Being Productive

We recently went to the Hong Kong branch of the US company, Cotton Incorporated. The office was on the twentieth floor with a beautiful view of the harbour and the Hong Kong Island skyline.  We were able to meet with the staff and have a brief tour of the office. The head honcho was sick, unfortunately, but we met with Bonny who was one of the account managers. She gave us a packet on Cotton Incorporated and their current technologies and strategies and answered some of our questions.  We know a lot about the company in general, but it was very interesting to hear the purpose of the HK office particularly.  The HK branch has different account managers that focus their efforts in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Vietnam, etc. They work with every part of the supply chain to promote cotton and increase its usage in textiles.  We had heard of some of their technologies before such as storm denim and wicking windows, but Bonny taught us about their new textiles encyclopedia they have online with tons of useful information about almost all aspects of textiles.  Ideas like this were helpful and we are also to relay this information back to NCSU.  After a brief sit down, we were fortunate enough to be able to attend a presentation by Ayako Kaneta on Japanese retail trends.  They said that usually students are not allowed to attend their presentations so we were very lucky to be able to go to the meeting with various sourcing company representatives in Asia.  The presentation was extremely interesting with many pictures and samples of the major trends currently in Tokyo.

Staff at Cotton Incorporated

After the meeting Bonny Kwan and May Chin took us for a dim sum lunch near by.  The restaurant was very nice and all of the food they chose was delicious! We ate the best chicken soup I have ever tasted, brought to you in a tea kettle that you pour into a tiny cup (looks like it is for tea) and you drink it. Amazing. We also had light spring rolls, fried tofu, eggplant in a vinaigrette sauce, seafood rice, and several other dishes. For dessert we had mango pudding, a type of sweet dumpling in a soup/sauce, and bean curd. You would think that bean curd sounds a bit questionable, but it was so delicious! It came with a honey sauce and sugar type thing to sprinkle on top. The lunch was a great chance for us to ask the ladies about their jobs, their schooling, and more about Cotton Incorporated in general. The visit was a complete success and the first tour we have had in Hong Kong. We could not have asked for anything better!

Bonny and May at lunch

A few days after our visit with Cotton, we had video conferencing with NCSU scheduled.  Thursday night at 8:30pm we reserved the piano room to turn it into our own office for the conference. We practiced the Skype with Dr. Marguerite Moore and waited until 9am when we would be needed to answer some questions. This conference was with Dr. Woodson, the Chancellor of all of North Carolina State University. He was touring the new lab facility on the College of Textiles campus and to demonstrate the new features of the lab, video conferencing, we were the perfect subjects to also share our HK experience with him.  Marguerite asked us each a few questions about what we are learning and our plans for travel, etc.  The Chancellor seemed very interested and asked a few quick questions at the end. First conference call down, two more to go, or so we thought.

The next call we had was at 5am on Friday morning.  The Textile Management Science Lab at COT was having its grand opening or unveiling at 5pm, so for us, that meant an early wake up call. We went through a slight problem with trying to get into the piano room/our office as this was obviously after hours that it should be open. We spent the previous evening running around the residence halls trying to find someone that could override this for us. Eventually we succeeded and they said they would send someone at 4:30am to let us in.  We got there, set up our office, orchid behind us and everything. Today we were skying into the unveiling and once again showing the labs capabilities.  We answered the same questions and we even part of their champagne toast, using the appropriate "gombay" instead of cheers. The room was full of people, but everyone seemed very interested and thought Andrew and his jokes were funny.  Conference call number two, successful. Not back to sleep.

Our last conference call was supposed to be our Friday evening at 9pm, during the huge firework display for China's National Day.  We got showered (after an insanely packed day at the beach) and dressed and ran around the residence halls once again when the internet refused to work in our usual office location.  We repositioned ourselves on the windowsill in Debbie's room and waited until 9pm... 9:15pm... and then started to question if we were really needed. It turns out we had a slight miscommunication and we were not actually needed for the Industry Advisory Board meeting. We had planned a catchy sign off and an opening act so it was a bit of a let down, but at least we were still able to do the previous two conferences. Out of these, a lady from textiles emailed us asking if she could write a story on us and post it on the home page of the College of Textiles website so we are hoping this works out! We also plan to meet with the Chancellor during our month home!

Our planned opening appearance