9 posts tagged “citysuper”
Looking at these beautiful masking tapes, can you believe they originated from fly catching paper from 1923? Any company survives over 80 years deserves certain admiration. Kamoi is a Japanese company started to produce fly catching paper in the 20's and gradually changed its business nature to paper adhesive tapes, recently supplying masking tapes for the auto industry.
A few years ago, a Japanese school teacher sent a mail to Kamoi requesting them to make more colors available from their adhesive tapes because she used to do school projects with a lot of their tapes and felt the demand strong for the craft projects in education sector. Kamoi responded by trial running and eventually the MT masking tape brand was born. Imagine that, one customer comment transforms your entire business. You just have to listen carefully and appreciate your customer's creativity. Today MT became wildly popular in Japan for all the possibilities this simple tool can bring to lifestyle.
I saw these tapes in Japan early 2008 when they hit the market. I immediately got a few and pondered whether this will be good for our market in Hong Kong. Some say Hong Kong is a cultural desert but I always challenge them "did you do something about it?" Lifestyle is learned, so these tapes won't get hit unless somebody is willing to show the possibilities. You just have to inspire by examples, and listen to your customers. OK, they are arriving in a week's time to city'super/LOG-ON and I'm gonna feature them in our Travel Photo Cafe 2009! I beg you to go to MT masking tape's web site, check out how people are using them in most creative ways and you'll be amazed, guaranteed!
After secretly injecting my personal interest of photography in our merchandising for the past 4 years, I was finally granted to have such a real section in the new APM LOG-ON store. If I were to propose such section on day 1, it wouldn't be approved, it would be subjected to a series of scrutiny, inquiry, doubts and attacks, eventually became an unfinished project on corporate earth.
I'm thankful even though it takes time for them. But in the process I figured all forces mysteriously working together towards this hidden agenda, mysteriously! Through numerous small projects, vendors getting more mature, customer showing more interests, higher standard is achieved..... I'm intrigued. All these require just one single binding force of good will and aspiration. Well, it is no big achievement but for myself it is rewarding enough.
The Photography retail business on earth is amazingly boring. You want a camera you walk into a camera shop, you want something printed you go to a lab, you want gadgets you go back to a camera shop. There is no CONTENT and sharing in all of them. On the surface, if you go to this Photography section of ours, it can appear all too commercial, composed with brands like Lomography, KOLO, Canon, Fuji Film, Umbra, etc. But look, there are people behind these brands working hard to bring out the fun and aesthetics to everyday lives. What's lacking in this industry is just a place to find and share contents. I'm not saying this very section is in its ultimate form, but it is a start, a very primitive start.
If you remember the "Our Last Polaroids" event last year (community photos here, here, here, here, here, here and here), it is the best memory I got in this journey. The online and offline community worked hand in hand to pull off this 2 week exhibition and gathering. It is the nearest form of the ultimate Photography gathering space in my mind.
Well back to reality. The most appealing thing about this area is that it is not a camera shop or lab. I gathered quite a few things related to analog, film, album, frame, photography, polaroid camera and films, lighters, key chains, instax, lomo, superheadz, prisms, etc. You can say it is a collage in retail form. Again, I'm not proud of its current state yet, I'm only proud of the process. So there's still a lot to do.
BTW, FujiFilm Hong Kong gave us great support recently. They made us this little Instax town display for our new store launch. Very creative use of instax film on paper made figures! How lovely.
I can't believe we have so many new projects, like we are not supposed to rest. I'm all excited about this new store in APM mall however. Talking about 63 shelves and 2900 products for stationery department, a new photography corner (which I'll talk about in the next post), travel corner, cosmetic, fashion food, gadgets, etc. Every single product in the stationery department was hand picked by our stationery team to compose the whole section, only the best, the funniest and the most efficient products are there (well, I did put dozens of low performers there but they are very nice products and thought people would like to explore). It is soft launched today at noon, press tour will be on 19th May 2009 while it will be officially opened on 20th May 2009.
Click on the above image to see the panoramic view of the entire stationery and photography sections.
One of the new arrivals we have here is "Fish Sausage Man". Yeah I know, it is weird and you'd have enough after you've seen our "Banana Man". Just check out the video and the story, it is super funny. You've got to know about his family tree, mom and dad are fishes. He also has some Russian friends and likes to dry up tea bags and reuse for at least 3 times!
I know the spending power in this region is not exactly promising, but I'm glad I'm allowed to share and show off great stationery, photography and gadget products in this location.
Many have been waiting for Tokyo City Notebook's arrival for a long time. It is finally here launching together with Kyoto version. We are receiving these huge display for our stores to get maximum impact of such launch. Perhaps there will be people queuing up waiting to take a picture with it.
I myself will wait for the stores finish using the display and drag it back to my home for wall decoration! Envy me eh?
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.
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!
I was banging on my head to think of a better thematic promotion for our back to school season instead of just "Back to School 2007". Turned out I tried many pen promotion earlier this year hoping to improve some brands' performance in our stores and this could be a theme too. So I decided to select a bunch of popular pens and created a customer voting and lucky draw event in the promotion as a highlight to the theme: Pen of the Year 2007.
It was totally tedious but in the end I found it very rewarding coz I learned a lot about the dynamics of how customers would select their favorite pens. 34 pen samples were taken and I did a first round photo shooting in order to indicate to marketing dept. how the pen should look like on our leaflet when real photo shooting was done by professional photographer. I found proper description of the pen either from the net or from vendor so the write-up was sort of done by me. The price and special feature also had to be accurate.
Visual Merchandising Department helped to find contractor to make a voting area spanning about 3 meters long showing all 34 pens spring wired to a board. A large row of testing paper was bought so that customers could try them out before they voted. I wish I could involve more of the booth design coz there were a lot missing when I saw it on site which I could change nothing at that time. I also made a voting slip allowing customers to give 3 choices. Basically a lot of tedious works I didn't need but I want to make the event special.
The result was amazing despite a lot of glitches. We had record high sales result and the pen category (with help from a lot of different vendors and staff) grew a lot comparing to previous years. So based on customer voting, the Pen of the Year 2007 is Pentel ERGoNoMiX WINGGRIP Ball Pen (@HK$55), congratulations Pentel despite the fact that you are not very strong in Hong Kong comparing to UNI, Pilot etc etc!!! Here's the ranking of the top 10 pens:
- ERGoNoMiX WINGGRIP Ball Pen
- Stabilo Move Paradise/ Passion
- Zebra Nu Spiral Ball Pen
- LAMY Safari Limited Edition Fountain Pen
- Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto
- Online Pen Tower Pen
- SLIP-ON Sierra Ballpoint
- Pilot V Board Master
- Sakura Luxue Gold
- Mitsubishi Jetstream
Tomorrow is the date to setup Kabo x KOLO exhibition in Festival Walk LOG-ON store. The tag line of this exhibition is the same as KOLO's tag line: A small window into a big life. It totally captured the spirit of this exhibition coz the gross profit will be donated to Orbis to help fixing children's eye sight.
There will be 100 photo albums with Kabo's photo inserted, all those
profit from these albums will be donated to Orbis so I hope many people
will spread the news and come support this event!
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