that it was foresaw 4 years ago and it became a reality finally.  At that time, I asked myself why we had no sourcing from Korea at all, nothing.  They have great products and reasonable price and why nobody ever built a network to get those great stuffs for our customers.  Since then a chain of events happened, many failed attempts and empty promises, poor communication due to language and culture differences, nothing worked for one and a half year.

I remember thinking, "it is impossible we cannot do it, it will work especially when everybody says it won't, I will get enough good stuffs and make a Korean Stationery Fair happen."  Well, thanks to those who care and those who don't care enough, they put in efforts afterall, this is happening now, not as elaborated as I imagined but it has come true and I appreciate all the small moves.  So what happened between nothing and now has a lot to do with tenacity and working out of ones boundaries, which I will share in a talk I will give to a university in Taiwan this year.

If you are in Hong Kong, come meet Pony Brown people this Friday evening and Saturday afternoon where I will also be there in Festival Walk LOG-ON store.  There are these 3 rubber stamps for you to stamp on your notebook, they are made specially for this event and for these 2 days only.  Don't miss it.

BTW, last Saturday was a great and efficient day I spent with my kid.  Bought him a pair of cheapest possible shoes, painted in color he loves, I'm yet to paint a crazy chicken on it though.  It was a creative day too, we explored different media for his homework.  I even had time to clean up my fountain pens and made a few sketches on my Traveler's Notebook.

Amazing MT Masking Tape Stop Motion

Forwarded from our MT Masking Tape friend in Japan, this cool little video is a cute stop motion animation created by artist Taijin Takeuchi (竹内泰人) in Shbaura House, a workshop space located in Tokyo.  It took him 11 days and 1700 photos to composite this 4 minutes video.  Great work!

 

Stealing Time

Time is like an invisible bottle of water, at the very beginning you suck up every drop you need, soon you find that sharing is rewarding and fun, then it become your responsibility to share and you wonder how much is still available for yourself, at this point if you can't figure a way cut down the demand, you will either break down, give up yourself or you have to steal.  I steal.

Today I stole a few hours between visiting Dad in hospital and family time to walk in Central with my camera.  A few cups of coffee here and there, taking photos in back alleys and checking out some cool shops.  I found an old books and stationery store in its closing sale.  The owner is also stealing.  The time has ran out for his shop to mean something in a district where more and more galleries and cafes are opening and rent is high, luckily he owns the place so he is renting out the place so that he can rent another space to continue the dying business.  He is stealing time by economics.

(very old copy books, gummed labels which you lick and stick, short stories and Standardgraph pen)

(China Book Company owner selling HK$15 pairs of old scissors)

(calligraphy nibs, old pencils, cutters and scissors)

(grip developer)

(Chinese chess)

(kids scissors, erasers, glue, pen tray covered with moss, music books)

(photo album, all sorts of erasers, sharpners, learning cassette tapes)

(crowded in its last day, China Book Company)

(look, changes ahead in this street)

My Dad stole too, he stole precious business time and brought back juicy cold watermelon so that we could gather at late night as a family enjoying something together, that was before air conditioning was common.  He stole time to look for other potential buyers when others were still considering his price offers (Chinese painting).  He stole sleeping time in exchange for quiet studies of the paintings' authenticities.  He stole sleeping time from a doctor and 'friend' he thought he could trust when I was terribly sick.  He stole my attention in small chunks when he demanded complete silence in the house for his studies.  I learned from a great man to steal.

I hope to be able to write more often and not disappointing Scription readers.  Been to Vegas and Tokyo in the past month, will visit Taipei and Shanghai in March, bear with me.

What Happened in 2 Months

Hong Kong is such an amazing place a lot can happen in just 2 months.  For those of you who don't follow my tweets or Instagram feed, I feel obligated to blast out what happened (Colin, I'm talking to you!).  Or to put it better, I want to share my colorful life with you because I know I won't have the time to go back and post tibits I wanted to describe in more details.  So here you go.

Had a privilege to be invited to speak in a conference in Basel.  Flown to Zurich on Swiss Air.

Before the conference, I had a few nice walk with conference attendees from different parts of the world, taking time to see and had coffee while journaling.  Visited stationery and lifestyle stores like Waser, Book Binders, Seven Sisters, etc.

One afternoon was particularly pleasant with nothing to do, so I cycled to all 3 countries sharing this lovely little Basel.  Between the border of France and Switzerland I had a couple of beers by the river and a nice chat with a fellow conference attendee.

After my presentation and the weather permitted, we went for the maiden flight of the newly made Cyberclean hot air balloon.  I was privileged to be on that very balloon, while the rest of the conference attendees rode on the other 9 balloons.  Champaign after that.

