Greetings from Hangzhou airport, just waiting to board a flight to KL with Tomas.

It's been a crazy few days, rushing around Yiwu finalising deals, checking samples pulling everything together.

Last week I was in Spain just leaving for China, it's a bit crazy right now.. I was telling everyone to just CALM DOWN! - You can read about it here.

So I took the flight from Malaga to Amsterdam..  I had booked with KLM, but my flight was very strange. It was an American plane, with staff from Florida and an American pilot - all the announcements were in American English with quotes from Federal law. The TV screens were broken, the plane rattled, some of the overheads came open on there own. Frankly a bit scary, why was an almost bankrupt airline flying me in Europe? We landed with a hell of a bump and screeched to a halt super fast causing .  As I got off the plane I heard the captain a Texan (I think) with a huge beer belly say to the hostess that was a hell of a flight - I was fighting that frigging crosswind all the way.  Why? What's going on.

I was happy to find the leg from Amsterdam to China was a proper KLM flight..

In China - had to hit the ground running - Tomas had already been there a few days and had things under control.. sort of.  I'd been there a few weeks ago and had lots of projects underway.. now we had to make it all happen. 

Working with Coco (our Agent in China) is amazing.. it always amazes me how much, and how quickly you can get things done.

It was China 70th birthday. A national holiday, so we thought everything would stop, but no.. Coco set up meetings and suppliers were happy to meet us even when everyone else was closed. 

No Plastic!!  No plastic is the plan, and now our Chinese suppliers are getting the message, we have been working hard on sourcing eco-friendly products.. I'm so excited at what we have coming..  but do calm down.. most will come after Christmas.

Yiwu is still hot, the city gets more trees and parks every-time I come.. and now even the grubby river area has been beautified.

But now it's on to KL, Malaysia. Regular readers will know that Raul (from Mexico) our IT wizard lives there, with his Malaysian wife; Alicia and his young daughter. He heads our small IT team from trendy offices in downtown KL - and I'm really looking forward to going over the latest developments - especially the up and coming new drop-shipping system. 

There is a neat IT update this week.. 

Dots appeared.. did you see, next to the product boxes, now we have a traffic light system in the websites to show you if we have good stock, in danger of running out or no stock. Red, amber & green dots.   

In the UK, it's crazy busy, but the guys are working wonders.. we still can't manage to ship next day but normal with this volume of orders we are slipping badly behind. But I can see the stats and we are keeping up.. pretty much. well done guys!

Brexit is looming.. it's seriously looming, not looking good. Shipping company's are quoting huge fee's for doing customs clearance.. so much that it will be impossible to do business. An average €300 order will cost so much that all the profit will be gone. So that's half our sales buggered. If there is a deal, will this still apply? No-one knows.. it's a shambles.. and only weeks to go. Boris makes jokes like a stand-up, tells people to think positive, accuses folk of being doomsters and gloomsters..  while my peoples jobs hang by a thread. I'm not seeing the funny side of those jokes.  Good job we have a plan.. but it's still not going to be a party.

OK our flight has been called, got to go.. 

More news next week.

David