It was only a matter of time before you saw the inevitable posting on a trade show. Well, wait no longer as Adam and I ventured out to Hong Qiao to check out a textile and apparel show. I prepared early that morning, piling enormous amounts of business cards in my pocket, printing out our product specifications, and eating some Wheaties.

About 10 seconds after we arrived, I was instantly subjected to the insane Chinese sales technique of following me around, for 10 minutes. This woman came up to me and asked for my business card. I refused, but eventually gave in (stupidly). She then asked that I come over to her booth and discuss how we could work together. I said I'd make my way over eventually, but she then proceeded to follow me everywhere. It was a thrilling chase, with me mumbling obscenities under my breath, stopping at her competitors stalls, even asking her to leave me alone, but her determination to annoy me seemed endless. Adam eventually tried to run a pick and roll play, but after it failed it had finally dawned on me the best way to ditch this bogey, the men's room. She actually followed me in, but quickly saw the urinals and made a U turn. I remained hidden, in my poorly lit and incredibly smelly fortress of solitude for almost 5 minutes. I emerged from the nauseating enclave to find that my fabric suitor had vanished, finally.

Adam and I walked around for a while and found 1 stall that really thrilled us. It was a specialty fabric seller, which offered premium quality wool, cashmere, and tweed. All of which really looked like they would be found in a jacket that would retail for over 1,000 dollars. I'm not going to be specific on our pricing strategy here at DressMonkey, but I will say this, we will never charge even half that for even the most top quality blazer. But just so you know, these guys are the same fabric suppliers to many of the top of the line providers, and now we have access to them.

Wanted: Coley Dale, Crime: 27 counts of Fabric Molestation

In addition to finding some cool fabrics which will soon be offered on DressMonkey.com, we even found some good leads on our future factory partners. Lots of people were trying to sell me on the fact that despite their factory's historic mass-producing processes, they would be willing to adapt to our business model. I don't know how much I should really be believing this however, as I've already learned about yes men here in China.

After a long day of high-speed chases, touching fabric in very risquee ways, and giving the same freaking company introduction over and over (in Chinese, which makes it even more exhausting), Adam and I headed for the exit. On our way out, we noticed another trade show that looked 200 times cooler than our apparel one. The "Greater China Cleaners and Cleaning Products Trade Show," was occurring at the same time. We had to register to get in, so Adam used his creative mind to come up with a name that would really convince the attendants that we were from a cleaning company, LeDoushe. I, Art Vandalet and Adam LeDoushe were registered in nano-seconds and entered the cleaning products show. What we saw was the future of cleaning products, something that I would just assume skip, but a certain German in my life would most certainly be enthralled by. We were surrounded by large guys named Carl from the Midwest wearing distinctly un-DressMonkey attire (not so great fitting suits), and all seemed to have made their millions, well, cleaning toilets. We left in a hurry, LeDoush Industries just wasn't large enough to make the kind of investments they were asking (I saw one carpet Zamboni that retailed for 40,000 dollars, again, I'll spend my money elsewhere.

Sadly, carpet zamboni driver Wang MingHui failed to qualify for this year's F1 Pro Cicuit. Maybe next year WMH!

So, it was another good day for DressMonkey. We learned how to ditch unwanted fabric saleswomen, clean just about anything, and most importantly, how to offer all of our future customers the TOP of the line fabrics out there.