China Trip #5 Summary!!

Home again and just in time for Christmas!!

  This trip was nothing short of amazing !! 

 I accomplished so much !!

 Met a lot of great people and business contacts, helped develop another Australian up and coming label called Dirty Gremlin, sourced an unknown shoe label to Australia for a new Streetwear shop in Brisbane, finished the development of the Gangstarship clothing co shoes and learnt a lot of new skills which will greatly benefit me in the future .

I will do some new posts on these experiences when I am back in Australia.

Design Legends - RADDISSHME DESIGN HOUSE - Guangzhou, China

I referred in my last post to Ajoy Sahu - founder and director of  RADDISSHME DESIGN HOUSE.

Check out their website here - they are really good to deal with and are a key part of my China sourcing system.  

Here is a sample of some of their GREAT work!

My #1 Partner - Ajoy Sahu - RADDISSHME DESIGN HOUSE!!!

Through my travels here in China I have met many great people and contacts but I would have to say that Ajoy Sahu would have to be one of the most interesting and valuable contacts I have met so far. We met strangely enough through a friend of a friend while playing pool watching football at an Irish pub in China.

Ajoy is the director of a company called Raddisshme Design House , he is an amazing designer and has a very extensive knowledge of the shoe and fashion industry. He has directly done many projects for companies such as PEPSI, MASERATI, ARMANI, HUGO BOSS, DKNY, PRADA, and the list goes on.

Ajoy and I have become very good friends and we spend a lot of time together every time I am in China.
We are currently working on some shoe projects together and really look forward to a long future of business and friendship with him.

Here is some information about Ajoy.

 FOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF RADDISSHME DESIGN HOUSE.AJOY SAHU

One of the most inuential casual sports footwear designers of the moment - Ajoy Sahu passionately continues to bring fresh and brand dening products into the market. Since his role in the launch of Prada Sport and Miu Miu footwear collections in the late 90's, Ajoy designed for many leading brands such as DKNY, Paul & Joe and Terra Plana for which he designed the shoe that won the Ethical Fashion Product Award of the year 2007

 From his vast experience, Ajoy Sahu established RADDISSHME Design House (R'Me) in 2004 which bridges the gap between Eastern and Western design by having studios in both London (UK) and Guangzhou (China).  FOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF RADDISSHME DESIGN HOUSE. AJOY SAHU

;

" All work No play" pfft.....

 A friend of mine has come over to China for a shopping holiday and we also decided to go to Hong Kong and go to Disneyland

Who said " All work no play" ?

Why Angel is my "Network Angel!!"

On my very first trip to China I met a lady that went by the name of Angel . When I first met her I thought she was no more than the manager of a local cafe/restaurant that I met at with other business people on occasion.

We spoke many times about business and I would regularly ask her questions about why the Chinese do things the way they do. She seemed to have a very vast knowledge for business in China, so I asked her what her background was . To my surprise it turned out to be business translating , sourcing , logistics and business management.


I thought to myself that this could turn out to be an extremely valuable contact for me to have.

Since then we have become very good friends, I have rented an apartment from her that she owns in Guangzhou, she has put me in contact with many factories and she has helped me with many dilemas that I have faced with factories and so fourth. She also put me in contact with a very successful law firm in Hong Kong which now helps me with many of my business transactions in China.

What grabbed my attention mostly about Angel was her network of contacts in China and ability to source new and good trustworthy factories. I have had many customers in Australia and New Zealand ask me many times in the past if I can source different products for them in China and most of the time the answer is "yes".

But sometimes it is not that easy, so if it is a product I have not yet sourced or developed I know Angel is the one for the job.

The best thing is, Angel does not go and do the job for me she simply does the research to find the factory and do background checks and so forth to ensure they are a good factory for me to work with and then she puts me in contact with them so I am still in control. 

Angel,  I just love your work!!!


PS - it is just so true what they say in business....

"my network is my net-worth"

Product design & development - From "wo to go"

I am amazed at the business product development process that I use .


