On the Life + Play Blog: China and Hong Kong  ✈

Every year we take some time out to travel to China & Hong Kong to visit our factories and source new ideas for Make Me Iconic. We went to Trade Shows in Canton & Hong Kong and traveled to a few places within China. We always try to take some time out along to way to sightsee and enjoy the culture and the country.

Hong Kong was also on the agenda and we sourced new ideas and attend Trade Shows. It's one of our favourite cities to visit. We found riding bikes In Beijing was the best way to travel like a local and take everything in.  We were lucky to see some local craft making. The people are so friendly  and the food amazing. We ate too many dumplings but well worth it. This year we managed to take  a few extra days and go see Beijing for the first time. It always been on our bucket list of things to do. We say the Great Wall and walked 21,000 steps.

 

This trip was not just about sightseeing, we were actually working and met with some of our wonderful factories that we work. It's great to touch base about production and discuss new ideas for Make Me iconic. We always find it fascinating to see how our products are made as well as see what new manufacturing techniques are out there. It’s not uncommon to think that having toys made in China is a bad thing. In our eyes, it’s a great thing. Learn why we love it so much.

 

In China, we're rubbing shoulders with some of the best toy making experts in the industry. Our factory guides us for their manufacturing process as well as safe toy recommendations. Not only do we test our toys for safety but we also check our factory for best place work practices and making sure it's a happy place that is safe and clean environment for all the workers. The factory is actually a collaboration of some international and local employees. Our factory actually makes all of the toys for a very famous Swedish company that you post all over Instagram. In fact we met with a factory production manager  who was posted to Ningbo over 30 years ago from Sweden to work here and has been in China since!

 

Safe standards  are really important to us at Make Me Iconic. We make an effort to ensure factory employees are happy and empowered. The work environment in our China factory is safe and secure; light and bright. Lunch and dinner is provided every day by their in-house cook and we were very happy to eat there ourselves when we visited. Our manufacturing contributes to some local experts having jobs for over 30 years.

 

We source quality materials and learn from other specialists in the field. We’ve been making toys in China for almost 9 years. We design all toys locally using Australian designers and then work with a design team based at the factory for sampling and amendments. Toys are then thoroughly toy tested before production begins.