No school today

Having no school was great for my daughter, but for the Father, ie me, having to supervisor her was a bit challenging for my work (sorry for not responding today to E-Mails and voice mails), the good news was we got a lot done for her school work and practicing (piano and cello) and getting caught up, so for her it was a pretty productive day.  Me, I now have to catch up!  At least the fires have retreated and their are no longer massive clouds of smoke reminding me of Mordor.

Principal Called - No School tomorrow!

A Calvin and Hobbes cartoon has Calvin looking out at the falling snow and hoping it's enough to close down the schools. Today, my daughter was hoping the fire/smoke was enough to close down her school, and she got her wish. When we got home there was a recorded message from her Principal that there was no school tomorrow.

This is being caused by the triangle complex fires that is burning in Diamond Bar, Yorba Linda, and Brea. Air quality is bad. One of the local freeways has been closed off and on that has made traffic locally a big headache and caused me to miss a speaker in Pasadena, when I started to go out the roads were the worst I have ever seen them because of the freeway detours. And this was only a couple of blocks from my home!

My daughter was supposed to have a performance tonight, a fundraiser, and we stopped by her school that is a emergency shelter. Sad to see all the people there with their pets. There was one boy playing with his Golden Retriever with a big smile and a wagging tail...

I think we are getting another dog soon because of that one image, especially the wagging tail. Since I live with my in-laws (who are in Taiwan), there are some political issues, in my opinion based on my experience, that need to get resolved. My thought has been let my Mother-in-law pick out the dog and it eliminates all political issues. I could write a lot about our great Akita hunt and how long that took . My brother-in-law finally saw one at a pet store, yes a pet store, and yes, I know about Puppy Mills, my Grandfather showed his Goldens and my Aunt is into a rescue society, and fell in love with it. Beautiful dog, but had health issues unfortunately (became blind at an early age). Currently we have no dogs. A friends dog is also putting pressure on me also, my daughter mentions after every time we visit them.

ChildBook - Removing the Fear of Learning Chinese

Something fun I wrote for the front page today

Afraid of Learn Chinese? Must be Halloween!

We removes the fear from learning Chinese!

• Don't be scared of Learning Chinese, ChildBook makes Learning Chinese safe with our 100% money back guarantee gives you peace of mind on your purchase, Free shipping^*, product comparison charts and over 500 customer reviews to help you pick the right product for your child.

Supplier Inventory Headaches

Some of my suppliers are cutting back on their stock, which is frustrating when I want to order an item and I need to wait.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are so important and I really appreciate all the customers who have done them. They help in choosing the right product so much, and they only take a few minutes to do. I wish more customers would do the, it's surprising as a percentage how few customers do them. May be the fact they need to login to create a post causes a problem, I know the fact it's not 100% obvious where the link is for doing a post is an issue (which because I rent my software, it limits how much I can customize it).

Reasons for Returns

The recent economy is resulting in more returns, and the reasons are getting less reasonable. I am not changing my return policy yet, but I am concerned.

My goal with my very good return policy is to make a happy customer and be fare. But unfortunately, some recent reasons I have been given for returns are starting to bother me. Being honest, when I get an item such as a DVD or Software returned, I can't resell it so I take loss. So returni

Automated Phone Navigation in Chinese and English - Arghh!!!

So I was calling this place in Hong Kong, select 3 for English after hearing some Cantonese and Madnarin. OK, should be easy. Then gives me a list of departments, then I select sales. Rings, rings, rings and get an recorded answer in Cantonese. So dial zero, more Cantonese. So finally get back to the main menu. I called in four times, and finally dialed customer service. Then I got transferred 3 times.

After experience this, I don't think I am going to be so frustrated by the automated phone systems in the US. I am so used to just dialing zero to get around the system, except some systems have disabled that option (US Post Office).

Customer Service Story of the Week

A customer ordered a lot of a series of textbooks, more than I had in stock. And my supplier did not have enough either, and other companies I am friendly with were also out. What to do?

So I shipped everything I had, and had my supplier drop ship, and then I found a company that had them and bought them at retail (it hurt) and shipped them to the customer, since they needed them ASAP.

