Busy busy busy!!!

Busy! Busy! Busy! And I am glad that I can finally ‘steal’ a few precious minutes to update latest happenings into my blog. So much had happened since the last time anything was entered in here. I m trying my level best to summarize the past week activities and share it with my fellow readers out there.

We are in the final stage of negotiation with the management to secure our new showroom cum office. Actually, we had paid the “commitment fees” but there is a last minute hitch – our common area is to be shared with our neighbour who runs a cafe. What an insult to us! The worst nightmare our main entrance is facing the common area! We are not too happy with this sharing idea and we insist the EXCLUSIVITY from management to utilise this area completely to ourselves. We have big ideas of converting it into a mini gallery to display our wide range of replica items in 3D frames. Our drawings and layout are ready and we are still waiting for the green light to proceed with this mini gallery. Question is what if the management insist that we have to share the area? Hmmm, in the worst scenario, we will have to give up this place and even scrapping the idea of setting up our office cum showroom here … and forfeited our deposit too!!! I hope we don’t have to take drastic action and everything goes smoothly as planned….We hope to operate from our new showroom in Mid December and time is running short….sigh…

Finally the much anticipated “Buy Malaysian Craft” promotion in the cool resorts of Genting Highlands is on. There are only 7 handicraft industries from 7 different states selected to participate in demo & selling. We are one of the LUCKY ONES! It is very costly for the Malaysian Govt. to organize and rent raw space from the Genting management and we are very thankful to them for this golden opportunity to test the potential market here. We were placed in one of the busiest building, i.e. First World Plaza and the crowd here is huge! It is always busy around the clock with many tourists from all over the world. So far the response has been encouraging with many small items being sold to different nationalities each day and they have a field day bargaining for best price just like Petaling Street! It is very disheartening when the tourists here are not appreciative of handicraft products and treated ours just like ordinary imported products…The govt. body must work harder and more aggressive to promote our handicrafts and change the tourist mindset that Malaysian handicraft is of world standard quality.

The weather is so pleasant here but at times it can be extremely cold, especially when it rains in the noon. Food is also very expensive and the fast food is also costly than normal outlet too due to higher transportation costs. For strange reasons all of us are always hungry and always craving to munch snack in between meals time.. Why is it so?? Is it because we are surrounded by many restaurants?? Aarrgghh….it’s burning big hole in our pockets!! The lighter side of Genting Highlands: every minute we can see many different kind of people, their character, their fashion sense – regardless of their gender and my! oh my!…it is so interesting I have to say!

Finally, here are the highlight designs for our current GH promotion. 3 nicely crafted bracelet. It took me a month to complete this limited pieces and few days for my partner to sacrifice her eye sight to fix the tedious crystals. I was hoping that it will get noticed by some rich tourist. But to my dismay, the market here is so different. Carry high range product here and it will never get appreciated and not even noticed! Sigh..
Goshh .. the smell of fried chicken is in the air again ….!!!! KFC …I must hang on to my wallet tight!

Meetings, meetings, meeting .... just can never get enough!

More meetings and more follow up discussions with the management over our soon-to-be ‘Paulini’ HQ & showroom. We are slightly taken aback as the management is keen for us to start operating our new HQ as early as December 2009 and not January 2010 as we plan originally! As the month of October and November are also an extremely busy month with back to back domestic promotions organized by Malaysian Handicraft for us…we have to speed up our productions s (not that we are complaining… as it is a good sign…)The drawings and plans layout are already completed. Now, we are waiting for the letter of offer from the management to secure the said place in black and white and no turning back after this. Soon…we will reveal the new image of our HQ ……so stay tuned for this….


Another good news for the day is we have been selected by Kraftangan secretariat to participate in promotion/demo up in First Wold Plaza, Genting Highlands. It definitely made our day because after much anticipation of which company is going to represent the metal industry, either from Selangor or Melaka…we are THE CHOOSEN ONE. Knowing that Genting Highlands is one of the nation’s top holiday destination….we anticipate another exciting event similar to our last year oversea’s promo in Ghuanzhou , China and another fantastic event in Jakarta Indonesia where all our products are snapped up!

As we are working against limited time to produce more stocks and new designs (both in workshop and shop….) another surprise master piece is soon to be released especially for our upcoming Genting Highlands event!. After discussing the concept with Lini, (my partner) I have completed assembling these tiny pieces of pendant that resembles turtle body and giving them the final touch. Fine workmanship & precise soldering is required…very tedious! We decided to only produce 3 sets! Tomorrow it will be sent back to our factory for plating…and later Lini will crack her head to fix Swarosvski Crystals to enhance the product…And she will also have the final headache to name the product too…Hmmm..what shall we name it??? AArrgghh..we always have problems when it comes to naming them…but not to worry…creativity knows no limits..so..we will worry about it later..

While having breakfast this early morning, I can’t help but noticed this petite young lady carrying an over sized handbag. When I say over sized I mean really over sized as in the bag equals a quarter of her whole female form! Makes me wonder what she hides in there? In fact, the question I have in my mind is why does most ladies like to carry big bags? Is it a trend or is it just a habit? Maybe they like to carry their whole makeup and 'grandmother' possessions in there?

Finally checked out our new office cum service centre. Hopefully and if possible, to start another outlet there!? Twice the size larger than our current retail outlet here in Giant Kelana, it sure looked impressive! Surrounded by many lifestyle cafes, this place might be ‘dangerous’ to us! To make matter worst, this place has got one of the biggest and cleanest ‘mamak’ restaurant around and it is 24 hours too! So are we going to confirm this as our new place? It took me half day and a box of cheese macaronis to complete the floor plan. I was satisfied with the layout at the moment but last minute changes is possible knowing my partner is ever fickle minded about the lightings, colour schemes, concept…, image???…..you know how fussy women can be?

'Cucuk sanggul' seems to rule the day as I am called to create an urgent request by a lady customer. She was thankful she doesn’t have to drive all the way to Melaka for it. Surprisingly, instead of just getting one piece, she bought two. She sure made me proud of my creations as it is going to Australia for a wedding functions and I bet many guests will envy her unique cucuk sanggul as it is customised and not readily available in the market.

Of late, we have this new ‘trading neighbour’ opposite our shop who sells many varieties of toys but interestingly….3 bright yellow colour toy chicken is the main star! Because…. without fail, it attracts passer-by to squeeze squeeze it ……. So shiok! And the poor chicken can produce sympathetic sound like being slaughtered!! I m serious, it does sound very real and never fails to make us laugh occasionally. At least I can confirm that everyone squeeze differently! Some fast squeezer, some slow ones and we even have those teasing ones! Even the small kiddos are not spared as they happily do their squeezing! Well…it does bring some live back to the solemn surrounding of Giant…. Now, we are waiting for our silver smith who’supposed to hand carry a special order from a VIP customer. The result? Will be revealed tomorrow!!!