Reboot

Chapter 5 My first China trip

Once we had established some relationships, we asked our Hong Kong suppliers for invitations to cross the border into China as their guest (which was necessary to get a China visa as Australians). We needed to visit to:

• understand how each component of each shoe went together, and which of these were interchangeable; for example, could the stiletto heel on that strappy shoe also go on this boot?
• decide what combinations of options we wanted to provide to our customers
• see the shoe factories we would work with from an ethical point of view; the more we understood about how the shoes were made, the better we could seamlessly integrate our systems and processes into theirs
• source all the other products that we would need to be able to ship shoes: shoeboxes, shoe dust bags, tissue paper, letterhead, heel pads, toe pads and envelopes.

Mike, Michael and I reached the first factory and were ushered into a boardroom. I was dressed in what I thought of as my sourcing uniform: I would hide my jewellery and wear something really simple. Black trousers and a black silk tee. An unbranded oversized handbag and simple shoes. I knew that negotiations on price were intense, so I wanted to go in looking presentable: serious, but not splashy.

Fluorescent lights shone down on the oversize table. Prototype shoes, heel moulds and scraps of leather were stored on a few shelves in the corner. The cupboards were all a dark chipboard laminate. There was a small bar fridge ...