My unexpected emergency of yesterday and today.

Chinese Halloween Sale

My weekly sale is Learning Chinese Halloween Products. So what does that mean? Basically anything with a front cover that could be be a costume qualifies. So Monkey King and Mulan definitely qualify. So does anything with a Panda on the front, and a few others...

And my wife is having on her site a $9.99 Chinese Dress Sale, they make great Halloween Costumes!

500 Posts Now - Wow!

And I did not even notice last night on my 500th post. That shows how tired I was last night! Or may be it was the flu shot I got yesterday finally catching up with me as I was blogging late last night. Tonight I am helping out with Bingo at my daughter's school, so I am getting the blogging out of the way early. I came in to do some shipping while my daughter goes to Voice and Piano lessons - my wife is the chauffeur today :-)

My daughter keeps on talking about how nice it will be when she drives. I have not asked my wife's opinion on this.

Quality - What does it mean

I started to write about this in my newsletter and it just grew, so now the blog post about what Quality means to me.

Running ChildBook.com has a lot to do with quality. My awareness of quality started with reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in college. And then I became very interested in Japanese manufacturing reading Deming and Schonberger. And recently more about Toyota's manufacturing system. These are related to manufacturing, but to me they are applicable to whatever you do. Mistakes and errors are waste, and it helps your business to reduce them. It also helps me from losing more hair :-)

The key to me is not to focus on who's at fault, but figure out how to prevent this in the future. It can be simple little things that help. And when a customer is involved focus on making it right ASAP. Customers are expensive and with ChildBook.com it's my reputation/face which is very important to me.

Someday I am going to be expert at lean manufacturing and get certified (no, not the asylum type), unfortunately I am a bit busy right now running my Learning Chinese for Kids E-Commerce Site as well as being a parent to a challenging daughter (why is it every age has challenges).

Creating New Competition

I was speaking with a bank officer today and he mentioned to be careful when talking about my business with Chinese, since if it's successful many would just copy it. I have seen that here, where a friend's Taiwanese restaurant had a competitor open right next to them with basically the same menu. The competitor finally went out of business, but it was not fun (I was surprised the plaza management would allow a competitor to do that, but the comment from our friend was all they cared about was the rent).

My opinion is there are already a lot of people selling what I sell, but what really matters is providing value to your customers. Simple idea and common sense, but actually making it happen is not as easy as it seems... I have been doing ChildBook for 10 years and every day still brings new surprises, and I am constantly learning. That's another reason I enjoy running my own business, it's challenging and makes me think all the time!

honesty - being real

iPhones, Lousy Chinese Food, and Good Vietnamese Food

I am again helping out a friend at a trade show, running my business remotely (thanks so much Mom!), and doing the Father duties via Cell Phone. And yes, I feel like pulling some of my already thinning hair out today.

So on the way from Denver's airport, a coworker from China wanted to go have steak. So I get out my iPhone 3G with GPS, and look for a steak restaurant nearby. Since I am driving it's challenging, so we get off the freeway and change drivers. I find a restaurant using the Yelp plug in, but no reviews in the entire area. And you can't go directly to the map in Yelp to give directions (hopefully fixed soon). So we proceed via some interesting surface roads to where the Restaurant should be, nope, not there, It's a Taqueria. So we went over to the other side of the road, and not there. So the consensus is there is a Chinese restaurant there, and I give my warning on be aware it's not what you expect, so don't complain. They did not even have chopsticks. It was edible, but I am so spoiled in Rowland Heights with real, excellent Chinese Food. When my wife got back from a trip to Germany, she immediately went to a local Taiwanese restaurant to recover from eating so many sandwiches for lunch while she was there.

So went to the tradeshow, and the booth had major issues. Got those fixed I hope... And went to dinner. The co-worker from China wanted Black Angus, and I had looked at Yelp on the iPhone and suggested Capital Grill, which is really well rated. No Black Angus near by, so we went to Pho Duy per the good ratings on Yelp. Excellent Vietnamese food, we seemed to have found the Little Saigon of the Denver area.

Long day!

