Greetings from Sheffield UK..
Yes we are not in China anymore.. last week I was telling you about the
Gemstone back streets of Yiwu in China, and spilling some trade secrets.
If you missed it you can catch up
here.
From Yiwu we took the train to Xiamen four and a half hours south and
noticeably more tropical on the coast the city facing Taiwan. It's
a lovely island city with a holiday vibe, and so we enjoyed a couple of
days being regular tourists visiting the small historic island of
Gulangyu just off the coast and walking around the beautiful Siming
District. We realised that we had actually been here 10 years ago. Just
outside our hotel was the spot where I took a picture of Coco. The world
changed so much in 10 years.. but Coco still likes to scare me by
posing on top of walls.
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Gulangyu is a fascinating place. No cars, so you have to walk
everywhere. And everywhere ancient (in many cases) crumbling but still
impressive villa's once owned by wealthy traders. The island was
divided up in the same way that Shanghai was by colonial
Europeans. You can see that many fortunes were made and lost on
these rocks. We climbed to the highest point: Sunlight Rock
where you can admire the modern Xiamen city on one side and
glimpse in the distance the Island of Taiwan. Which in itself is
of course a massive shadow hanging over the good trading people of
China.
I had expected to see jets flying overhead, warships in the bay, guys
in army fatigues in the streets. But nothing - actually
everything was normal, subdued but normal.
From Xiamen we took a friendly local taxi to the airport and Xiamen
Airline to Amsterdam (11 hours), changed for Manchester Airport (one
hour) and was met by our James (aw-fullfilment.com) manager who loves to drive to Manchester and pick me up, because
we will usually stop off for a pint of pale ale and catch up with
everything going on. That was all day Monday travelling.. we
left at 10.30am and arrived at 7pm the same day but
strangely jetlagged.
Now it's Friday and I still feel a little jetlagged..
Coco was interested to see how things have changed at AW since she
was last here (just before the pandemic) and also meet in person
the people she messages everyday, plus catch up with old friends.
So this week has been a massive catch up time.
Today an Indonesian container arrived, they are unloading it now.
I'm of course quite excited to see lots of new products arriving..
especially the Healing Powder Incense - made by three holy men
which regular readers will know the back-story about.. and the new
ritualistic way to burn incense - I'm sure your customers are
going to love it! Here's the news letter link. See details below..
It's great to be home. Only four weeks to
Father's Day
and all is a bit of a buzz.. We have brilliant gifts like this,
and more arriving by the day.
Plus it's all happening - big changes - at AW-Aromatics. The factory is in full swing making new fun bath bombs, but
also did you know if you want unlabeled essential oils, bulk
essential oils (or any ingredients) you can now buy direct from
the aromatics factory.. We realised that packing and shipping,
storing and shipping these low margin things from one side of
Sheffield to the other and shipping them again.. was well just a
bit mad. So we open up lower prices direct from AW-Aromatics.com -
sorry you will
need to register there
also but get the keenest possible prices.
Lots of work to do, lots of catching up, lots of plans to make..
it's all go as usual.
Take care - have a lovely weekend.
More news next week.
David
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