I stole half a day from the conference and met two persons I knew but never met before.  My blog reader Yvette who took me to Zurich to see stationery stores and bought me a nice pen, we had lunch in a famous restaurant Zeughauskeller, she showed me her lovely Traveler's Notebook and pens in brass pen case, we shared love in stationery and photography.  We talked about business and management near the end of the day as she is the head of a medium size company.  Since I'm a serious Treemap user, I arranged to meet the founder of Macrofocus Treepmap, Luc, in Babu's Bakery & Coffeehouse.  Interesting to see his other versions of Treemap and found that surprisingly the software's biggest clients are … I can't tell, but very interesting.  Thanks Yvette and Luc, I had a great afternoon with you even though it was very brief!

Visited Museum Tinguely amazed by his work, went up to 1291 meters Weissenstein mountain top to lunch afterward.

Chased by a cow there after showing her my Traveler's Notebook, literally chased by her and being laughed at by a 10 years old kid.

Before we left Weissenstein, I had 30 minutes laying on grass breathing clean air while looking over this beautiful country.

It was quite late that day but we managed to stop by Solothurn, a beautiful little town having a lot to do with the number 11… (check out my flickr feed by clicking the photos).  Fountains, churches, clock tower, cafe, etc.  Too short a stay but feeling lucky.

Back to Hong Kong from Switzerland.  Mid-autumn night playing with kids and lights and camera.

A cycling day with my Strida and Olympus PEN.

Worked a lot on Inkling campaign, which has a long queue of waiting list now as production speed is still slow due to their strict quality control standard.

Went with my modified Polaroid 110A (by Patrick Putze) to Ma Wan in Hong Kong, where an Instagram event in Hong Kong took place, check out Hong Kong Instayay keyword.

The Instayay group is getting bigger and bigger, lots of new faces I couldn't find time to meet.  Great to socialize with a very diverse group of people.

Oh I did take my Voigtlander 35mm too, stunning colors to capture in Ma Wan.

And it was the first time I saw my son so seriously taking photos with his digital camera, love that he enjoys photography as much as I do.

September was Switzerland, October was Korea.  For some reasons this trip was delayed to October and I couldn't change flight schedule but to accept a midnight flight to Seoul.

Rare in Seoul but it happened to me, bed bug bite in a decent hotel, luckily they moved me to a super nice traditional Korean style room, 5 times bigger but I was not so used to sleep on the floor with thin bedding.  Managed to find a lot of great stuffs to bring to customers in our shop.

First time to try Budae Jjigae (Army hotpot).  A type of hotpot originated from Korean War when meat was scarce and people picked left over food from US army base.  Yummy.

Met dozens of suppliers over there and found new masking tapes which quality finally catching up with Japanese MT Tapes.

Stopped by 10x10 cafe again, a must visit cafe even though the decoration is changed significantly from my last visit.

Finally visited Jetoy's very own shop, met the founder once again and had a real nice meeting and planned ahead for the coming year's collaboration.

Visited dozens of stationery and lifestyle shops, as usual.  Small world, I arranged a meeting with a Korean guy I met back in Switzerland, to learn more about his business in Korea.  Chose the Toycamera shop to meet.  Found in that shop selling a book with dozens of my Polaroid photos inside.  I agreed to let them use my photos for the book, for free, in return I asked them to send me the book but they never did!  Toycamera shop owner was nice enough to ask me to sign that book and I was happy enough.  And I bought the book.

Turned out there was a firework display in one of the night I stayed in Seoul, went all the way to get close to the firework and it was awesome, so many people.

Back to Hong Kong from Seoul.  Kid is having more homework, I invented some ways to help him learn English spelling, turned out successful and each round I would make a small booklet for the bunch of words he needs to memorize.  Eventually, I made a leather cover for those booklets.  My kid supervised me to make the leather book, and he specified a pencil holder too.  I named in "Spell(ing) Book".  Fun.

Cycling in Cheung Chau with kids, what a lovely day.  Ice cream, cycling, chit chats and of course Instant photography, this time with Chocolate Polaroid film.

Middle of October, after weeks of thinking about it, I finally took 4 hours (or 6?) to make this leather pen holder with strap for myself.  I followed a design from a Japanese company called 4GATS, I admired their design a lot but I couldn't buy it anywhere in Japan in my last visit in July.  Will import their products to Hong Kong, but I just had to own one created by my hand :)

More product sourcing, repeatedly, happily.  Knew Jac Zagoory's key pen for a while but finally saw it in person first time.  Great quality, good looking, but probably cannot arrive for this Xmas.

Couldn't join Strida gatherings, but managed to visit a bike store opening.  Met a serious biker who customized his Strida with speed drive, drop bar and Megahorn.

Got my hands on the Polaroid Z340 instant digital camera!  Love the look, hate the Zink prints.  Launch event with media on 23rd Nov.

