We’re in China!

Ethan and I are in Hong Kong now, headed to Shenzhen and Zhongshan, two big factory cities just over the border from here into mainland China. Our mission: to meet entrepreneurs who’ve tapped China’s vast manufacturing prowess to bring their creative products to market. We want to learn how they did it and share that with you. We also have our own skunkworks project that we’re bringing to Kickstarter sometime this summer, and with 3D-printed prototype in hand, we hope to get a factory production partner lined up.

It’s Saturday morning now. We left Thursday afternoon and spent the better part of a day crammed into perhaps the two worst seats on the plane: middle seats with a pair of transformer boxes right where our feet would normally go. On the upside, we did have power jacks for our laptops.

To save money, we’re staying in a friend’s tiny, 300 sq ft apartment with a couch and a bed frame with no mattress (turns out you can sleep well anywhere after nearly 24 hours without sleep). Now we’re off to find free wifi, power adapters and foam mattresses. We’re also meeting a couple of successful ex-pat entrepreneurs this afternoon, so stay tuned for some blog posts about that.