David's AW News: Muggy Weather & Mooncakes

Greetings from a humid Yiwu, China

Yes I made it to China, and I can tell you it is unnaturally hot here.. The streets are oven hot with a humid hair-dryer-breeze. Evenings are sticky and tropical.

From Bali I took the daily China Southern flight, which leaves every day at 30 minutes past midnight and arrives in Guangzhou five hours later. A big storm further up the coast was blasting Shanghai and I think we were feeling the effects, we had bouncy turbulence for almost all the flight. In Guangzhou I cleared passport control and made my way to the domestic terminal with a flight at 11am to Yiwu. We landed in Yiwu on time and my luggage arrived quickly, within minutes I find Coco waiting for me at arrivals. All seemed pretty smooth and it is amazing to be back in China.

Last week I was telling you about foreigners behaving badly in Bali.. if you missed it you can catch up here.  

I arrived just in time for the Mid autumn festival.. or as I call it Mooncake day.. all our suppliers send boxes of mooncakes, some nicer than others but far too many to eat.

It's auspicious this year because not only is the festival on a full moon, but a super large harvest moon,  a lunar eclipse sending the moon red, and a visible comet in the night sky. All these astrological events the Chinese believe predicts major events in world affairs. Feels strange.. The hot humid sticky weather adding to the strangeness.

At this time in China.. Moons and Rabbits everywhere..

Anyway so Tomas arrived, and we hit the ground running.. visiting existing suppliers first and checking out the projects already in development. Our designers have been super busy ahead of our trip here and now we need to make things happen.. which here is fast and fun. 

Only had a couple of days to check out new stock ideas and we have lots! Almost beside ourselves with excitement!  I think a lot of creativity has been going on this summer.. that means we will have stock on the way for Spring, Easter next year that going to be awesome.. 

Here is Mid-autumn festival but in Europe it's the Equinox.. and that means it is officially autumn - making the start of the "back-end" in the gift trade.. Time to think about Christmas.. and Halloween

We had a lot of stock delivered this week.. I know the warehouse team have containers most days. Lots back in stock.. a quite a lot of new stock.. Including some India stock  still on its way which is taking forever to arrive here, mostly because if the shipping container delays, but also for some reason Indian suppliers have many domestic issues causing delays.

Take care .. have a lovely Equinox week

More news from China next week.

David

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