13 posts tagged “city'super”
Whether it is digital or analog, mini cameras are the most trendy thing happening in the industry. Digital Minox, Rollei, Diana mini, Digital Harinezumi (just released new white edition), etc. They are all in this tiny little promotion happening in Festival Walk and APM LOG-ON.
And yes we are including the Olympus E-P1 too coz it is somewhat a smaller version of SLR. If you missed the chance to grab a Lomo mini camera keychain packaged in beautifully printed film cans, they are now back in stock, talking about 20% the size of the actual camera (hmmm, I did say they are keychains, not real cameras).
Most of us are bored by the strap came with our cameras right, so we've been collecting from Korea and Japan some of the nicest straps ever produced and some of them are here, the rest will be coming to the stores this year.
Friends from Lomo, Superheadz and Fujifilm gave us some very nice supports including some left over film canisters, cute POP and displays, etc and I feel thankful for their generosity and help. Superheadz even shipped from Japan a dozen foam boards printed with versions of the lovely Russian girl character.
One of the pink display took me a few hours to create using films, MT tapes and various products from other departments. If you have time, please do visit these two stores and see if they are still intact :) This promotion lasts for 2 weeks from now on. Hope you like it and able to find some inspirations from it. Check out the Flickr photo set of this promotion.
Note: thanks Martin for the hard work. Get well soon Moon.
The earphone market is getting more crowded these days. Two years ago a good pair of earphone at about HK$200 was difficult to find, quality earphone often means at least over a thousand HK dollar from names like Shure and Sennheiser. Now a reasonably good earphone costs only around HK$150 and you get to see so many choices in retail stores. Earphones like candy indeed. The price is definitely going down further but I also observe a drop in quality from some of the bigger manufacturers, obviously hurting their brands and allowed some of the new comers to catchup with the market.
I think good ones should charge properly instead of competing at cut throat price. Anyway, I saw this cool skull earphone from catalog and asked for a sample to try before I decide to order for the stores. The company producing it is not a professional earphone maker, that's why I had doubt before ordering. Surprisingly it its bass is not bad at all for a gimmicky earphone like this. Included in the package are two LR754 button cell for the LED light module. The skulls' red LED eyes flash following the beat of your music. Priced at HK$280 I think it is a good enough gift for Xmas, if everything goes smooth it will arrive our stores early December.
Time flies and summer is nearly gone, this year's back to school event has already started in several stores. We started to think about the theme almost right after last year's event. Lots of improvements were made in the whole process of planning and thanks to our stationery team's effort, each really played an important role in making this event successful.
The entire layout was planned using Google Sketchup, the first in city'super's history and I'm particularly proud of it. I started using it for this fair last year but lots of measurements were inaccurate, but this time it is near perfect! When we were standing on the aisles after 4 hours of setup, we could see the big difference and we could feel the satisfaction rush to our hearts. Layout is only one of the many critical success factors, the way our team "pour our hearts" to this really makes everything click and I can't be thankful enough for that. In the process, we all better ourselves. Almost everyone had some innovative small moves, gee I appreciate a lot! What can I do? Buy you gals lunch?
One of the backdrop was my overnight illustrator work and the result is stunning to me. It is a "personalize + stylize" your notebook section. Here you get all the components you need to create your own perfect notebook, in addition, pen holders, pen, clips, stickers, stamps, MT-tapes are all there for customers to create something unique for themselves.
6 years ago when I first became a stationery buyer, I introduced computer related products for this fair coz school was no longer paper based. Since then we had a deal with Apple Computer directly to be in the fair and offer something special no other places have. If you carry a student card or show them your teacher's identification, you will get discount and a free iPod touch when you buy a computer, in addition a few free gifts for you to choose including hubs or computer carrying cases.
I had high hope on the leaflet of this fair too, to make it like a magazine offering useful tips instead of just a product list brochure. It didn't happen as expected, but it is already one big improvement in terms of communication between various teams.
So in short, this year's back to school fair in city'super/LOG-ON, you can find Apple Computer's exclusive offer, colorful computer carrying cases, super funny and beautiful USB memory/gadgets, fashion headphones, cute portable speakers, hottest Korean stationery, Staedtler gears, personalize and stylize your notebook, newest stationery gadgets, Pilot's erasable gel pen, etc etc....... Just come over!
Not long ago I said PoGo is No Go, particularly for serious photo journaling people. I decided to use up all the ZINK photo paper and sell the unit fast. Then 5 days ago when I received the self-inking stamps for the Travel Photo Cafe 2009, I played with the stamps on the opposite page of 2 PoGo prints I sticked on my notebook. 3 days later, I found that the colors on the PoGo print faded in areas in direct contact with the stamps!