Thought - Design - Development - Final product.


Very exciting!!!


The process goes "from this...."

"to this !!!"

Gangstarship shoe project, 2 thumbs up !!

The shoe samples for Gangstarship Clothing Co are going great. Many of the samples are finished, they look perfect and the quality is extremely high.

 I was even able to have some of the samples photographed and I cropped and leveled them to send the customer professional looking photos. Here are some of those photos.

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes!!!

I have spent weeks now having meeting after meeting with some of my factories here in China about the shoes I am developing for Gangstarship. Shoes are a lot more time consuming than t-shirts and baseball caps, but a lot more exciting watching them come together 1 stage at a time.

I am currently working with 13 different factories to develop the shoes for Gangstarship, as each process for the shoes is handled by a separate factory, for example- Molds for the sole of the shoe, Dies that cut out the leather for the different panels on the shoe,  Leather factory that die the leather to your specific colours, Molds for the innersole , Printing factory for the shoe boxes and so on.

Everything with the shoes is going relatively smoothly so far , a few samples have been produced and the colours have not been exactly spot on and the way the shoes wear and walk when they are actually being worn is of some concern to me at the moment. Some of the panels of the shoe will have to be redesigned in order to correct these small issues but that is nothing I can not handle.

Quality control!

While I had a break in Australia I was able to take some of the samples I had made in China and really put them through their paces. I wanted to do this actually hoping to find some flaws and poor quality in some of the products so that i can learn how to better recognize faults with some product development processes and how to avoid problems and guarantee quality.

 One of the problems I encountered was with one of the Gangstarship T-shirts, the shirt had a very involved 16 colour silk screen print on it. It looked great but after about 4-5 washes the print started to lift off the fabric. You could wash them as many times as you liked if you washed them by hand in cold water but you can't expect customers to do that, so back to the drawing board.

 This really made me look closer into the colours, print processes and washing abilities of different products. I took some of the samples back to the factory where I had them  made and explained what was going wrong. We then started to investigate the possibilities of why this shirt print is coming off.

 After many theories and print attempts we nailed it, so a new quality control step was needed to be put in place. From now on what I do with my t-shirt factories is actually have multiple samples made of the same product and leave one as how the factory gave it to me and then get one of the other samples and  wear it and have it dry cleaned thoroughly and wear it again and dry cleaned again and so on..... After many wears and washes we look at how the actual print, the colour of the print and the colour and shape of the fabric has turned out compared to the untouched sample from the factory.

After doing this a few times now I  have recognized a number of processes and fabrics that do not work well together and also how I can implement these same new quality control measures amongst many to other products.

Quality control is vital...

More work to do!! Off to China!!

I have had a long break back in Australia with family and friends , which has been great but time to go back to China and do some more work.

I expect this to be about a 9 week trip as I want to try and be home for Christmas. One of the clothing labels that I have directly been helping design and develop has decided to focus more on their shoe designs , so on this trip I will be developing a range of low top and high top streetwear sneakers of very high quality and comfort.

 The clothing label is called Gangstarship Clothing Co and they are a hip hop Clothing label , they have been running for a few years now and I have helped them with some designs and product development in the past.

Back to Aussie land again.!!

This trip has been extremely educational, busy, stressful, beneficial, profitable and a whole lot of fun.

I have seen a lot of great things, met a lot of great people, business contacts and factories and also added another great chapter to my journey of  business and product development and sourcing in China.

Homewares!!

Most of my production so far in China has mostly been around the fashion industry, but I had a customer in Australia ask me to develop some wrought iron style candle holders.

 This turned out to be a great opportunity to start developing even more skills and contacts in China with homewares.

TV's

Everything going reasonably well this trip, only a few minor hick-ups but you have to expect that.

I had yet another customer in Australia ask me to source them some good LCD TV's.

I traveled to Shenzhen for this as this city is very well known for electrical products.

                                                                   Shenzhen