Importer Mistake - So Make Lemonade

I thought I would be clever and order a bunch of the a soft cover book of the Monkey King in traditional characters that comes with a CD, part of a series that is a great value.. The problem is everyone just buys their favorite one (I started with 30 of each).

So I got 20 of them today...

Only one minor problem. Any guesses?

No CD. And the books have the same ISBN number, so time to make some lemonade and sell the book without CD for a bit less. I need to set up some new part numbers, soon as that is done I"ll link to it here. I have re-ordered them and hopefully this time they will show up with a CD. The wonders of importing, you are never 100% sure what you will get in a shipment :-)

Passion, Integrity, and Knowledge

A friend of mine gave a talk today about what it requires a successful business, and he mentioned three key factors:

• Passion
• Integrity
• Knowledge

I have known him since the dot com boom and bust of 10 years ago, and of a group of people I was in a group with, I am the only person still running an Internet based business. I like the definition of Integrity he got from the audience - keeping your word. It's so important to do this.

Humbling Day

A humbling day, I really dislike when I make mistakes. I find whenever I make a mistake, it's time to slow down and re-work the processes so this type of mistake does not happen again. Sometimes it's as simple as just adding a sign. My belief is if you make the process correctly, it is almost impossible to create an error. This week has been humbling and a learning experience. And on what to do as a business, do what you promise, so I do offer and back my 100% money back guarantee. My goal is a satisfied customer, and if that is not happening something needs to be improved.

Chinese Learning Materials - Making it easy to find

An article that is thought provoking and is more aimed at Software than a web site such as ChildBook.com Ten guiding principles for interface design and some questions in the comments that are thought provoking:

• Are we making someone’s job easier?
• Letting them have more fun?
• Helping them learn?

My problem:

• Huge amount of Learning Chinese Products, over 100o live products. From DVD's to books to Music to Software. And then the sub-categories. And the textbooks.
  
• And then lots of free stuff from listings of events, articles, coloring pictures, and crafts.
• And somehow making all this content easy to find for my customer.

What I have done currently is:

• Create separate main pages for each area such as DVD's, CD's, Software, and Music.
• Create pages that list items by age.
• Lots of links on the side for all the extra content.
  

Running your own web site

Flipping Web Sites, Selling the Niche from the NY Times. Interesting article about people who buy up badly designed web sites, do some tweaking, and resell them.

I hope I would not be considered a badly designed web site!

And by using drop shipment, the shipping part becomes easy. I am against trusting your shipments to a third party, it adds cost and problems. You can outsource, but you have the danger of outsourcing what makes you a special place to shop. Where when a customer E-Mails, phones, or calls a person who knows a bit about the Learning Chinese for kids(me) can answer the questions and give meaningful recommendations.

Spam Posts - Getting tired of them

Sample Spam:

• A good place for adults to learn Chinese for free that I would like to mention is annoying URL

Another one from the same place (and this is after I had told them not to do this).

• Learning Chinese is a wonderful and enriching experience. A fantastic place to study is online! annoying URL

Product Reviews for Learning Chinese Products

Learning Chinese Product reviews are a challenge, the biggest problem is getting them. I don't know why, I am only asking for a few sentences, and you can even do it anonymous to the public (I can still see who you are since you need to login to do a review, which prevents the wrong type of people doing them).

Product Reviews are great for the learning Chinese product that has lots of them and if laid out correctly, but what about the Learning Chinese product that has none?

And it's challenging to get people to do reviews! I am even offering a monthly drawing for cash, and the number of reviews I get is, umm, pretty sad. Don't get me wrong, I deeply appreciate every review I get! But I wish I had more of them. I don't mind if you review a product I carry that you bought from another vendor! I know you probably regret not buying from me, but please don't let that stop you from doing a review!

408 Posts! I can't believe it.

I find it astonishing I have done 408 posts so far on Chinese Language and Culture related topics. Some day the posts are easy because of my interaction with customers, and other days I need to hunt to find one. Right now there are so many Olympic themed articles that it's easy. Face Mask wearing by USOC athletes is one I may do.

Retiring Friend at USPS

Today a person who has known my daughter since my wife was pregnant 14+ years ago retired from oue local Post Office.

