Month: December 2019

For the last two days I have been helping my colleague to host 6 Japanese visitors, they are from our partner company. Four of them won the best store managers around Japan.

Day 1 we heard about their experience at their store, how they educate consumers about the brand and the importance of sustainability . They all prepared lots about our brand and how they can incorporate the values with Japanese consumers. The biggest challenge is that most people live in the city  are out of touch with nature. Therefore for them to understand the impact we have on the environment and then how that affect ourselves are a bit far-fetched. Most people think of functionality and price as the most important thing. Persuading them to pay more for a product which is better for the environment is not a strong factor to change their purchasing behaviour.

This insight is similar across most Asian countries, ordinary every-day people buy things for good value. To include sustainability in their purchasing choice is not a common concept.

In the afternoon we went to the flagship store to meet the founder of our company, Malcom Rands. It is always a valuable experience for me to hear him talk about how everything started. Malcom believes the three key factors we should address to new customers are:

1. works just as well as mainstream products
2. price per usages is not more expensive, as our products are quite concentrated it could even work out to be cheaper
3. safer for you

The concept of safer for you works very well with the laundry products, we thought about which part of our day our body is not in contact with fabric, its that very little time in shower or bath. Majority of our times we are in close contact with clothes, bedsheets, towels, socks etc. Therefore who would want to have close contact with nasty chemicals day in and day out?

Also Malcom talked about collaborating with good artists to build our brand creatives. The products not only need to work but also should be beautiful to look at. It reminds me to stay true to our brand identity and tone, not sway easily when the market requires something more colourful or “loud”.

Then we went sailing with two sailors from the Japanese sailing team, it was such a treat to be out on the water in a workday afternoon. We sailed under the harbour bridge , had cheese and crackers on board. The weather was beautiful we all got plenty of sunshine and fresh sea breeze. I would consider get Bella to learn sailing once she is older, we are living in the city of sails, its a pity not to get involved in this activity which is so widely available.

The next day we visited the factory where all the products are made. Its good to be reminded that marketing is juts one small part of the company, manufacture is the pillar of what we do. There are lots of efforts made to achieve better efforts on making our production more environmental friendly. We reuse carton boxes, plastic wraps, also collecting empty bottles to remake them into new packaging. There are many steps of the process are designed to produce less waste, but also efficiently to achieve financial result. The Japanese visitors were impressed we play music at the factory, they think that make the workspace more enjoyable.

Afterwards we went to dispatch, they are responsible for moving our products to different parts of the globe. The storage place was clean and spacious, the team out there are good hosts, showed us which section of the products going to what part of the world. It gives me new perspective on the scale of the work we do.

We then head out to Muriwai to visit our colleague Huia who is in charge of product research and development. He lives out west and gave the visitors a very good Mihi. He acknowledged the tribe Ngati Whatua who own the land we stood on, also welcomed the visitors from Mt Fuji. In the middle of the greeting, a little sparrow came and landed in the middle of us. It made us felt like nature is listening and we are connected to everything around us.

I felt a lot happened over the last two days, it reminded me of the days at the Foundation. I am mostly impressed by these Japanese people’s dedication to their work and the sense of purpose and responsibility they have about their job. It reminded me to think about what I am doing daily, move on with a clear purpose.

It is good to know this journey is meaningful in some ways, and I hope the contribution I made also improve little things along the way.

 

Lets talk about money! I am anxious, we asked for my parents to help financial with the new house. I felt guilty to touch more of their saving than we intend to. Also we will increase our weekly expenditure quite significantly once the mortgage payment begins.

Today we had a meeting with a personal finance planner, she advised us to sell the place my parents living in now and buy a property with higher rental yield. I understand the methodology behind her approach, its basically an aggressive way to turn your current asset into something value adding. also means we don’t pay tax to the current rental income.

However I don’t want to do this, as my parents are very settled in that place. I can not let them rent somewhere else and live temporarily. Their retirement is in NZ and they should enjoy the rest of the retirement here filled with days with Bella and to travel a bit more.

Also this personal finance company make more income from mortgage and insurance, its in their best interests to loop us in a bundle deal with our future investments. I am not very comfortable to be monitored and influenced by them for every step of my way towards financial freedom.

I love rules, structures and crave for stability but then sometime I rebel against stereotypes and “the money rule the world” approach. I am not sure this finance planner understand from my Chinese perspective how I need to look after my parents rather than using their retirement as my investment assets. My parents already helped me so much from supporting my overseas eduction to secure our property.

So I don’t think we will go along with this finance company. Also they know we have a big mortgage coming up and yet still suggesting the most expensive package on their service. I think they may see the fear in us approaching a life switch to paying a mortgage. But I have confidence in myself to figure this out. It will be hard and challenging, but with books to read and people to talk to, I think we will be alright.

After all I have been living overseas for almost half of my life, never once I got in trouble financially, I can manage my wealth and creating more. This could be a chance to push me to make more money in creative ways. Change is inevitable.