I started a T-shirt printing company when I was in college. Nothing fancy. Just handmade silk screens, a couple of wooden frames with card board backing and a squeegee. It was more for lack of something better to do and it kept me in pocket change. People liked the designs, the T-shirts sold, and the business kept growing. I asked a couple of friends to work for me when they had some time and pretty soon the business became “for real.”
Today it’s a fairly large business. We have factory outlets on all the islands in Hawaii, in Guam, Tokyo, San Francisco and Los Angeles. We expanded to do full leisure clothing lines and accessories. Even had a manufacturer do a line of beach accessories including straw mats, collapsible shades, towels, and sun umbrellas. Pretty cool stuff. The business keeps me hopping and it more than pays the bills now.
Niki has her own fashion design boutique. I met her after my business graduated to the “for real” stage. I was in need of a good designer and hired Niki after seeing some of her sketches and ideas. They seemed to fit with our product line at the time. She helped us move the quality of our product line up several notches and was responsible for our initial attempts to diversify into a full line of leisure wear. She would have still been in charge of our design area if we hadn’t gotten romantically involved with each other and decided that it would be best if she went on her own and free-lanced as needed for the company. It actually turned out for the better as Niki was now free to pursue her own design ideas without having to fit them into existing product lines and themes.
She’s been into design for as long as I’ve known her. Always throwing things together in such a way as to make run of the mill stuff look like a million bucks! Her stuff’s pretty cool from what I’ve been told plus I think they’re pretty righteous stuff myself. And her client list is impressive. I’m not one to follow the Hollywood glitz but Niki tells me that she’s got a couple of the ladies who fly in to spend a couple of days with her when they need something for a special event. When that happens, her clients expect her to spend every waking moment with them. It’s a tough and demanding business.
Well, it’s Friday and it started out just like any other Friday. I left the house before 6:00am, and then got stuck on the freeway for an hour and a-half. Grabbed a mocha latte on the walk to the office along with a croissant.
When I got to the office, my marketing manager Keith immediately grabbed my attention with a hint that we might have a shot of becoming an exclusive tropical beach wear supplier for a major Japan retail chain. However, their company chairman wanted to meet me before they went further and inquired whether it would be possible to meet for golf and dinner on Sunday in Tokyo.
Typical of the Japanese. They need to feel comfortable with the people that they were going to do business with. And actually I’ve always felt the same way. If I don’t trust the people that I’m doing business with, it usually means that we won’t do much business with each other.
Anyway, knowing what the request implied, I asked Keith to reply in the affirmative and that I would make travel arrangements and get my travel info over to him as soon as possible.
I ducked into my office and reached Niki on her cell phone and told her what was happening and the need for a quick trip to Japan. In the same breath, I asked if she felt like running away for a week or so to accompany me on the trip, and then take a short vacation as well.
Niki squealed in delight as I knew she would. Part of her ancestry came from Japan where she always held an interest. Many of her designs have an Asian influence to them. Her mother was a Nisei or second generation Japanese and Niki was always seeking opportunities to learn more about her ethnic roots. There was no need for a hard sell!
My next call was to our travel agent to have her book our flight over and hotel accommodations at the Keio Plaza Hotel which is located in the midst of downtown Tokyo, close to the US embassy and across the street from the Tokyo Central Municipal Government Building. Fodor’s gave it a 4 Star rating however I’ve always felt it deserved better.
Our travel agent got us on a flight that departed that evening and got in to Tokyo the next day. One needs to remember that in going west across the International Date Line, that one actually loses a day. So while it would have been Saturday in Hawaii, it would actually be Sunday in Japan. I was arriving in Tokyo just in time to play golf and dine with our potential customer.
I relayed the travel info to Keith so he could alert Japan, and also gave Niki a call to inform her to start packing! I could hear her firing off orders to her staff as she hung the phone up.
Keith laid the deal out for me. He had been working on a possible joint venture with a large retailing chain headquartered in Tokyo that had stores across Japan. We would supply product and they would channel the merchandise through their retail outlets. We would help to create a tropical marketing blitz campaign for them and promotional collateral as well. Pricing splits sounded good and our initial outlay in terms of marketing monies and product inventory seemed reasonable. It sure sounded like a win-win to me so long as they could deliver what they promised.
I told Keith to send the details over to me via email and I would pick it up enroute or when we got to Japan. With that concluded, I dashed out the door to go home to pack.
When I got home, Niki had already filled one large suitcase with her stuff and had another one partially packed for me. “Thanks Niki, you’re always one step ahead of me,” I told her as I gave her a hug and a kiss.
“Of course,” she replied smugly while giving me a quick peck on the lips in return. “We wives have to in order to keep our husbands on track,” she laughed!
“Did I also mention what a smart ass you are?” I quipped?
“Oh but I thought you loved my ass, don’t you now?”
I grabbed her from behind which caused her to shriek as we fell giggling on our bed.
“Ok mister, if you start anything now, we’re going to miss our flight and there goes your deal!” And she was right. She’s always right….must be a gal thing. So we finished our packing and caught a cab to the airport.
It took us over an hour to check in and go through security. Traveling now days is not something you want to do at last minute. Our last minute booking caused us to jump in the risk profiling that airport security uses and they went over our luggage at least twice. Bugger. Well we survived that and made our way to the gate in just enough time to catch our breath before they started boarding.
Bless her soul, our travel agent had managed to finagle us a pair of seats in business class. Normally, it’s full by this time with everyone else using their mileage points to cop any free seat as the legroom and seat width make it a much more comfortable trip. Plus, our seats were at the very front of the plane which meant that we had legroom galore and no one in front reclining into our faces!
Our plane pushed away from the terminal and off we went winging our way to the orient. After about an hour, the flight crew served dinner and what a feast it was. Niki ended up choosing a sashimi dish of raw fish and some assorted seafood. I was tempted to do the same but decided upon an interesting chicken and vegetable stir fry. We shared our meals and I had to agree that Niki’s dinner was the better of the two by far.
After dinner, we snuggled down for the remainder of the flight choosing to try to sleep instead of watching the movie as we were going to be hitting the ground running when we got to Japan.
