Buzz word: Authentic
Fri Jun 28 2019 22:31:00 GMT+0800 (Malaysia Time)
Greetings from Spain
Last week I was telling you about KYW (know your wholesaler) and some wedding customs from Slovakia.. you can read about it here.
Since then my wife and I took a short break on the island of Rhodes, we just got back to our home in La Cala de Mijas at 3am last night.
On the flight, I was thinking about "authenticity" and what it actually is? It's a buzz word right now, and whatever it is - everyone is after the authentic experience.
Here's my top travel tip for the week, avoid Volotea airline like the plague. It's a budget Spanish airline, and we were never so ripped off, delayed without explanation, incompetently organised, left on the tarmac waiting in 38c heat, left on a bus for 30 minutes no aircon. Any company in this day and age that charges €20 to print a boarding card, or another €20 if your hand luggage is 1cm bigger than allowed, and that is almost everyone's.. they waive this if you buy speedy boarding.. except there is no actual speedy boarding system (at least on our flights). Dodgy as they come, you can entertain yourself by reading the one star Tripadvisor reviews for the airline.. the thing is the image is amazing, company presentation is super cool, staff with fashionable uniforms, beautiful looking website, planes in fresh clean livery. Looks good - doesn't deliver. The name "Volotea" originates from the Spanish verb "revolotear," meaning "to fly around.. my travel tip.. fly around this company if you can.. they don't authentically care..
Anyway back to business, the gift business. In Rhodes old town.. which is a truly ancient wisdom sort of place with history oozing out of the stones, also has a lot of gift retailers, some of which are top class retailers offering a fantastic range of authentic giftware.. some like that airline offers a more fake experience. You can tell instinctively which retailers love gifts and which just want to rip of the customers with any old products and sneaky tricks.. I seen plenty of Indonesian and India imports in Greece, but thoughtfully presented to in keeping. Of course, fridge magnets are almost always made in China, so does that make them an authentic gift? mmm - I'm not sure?.. We found a guy in a mountain shop selling his own olive oil products, he had our China bamboo boxes with his company logo stamped on them. and cotton bags from India again personalised. Is it still authentic? Yes I think so, gift packaging adds value to the product, and this kind of stuff only comes (cost effectively) when imported. He obviously loved his products, and what he offered was an authentic experience.
So what is authentic? How do you define an authentic gift? Is the difference in love of the product?
I like to think so. But what about gift wholesalers.. how do you tell how authentic they are..
My old friend Terry (now retired) a true gentleman gift professional, once told me about a London wholesaler he was thinking of investing in. Naming no names here.. but they had an obsession about removing any label that might give away the manufacturer or true importers. Needless to say he never invested. At AW we hide very little, (only commercially sensitive information) - if you are a regular reader you know all the trade secrets of importing, I tell you everything! If we can't add genuine value we shouldn't be in business.
So here are 5 tests of authenticity for your gift wholesalers?
1. Are they actually importing or manufacturing the majority of the products on offer? - if not they are just a middleman adding no actual value to a product.
2. Do they have warehouses and agents on the ground in the countries they import from, who care about trading fairly and track the source of products?
3. Does your wholesaler retail as well? Do they sell on Amazon, or own retail sites (online or high street). Because if they do, they are competing with you unfairly. That's not love.
4. Do they add value, buy creating authentic original designs, and/or by buying big enough to get economies of scale that they can genuinely pass on to their customers?
5. Are they trying to pass themselves off as being something they are not? Beware of fakes.. believe it or not, there are people who even pretend to be associated AW wholesalers.
We are far from perfect at AW - we are often behind with orders, often out of stock, sometimes things go wrong, but at the end of the day we love gifts (and our customers) and try our best to be authentic.
We don't have sales people or do trade shows, so maybe you have to work a little harder to place an order, but you will see the difference in your bottom line...
One of the things I love about Spain is the food. Many restaurant owners (especially around here) love what they do so much, they would never compromise on quality, the product comes first even before making a profit. You can feel that love, that distinctly Spanish passion, that authenticity in a restaurant before you even eat right? You know what I mean? On the other hand the fake tourist paella joint still lives on.. conning its customers selling tarted up boil in the bag paella. There are boil-in-the-bag wholesalers as well :)
It's super hot in Spain.. forecasts of 40c plus.. hopefully if I don't wilt away more news next week.
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