You can clearly see the icons left an "impression" on the PoGo print. Perhaps the ink is acidic, perhaps something else. I have another PoGo print reacting to Copic marker drawing as well. Despite the fact that the PoGo's ZINK paper is waterproof, the surface is susceptible to reaction somehow. I'm definitely not using PoGo/ZINK for photo journaling. Yes, I said it again. This doesn't happen to my Fuji Instax or Pivi prints.
I wish I made them smaller, but they are still cool. 4 stamps to be put in Festival Walk LOG-ON store tomorrow for customer to play with their postcard in Travel Photo Cafe 2009!
And I had so much fun tonight playing with MT-tapes :)
One of the cool thing about KOLO's refillable travel book called Essex is that you can actually archive the thinner refill onto a larger album. This way you will have an album showing selected photos as well as the actual journal you used when you were traveling.
Some of us like to stick everything collected in trip to a thicker journal, write a lot and never miss a thing. This creates bulky books and may not be a good sight on a nice clean shelf. KOLO's Essex however invites you to strip things down to the essentials and keep things simple and elegant, just like the usual KOLO aesthetic which brings out your content (photo and text) while the album itself becomes a nice decor.
Travel/Photo journaling style is really a personal choice. I love to create junks and think back later what really happened. On the other hand, I admire clean looks. Perhaps a lot of small/thin refill notebooks filed into a clean album with selected photos is the solution to satisfy both wishes. I'll explore more.
BTW, I really hope the leather version of Essex is coming out sooner. Leaving HK on 28th June for Tokyo!
This concept cafe is finally here (development), don't be deceived by just the look, I've added some very nice contents inside, i.e. if you care to discover.
I had great fun to design the event poster and postcard, which went well into production. I thought marketing was going to print a glossy postcard but they didn't, I still love how it turned out though. I'm posting several written postcards to friends around the world.
Today I went to the store to give a final touchup on the entrance display. I was so happy to see people stopping by the entrance display right after what I did to it. Just what is this event all about? It is a concept cafe filled with things related with travel and photography. Travel/photography magazines, Moleskine, Lomography, Traveler's Notebook, Lonely Planet, LUXE cityguide, Cavallini notebooks, Authentic Models globes, Chronicle Books' Wanderlust series, antique keys, travel jewelry cases, Eiffel tower keychain, etc etc.
There are great prizes for patrons too! Anybody purchase over HK$300 in Times Square and Festival Walk store will be eligible for a lucky draw. Prizes include: Samsonite Valiance spinner, upright; Virgin Atlantic Airways tickets from Hong Kong to Sydney, Lonely Planet compete set of ENCOUNTER guide, Lonely Planet Travel Photography book, Moleskine bestsellers, Moleskine HK/Beijing travel set, Mendoza Panzer Z luggages, Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS, Canon SELPHY CP740 compact photo printer, Cosmopolitan Paris trolley, Lomo Diana F+ with flash, Lomo Diana White Edelweiss, Lomo Fish Eye No.2, LUXE Asian Grand Tour box set, KOLO albums, Design Go kettle, Dr. Willard's moisturizing lotion.
I've invited several people to be speakers for a culture talk in our store. The topic is about how simple it is to carry a totally different mindset in your travel and act upon some simple techniques to create stunning photography and travel experience. Speakers includes a Lonely Planet travel guide writer, a lomographer, an architect and me. The architect will also share with us some of the great spots in Hong Kong where you can experience our rich cultural heritage. This talk will be held on 5th July 2008 in Times Square city'super.
I've already dreamed up something new for next year's Travel Photo Cafe event! Time flies.
After a week of setting up the Travel Photo Cafe promotion in various stores (which I will cover later), I must say a BIG THANK YOU to Moleskine, its distributor and colleagues who helped to pull this off smoothly. Finally, the long awaited Hong Kong and Beijing City Notebook versions are launched, the first 2 Asian cities for many to come. Moleskine enthusiastically rushed to release these two notebooks in order to catch the Beijing Olympic event, which generated a lot of excitement among the locals.
I first received the prototypes of these notebooks a month ago, the feeling was totally different from the time I received Paris/London/New York versions. I immediately flipped through the maps of my own beloved city with excitement despite the fact that I had some negative comments about City Notebooks in general. The Beijing version is quite special, there is an Olympic Game Area insert at the back pocket, which contains 6 pages of maps, 2 pages of street index and 2 pages containing a calendar month which you can mark your own schedule for the game. This is definitely a collectable as they won't include this insert forever :)
The release of these notebooks is just in time to join our Travel Photo Cafe fair held in 4 stores. In collaboration with a local group called DayTauChung (literally translates to "neighborhood worm"), a mini theme called "Digging Up Local Favors" was created. Several Hong Kong notebooks were customized to show some lesser known but highly interesting spots with pictures and routes. We will even hold a small session on 5th July 08 in Times Square to mingle with customers sharing travel tips.
