Another factory visit completed, along with another seemingly endless bunch of material to write about in this blog. I had been advised by my trading agent here that I should check out a "box factory" which makes boxes for our blazers. She went on a long diatribe about how she had done business with the factory owner for a long time, and that I should seriously consider buying our blazer boxes from him. So I agreed, and off we went. The factory owner was going to pick us up in his car, but unfortunately she neglected to tell me that I would have to endure a bus ride for 40 minutes to get to where the factory owner was waiting, during the peak of rush hour. For anyone who has ever ridden the bus or subway during rush hour in China, they might be able to attest to the ultimate horribleness of such an experience. 45 minutes and multiple foot-stamps on my sandals later, we arrived at the bus stop where we met the factory owner's beat up minivan.

I'm really not complaining, because I've ridden in some crappy vans and modes of transportation during my time here in China and elsewhere, but this one was bad. "Forget it, entrepreneur's have to get their hands dirty, its that simple," I told myself reluctantly. Another 45 minutes later, we arrived at the "box factory" where the factory owner came out and greeted us. During the long bus ride, the trading agent repeatedly told me that he was extremely trustworthy "because he was in the army for 20 years." I'm not sure how those two characteristics really correlate, but I took her word for it and shook his hand with a surge of confidence that this guy wouldn't take my money and split, not yet at least. We took a tour of the factory, and not a box was to be found, on all four floors of the freaking thing. It turns out that she took me to a normal clothing factory which "occasionally produces boxes." Big disappointment, but for boxes, there is always Alibaba. One thing I was pretty impressed at though, were some of the brand names which this factory was making clothing for (which will remain nameless because I don't want a lawsuit, unless someone who is bar-certified leaves me a comment telling me they'll represent me). They agreed to consider our business model, and showed me some samples of blazers they have made before. Not bad at all, but we'll have to see if they can beat our current factory's quality.

The factory owner, who seemed mesmerized by me, "Chairman Dale" who could speak Chinese, invited me out to dinner for, as he put it, "more booze than food." I have been put in this position before, and usually it leaves me in a position I like to call, cuddling the toilet three hours later, but I decided I would try to control the booze-flow as much as possible. When trying to impress, Chinese people like to drink, and this was no exception. We went to some weird (but surprisingly good) restaurant with ping pong tables in the foyer, where we started the shitshow. Aside from the multiple "Gan Bei! [bottoms up]" orders, the dinner was quite pleasant and the conversation was engaging. I tried to talk about business as much as possible, but he kept steering away from that and actually asked me all about American politics and had some interesting viewpoints and criticisms of China's economic prosperity. It was actually an honest conversation with a fairly successful Chinese guy where I wasn't bored to death after 2 minutes.

After the last of the baijiu (Chinese booze, aka, lighter fluid), our party stumbled out of the restaurant and found that the driver had exchanged the crappy van in for a slightly less horrible, and somewhat comfortable car. I was inebriated enough that I didn't mind, as long as I had a window to lurch out of if I felt the need on our hour journey back into the city. Thankfully I made it home relatively unscathed, though I did get a "you smell like shiser" from the girlfriend as I fell into bed later. Ahh Germans.... So, now I'm hungover, but confident that we might have found a factory to tap into when our volumes get up. I guess that is as good a plug as any to buy blazers from us, if you enjoyed this post and want to keep reading more about my drunken adventures, buy a blazer so I can get our volumes up and make a better case to this factory owner to give us some big discounts.