It has been a long time. 好久不见了。お久しぶりです。

It has been a very long time since I posted anything on my blog. Like everyone, our company, our lives and our habits were seriously disrupted from the moment the pandemic started. My second last post was a week before the pandemic was publicly acknowledged.  At the time I thought the Year of the Rat did not sound very auspicious, and it turned out that it certainly was not, but it was highly appropriate in retrospect. What better augury than a rat, spreader of disease?

Although the pandemic is behind us, we all know that the world has not returned to normal. However, we must move forward and control the things that we can control and leave the rest to fate.

We have done some very interesting jobs following the outbreak, and a few of them are detailed below. We are focused on special jobs that make best use of our points of difference. The main one is that we are international in our perspective and our values. We understand our customers better than our local counterparts do, and yet we also have decades of experience in Chinese manufacturing, and of living in China. We are also creative and are not focused on solely on volume production.

In April 2022, we did a nice project making and installing an FSC Teak deck on a motor yacht here in Huzhou. We largely prefabricated it in the factory before installing it on the boat.

Plantation grown Indonesian Teak

We have also done a big job in Beirut, Lebanon, supplying 1400 m2 of Versailles parquetry and a similar one in Melbourne that went into a heritage listed mansion built in the late 19th Century.

Two parquetry designs for a residence in Beirut, Lebanon

In China, we had a bonus year of Covid restrictions and lockdowns, so we were only able to leave the country three years after the outbreak began. We wasted no time and in 2023 we exhibited at 5 trade shows, two in Australia, two in China and one in Saudi Arabia.  It was our first time in Saudi and we were surprised at the new openness of the country. Plenty of unaccompanied women visited the show, both professionals and ordinary consumers, but few wore the burka, most were in Western dress with only a head scarf. We were overwhelmed with visitors, but we found it was not easy to convert interest into sales. However, we think that the market has potential and will continue to look for opportunities in the Gulf Region.

For that trade show we were part of a Chinese delegation, so we made a bunch of new Chinese friends too.

Dammam in Saudi Arabia, November 2023

The other region that is new to us, as a market for our products, is India. We have a few clients there now and have done several jobs. One that we are currently working on is a parquetry panel project that is part of a major renovation of the famous Taj hotel in Mumbai, right behind the Gateway to India arch. The panel has been signed off by the architects and we are looking forward to starting the job.

A special design for the Taj Hotel in Mumbai

In the last week of April, we are planning to be in Mumbai to attend a trade show there and to visit a few of our clients, including some new prospects. We are pretty confident it will go well. It is interesting to note that India’s economy is now as large (US$4 trillion) as China’s was when we came here 17 years ago. It’s growth rate is above 7% and there is the same dynamism that we felt in China when we first arrived.

Late last year we went to Vietnam to visit a particular factory there and to explore opportunities for cooperation. It is early days, but we feel there is potential for us in that country, especially as China faces headwinds these days, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon. It so happened that our 43rd wedding anniversary fell while we were there and our new Vietnamese friends helped Sonoe and I to celebrate.

Our 43rd wedding anniversary fell while we were in Vinh, North Central Vietnam