An interesting incident happened during this launch. A customer walked into our Times Square store on 24th June 08 expecting to find the new City Notebooks but couldn't find it. He asked one of the sales floor staffs but she said it wouldn't be available until the Travel Photo Cafe promotion setup, which was 3 days later. While he walked away disappointed he found the notebooks he wanted displayed somewhere with amazing price. HK$108 as supposed to the advertised HK$188! So he grabbed it immediately, just as he pulled out his wallet to pay for it, the staff ran to tell him the correct price. Disappointed and unhappy about the whole incident, he paid for it anyway and went back to send a complaint email to Moleskine and to our office.
In a very short time, Moleskine responded by forwarding this complaint to our distributor, when we received the same complaint from our end, our store manager got in touch with this customer, apologized and arranged a credit to his membership card for other purchases. Turned out the sales floor staff who'd just gotten back from lunch break when the newly arrived stock was shown somewhere she didn't realize. Comparing to my previous customer service work over 10 years ago, the whole incident from start to resolution happened real fast, almost instantaneous and globally coordinated, isn't it amazing? This also shows how Moleskine is in constant alert for customer complaint/satisfaction and I'm very happy with their dedication in this respect.
One more interesting thing about this incident is that the customer was just like me flipping through the maps excited, but he immediately found two spelling mistakes in the Hong Kong City Notebook. On page 12, "Bo Ma Shan" was incorrectly printed as "Bo Ma Chan", while on page 11 "Choi Sai Woo Park" was printed as "Coi Sai Woo Park". I guess Moleskine has already noticed this.
More photos of the Hong Kong & Beijing City Notebook launch and press coverage in this flickr set.
Hint of new Moleskine product: I overheard somewhere that there will be something related to filing from Moleskine. Yes it is still a rumor.
I'm looking for a buyer for our Stationery department. It will be a difficult task to find a like minded person who possesses certain industry required skills, but I'll give it a try by posting here in addition to recruitment ads.
- Plan and select the range, type and quantity of products according to customer demand, trends, store policy and budget.
- Process orders, track delivery and promotion schedules.
- Prepare sales supporting materials, display products and share product knowledge with sales floor staff.
- Analyze product performance and device actions to maintain departmental competitiveness in the market.
- Keeping up to date with market trends and reacting to changes in demand are key elements of the role.
- Hold considerable amount of responsibility and automomy in what is often a pressured environment.
Enough said of the job description. I simply need a passionate colleague who's mind is open and creative enough to work on concepts, technical enough to tackle all the basics of a retailer, analytical enough to translate data into actions, fun to work with and enjoy giving his/her best. The exposure will be overwhelming but that's part of the fun I get a lot from this company in the past 5 years. So I hope like attracts like, please spread this for me to your friends, send me a resume!
The idea of this campaign was conceived in 2007 soon after the very successful Lomo Amigo event. Planning started in November 2007 and thanks to Lomography Hong Kong, we launched this year's big event successfully on 3rd April 2008. The exhibition, workshop, monster hunt and competition will last until 16th April 2008.
This year's focus is to teach toy camera lovers how to accessorize their LCA+, Diana+, Fisheye and how to use different types of films to achieve desired results. So the backdrop is filled up with great information on 4 panels while corresponding 4 islands of cubes are used to showcase the cameras and their effects.
I was a newbie so I know how people got frustrated seeing the difference between their first rolls and lomo's advertised photos. So instead of just selling customers expensive (sort of) toy cameras I felt in debt to give them more information through display and workshop. This event is totally filled up with colors, knowledge and excitement.
In addition to showcasing, we organized some fun elements to this event. This includes creating 10 monsters each corresponds to a particular lomo camera and put them in 10 different locations in our Festival Walk store. You can go to the store and borrow a camera to hunt down these 10 bast**ds by shooting, developing the film and then send your creative photo entry to us by putting them in a nicely designed envelope. Winners will get Diana+ camera and accessories.
These notorious creatures hide in various places in the store and some are quite difficult to find if you are not as perceptive as a lomographer should be.
The advertisement on Milk Magazine is going to be published on 10th April 2008. The title "Hunt with us! Play with us!" signifies both the monster hunting competition and a friendly workshop to be held at Lomography Hong Kong's beautiful shop. If any of you purchased a Lomo camera within this period, as a newbie you can register in any of our stores to join the workshop.
Oh man you got to see the limited Diana White Edelweiss Edition, the new Lomo mini catalog and event details here. Finally, I've aligned with a great photo lab to get lomo customers half price to develop/print/scan to CD their rolls, but details to be announced later. Happy shooting!
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