Day 4

Day 4 was now two days ago, I was unable to blog because the Chinese government blocked it. Also, when Osama Bin Landen was finally killed, we turned on the news to hear what had happened and the sound on CNN would not work. We tried the TV in another room, thinking maybe ours was defective, but no, the government had blocked the sound! That way they can say oh no no we didn't block the channel something just must've gone wrong with their server. So that was pretty annoying.

Two days ago we left Hong Kong for Shanghai. There is a Coach flagship store in Shanghai, so we went there to meet with the manager. This store is rather new, along with the gigantic Apple store located right next door. Many people had thought that this would be a prime location because the traffic from the Apple store would attract more Coach customers, but that hasn't really been the case; this was a hot topic of conversation at the buisness dinner that night. It felt like econ class all over again, so I was able to join in on the discussion... I said maybe this was because when people buy something from the Apple store it is usually a very costly purchase and they are not looking to buy a new expensive leather hand bag right after. I also suggested that the manager of the Coach store collaborate with Apple so that in the Apple store there could be signs like "Check out Coach's cool new ipad covers right next door" and in the Coach store there'd be signs like, "do you like this ipad cover? the ipad 2 is just around the corner."

While in Shanghai we also visited a few factories, there was one hat/glove/bathing suit factory and two jewelry factories. Coach is really hard on the factories when the working and living conditions do not meet their standards because most of these factories have been with Coach for years and so what the company expects should never come as a surprise. After the factory visits we flew back to Hong Kong, that is where I am right now. Shortly I am meeting Wendy for lunch to interview her for my Writing Communications paper.