I went their with my daughter to give her a card and a cake from Nie Nie Ruby Bakery. It's nice to meet and work with nice people, and she was always was so helpful when were were dropping off our packages. From when I first started and had the postage done at the Post Office, to know where I do it at the office and just drop off the packages.

Thanks for all of your help and I hope you have a wonderful retirement!

Due to privacy reasons I did not include her name in this blog post.

Images for Learing Chinese - Which is best?

I am still thinking/considering/going in circles about My Daughter's Picture on ChildBook's Front page. Does it represent the best image for Learning Chinese? This article is an interesting read and game me more things to think about on selecting the right image for my Learning Chinese Materials.

So what are my competitors doing? One has a nice picture taken from their books, another has a beautiful collage of Chinese related items, and another does different graphics depending on the season (wonders of having a husband whom is a graphic artist).

Negotiating and Discounts

Phone orders can be very annoying, because some people think they should always get a discount. Even when the item is cheaper than everyone else and on sale!

I was talking to another owner of a business selling items for learning Chinese, and they had the same complaint. Their policy is just keep on repeating they don't discount. My goal is to have fair prices so none of the negotiating is needed. Win win is my goal with customers.

Summer Vacations & Chinese

The idea of this weeks Theme of a Chinese Virtual Vacation is products that allow you to visit another place (China) or learn some new things (cooking Chinese Food for kids) in the comfort of your own house. With the high price of gas and the visa hassles of going to China, here are some products to Learn about China at home.

No Post Yesterday due to my Internet was down

So I get back from the tradeshow last night. Ate dinner with the customer and some co-workers and got dropped off home late. First thing I heard was the Internet was not working from my wonderful daughter. After unpacking, I went to do some posting and my cable modem was fried. So it's 11:30AM, do I go to work to post or sleep? Sleep won.

I exchanged the modem this morning and at least it's working. I also went into work, did some shipping because the person who was doing shipping while I was at the tradeshow got sick.

Mission Statement for ChildBook

I just attended a Drucker Symphosium and it got me to thinking about Mission - Helping Children Learn the Chinese Language and Culture (click for longer version).

A Druckerism I did not know "A Mission Statement should fit on a T-Shirt".

Another Druckerism "The ultimate test is not the beauty of a mission statement. The ultimate test is right action."

And a checklist for developing a Mission Statement

My current mission describes what I do, but I am not sure if it does what it is supposed to do. It talks nothing of goals and where I want ChildBook to be. What sets ChildBook apart from other businesses is our focus on doing the right thing. Our 100% Guarantee policy is an example of that (along with our low return rate by selling quality items). Simple idea, sell quality items and you won't get many returns and you will have happy customers, which makes the owners life easier! And by running an ethical business, it's also easier to sleep at night!

Yes, I am into Ethical Management and I can blame it on the place I got my MBA from ;-) The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management Truthfully, it just helped
give guidance to a set of core beliefs I have in win

1 in 1000 Freight Issues

My problems with freight is about 1 in 1000. And of missing packages 1 every couple of years. The latest was a package that was going from California to Arizona, somehow took a detour to Ohio. And the tracking shows the address is Arizona. Good news is it's going to the right place. I called the USPS after noticing the strange route and on the third person found out it was going the right place.

Book Expo in LA

I was at the Book Expo today. Overwhelming!

It was wonderful to meet in person some of my suppliers. People who I have spoken over the phone for years. I also found out about some neat products that I will get soon. I wish I had more time there, but since I am in charge of picking up the daughter, my time was limited...

I did not even know my suppliers would be there till I was walking the floor. My main purpose was to see a friend I had not seen in many years who worked for a supplier, but has moved jobs.

Memorial Weekend Customer Purchases

After a 3 day weekend, shipping is a challenge and usually results in a late night.

