Day 9 – Hong Kong Suppliers

Our third day in Hong Kong and second full day of business will be a whirlwind of carving and bead suppliers to top up for Christmas stock, and this is where Kasie will make the decisions.  I fear a boring day for Aidan but it turns out he finds the carvings interesting … especially the ‘boy stuff’ … skulls, rhinos, tigers and the like … he’s not so much taken with the beads and out comes the iPod.

We visit a number of suppliers and I am delighted with Kasies choices.  I’m not saying I’m clueless when it comes to this sort of thing, I just don’t have the experience to make the best choices.  We’re both particularly happy with the large selection made at one bead supplier … I’m impressed.

The carvings selected are also great and certainly different to what i would have chosen had I been alone.  Elephants, hippos, porcupines, frogs, horses and owls in various jaspers, labradorites and other weird and wonderful materials.  We had planned to buy lapis carvings but the quality wasn’t there.

An interesting choice by Kasie was some large free-form ‘modern’ shapes in labradorite … absolutely gorgeous.

We are conservative with our money because will be visiting China tomorrow where some of these carvings are cheaper (or are they?).

We also stop in a supplier of calibrated white opal to fill gaps in our stock.  We used to buy Australian cut calibrated opal but alas it became impossible to do so with this material available … people just won’t pay the prices.  While there we pick a fantastic free-form piece of white crystal … the price is excellent and Kasie says she knows a few customers who may well will snap it up.

A full day done.