Lomokino launched.  Got a sample but haven't tried to use it, I have low motivation to do that afraid of spending all my money in seconds.

Phew, a whole lot more happened, I guess these are just tip of the iceberg.  Better follow my tweets Colin! :)  BTW, finished reading the "Steve Jobs" biography and re-read "Why We Buy".  In the process of reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow".

From Ideas and Simulations to Making Them Real - with a lot of help from colleagues

Yet another year has passed, I really didn't realize until I grew tired of something at work lately and counted, that it is the 8th Back To School campaign I managed.  I couldn't believe it, and it is best for me to stop and let the next guy take over.  To linger a bit more, I imagined next year's campaign would feature "The End Of the World BTS Catalog" hahahah, a lot of fun games, dressed up staff, in-store characters displayed…. etc.  What do you care, it's the end of the world…. kind of cool.  Anyway, the idea will perhaps stays with me and still looks beautiful without actualizing it :)

I strived to add new elements to every year's campaign, mostly on concepts, accurate 3D layout, analysis and games.  Too bad this year there are not much new merchandise from Japan (after the quake) and things are pretty slack.  But so far this is the best year ever in terms of contribution from every division.

I'm particularly happy about this year's simulation, in fact so proud I showed my son how it was done from scratch.  First it was a sketch on paper, then I worked on 3D simulation on Google SketchUp accurate to the millimeters, fantastic colleagues from VMD made them real finally.  My son was watching me orbiting the simulated scenes on computer, asking all sorts of questions, he wanted to go to help setting up the actual event and to watch when it first opened and customers coming in.  Eventually I took him to Times Square in the middle of the event, at first he was just casually looking around, not particularly excited I guess because it was not really a back to school event for young kids.  All of a sudden, he said calmly "so amazing".  That's enough for me, I didn't need any award.

So let's see what will come to change and I will put some thoughts on it during my trip to Switzerland next week (yes for work).  After all, my tarot amplified my thoughts about putting plans into action, inner strength and courage to take risks.  Will see, will see.

Meet Yourself - A Back To School 2011 Event 12th Aug - 1st Sep

This year our back to school theme will be "Meet Yourself!" in city'super and LOG-ON.  I realized for a long while that we've never really geared our promotion in terms of "school supplies", but rather "Personalization, Customization and Individualism".  So I decided to play down the "back to school" name a bit and "invited" 9 very distinct characters whom you will find appearing in our event area and on leaflets, to show you what they like, perhaps you will identify yourself to some of them naturally.

In this event, which is a painstakingly difficult thing to pull off involving so many parties, we will have Personalization Zone, Gadgets and Basic Stationery Zone, iPad/iPhone/Headphone Zone, Fashion/Bag Zone and Brand Zone.  All in Times Square city'super for the period 12th Aug to 31st Aug (while in other stores, they are the smaller sized versions of the Times Square one and last until 1st Sep).

As usual, we get the privileged support from various Japanese stationery makers to have offer items that are new and exclusively imported for this event: UNI StyleFit single body with dot patterns, UNI Cutie & Cool series, PILOT Coleto Heart series (very difficult to get from Japan!), PENTEL Vicuna 2+1 pen, ZEBRA award winning Arbez series.

Our dear friends from Korea stationery industry also supported us with brand new product lines and beautiful displays.  I wish we had more time and manpower to cope with their sheer volume of creativity. Brands include: Antenna Shop, 7321 Design, E2, Pony Brown, Lollipop, Indigo, Elago, Vistadesign, etc.

Chocolate Rain fans will be delighted to see a 1.7m Fatina along side with a bunch of new products such as umbrella, keychain, iPad cases, etc, thanks to Prudence and her friendly partners to make it happen again this year.

Staedtler will be demonstrating how to use their coloring products, while an exclusive DIY pencil set will be available too.  Cote et Ciel new arrival from France.  Soul by Ludacris demonstration booth with show girls.  Hello Kitty speakers, Jays earphones, Tunewear collections, iHome mood light speakers, mix tape USB drive, music match and doll earphones, water dancing speakers, etc etc.

Purchase any Nike bags from us you will also get this cool notebook set for free (while stock last, about a thousand pieces).  It is a nylon cover with 3 A5 sized notebook refills (ruled, squared and plain).  North Face, Puma, Gregory bags will be present in the event too.  Don't forget to check out our own production bags which each of the series are named after those 9 characters I mentioned above (Nicole, Nic, Mandy, Rika, Nikki, Matt, Max, Wilson, Eagle).

I'm not very organized here but you will soon see our "Meet Yourself!" leaflet coming out, feel free to pick it up and explore.  There is even a matching game with very nice prizes, you just have to figure out which pair of those 9 characters are currently "in a relationship" :)