Some popular items this past Memorial Weekend:

• Harry Potter Complete Book Set - Traditional Chinese
• Harry Potter Set - Simplified Chinese
• Chinese Made Easy Textbooks/Curriculumn (both Simplified and Traditional)
• Kuaile Hanyu (Happy Chinese Textbooks/Curriculum)
• Practical Chinese - Effective way to learn Chinese
• Lots of Flash Cards
• Early Start Mandarin Chinese with Bao Bei the Panda #1, 2, 3, and 4
• I Won't Bite (a wonderful book)
  

Quality of Chinese Children Books

I was filling an order today for a customer and noticed the lamination on a book was coming off. In fact all the lamination of the entire series I had purchased as samples was coming off. Hmm... What to do. So I gave the book to the customer for free and removed the others from inventory (giving the customer 1 each of the delaminated books). Quality is extremely important to me in what I sell for childbook.com and the goal is to have a happy customer.

Clearance and New Products

The number of items on ChildBook.com has doubled in the past few week as many one of kind items were scanned in and descriptions written. 390 items were added! Some of these have instantly gone to Clearance that has some great deals if you don't mind cassettes (4 cassettes for $7.99) and some video tapes.

Product Reviews - So Helpful

Product Reviews - So helpful! I hope I can get more. For some reason, it's hard to get customers to do reviews for Childbook.com (most sites have this issue I have noticed, which is probably why unless you are a super large site, most sites just don't bother with reviews).

A product that I have been selling for two years, finally got it's first review yesterday (actually two).

The Great Voyage of Zheng He, Bilingual Book - Nice book about a famous Chinese Admiral. Great English, Chinese, and Pictures. Not to mention the story.

Beautiful artwork and enjoyable story
Reviewer: MMBaillie
I was looking for a book to reinforce language studies that would be appropriate for my college age son. He has been studying beginning Mandarin and I was very happy to find this Chinese Character/English bilingual book. My son loves history and he said he was able to recognize many of the characters in the book. I was pleased with the beautiful artwork and I enjoyed the story as well.Was this review helpful to you?


good history book
Reviewer: Gary from Phoenix
I bought this book because I want to learn more about the Chinese heroes (real people, not legend). The book is in English and Chinese, both myself and my son can read it.

Learning Chinese - My 200th Post

My 200th post! Back in September I started blogging and it's already 200 posts. It's a challenge to come up with meaningful posts everyday. The Theme I have worked on keep related to Learning about the Chinese Culture and Language. The blog has given me an opportunity to write about new ideas that can be used for articles, lesson plans, and other resources for web pages for childbook.com that I am developing.

Of course my topic of a couple blogs, Why Learn Chinese that gave me a lot of content to update my page, Why Learn Chinese is still high on my priority list to get done soon. Very soon :-)

200th Post - Learning Chinese

My 200th post! Back in September I started blogging and it's already 200 posts. It's a challenge to come up with meaningful posts everyday. The Theme I have worked on keep related to Learning about the Chinese Culture and Language. The blog has given me an opportunity to write about new ideas that can be used for articles, lesson plans, and other resources for web pages for childbook.com that I am developing.

Of course my topic of a couple blogs, Why Learn Chinese that gave me a lot of content to update my page, Why Learn Chinese is still high on my priority list to get done soon. Very soon :-)

About Us - Why bring up our daughter bilingual in Chinese/English

The about us section of ChildBook.com is extremely personal. It talks about how my wife and I started ChildBook because of our frustration of finding material to bring up our daughter bilingually in English and Chinese. Local bookstores had a horrible selection and were often over priced. Yesterday, I saw a book of 40 children songs in Chineses and cd for $21 that I sell for $9.95. And my selection is a lot larger for children items than them and the quality is high. It's hard to find materials that are of good quality. Sometimes books have great Chinese, but then you look at the English and it's strange... Or the Chinese is translated word for word, which makes for very strange Chinese. Dr. Suess is an example that does not translate well into Chinese (and I don't carry). It's much easier if you carry the right product since then you don't get into returns (I hate those). It's astonishing how low ChildBook's return rate is compared to the Industry average. And ChildBook has a nice return policy. ChildBook to me is the type store that I would like to shop in and feel proud to have my name attached to it.

A while ago, a competitor actually stole content including word for word of my about us page. They finally made some changes on that after I complained (I could have made their life really miserable, but I like to play nice). It's minor, but since it's about my family's journey of raising our daughter, it's a bit personal and I don't appreciate it.