BUSINESS TRAVEL
TWO WEEKS IN CHINA
Last updated July 25, 2026
I came home from China a different person than I left as. Two weeks with James and the team, and I don't think I've ever come back from a trip with that much changed in how I think about my own work.
We were there for everything at once. Sourcing new products, visiting our ZAROS suppliers to finally make the call between two manufacturers we'd been going back and forth on for months, helping a client find new suppliers of their own, upgrading the design of an existing product line. Factory floors and showrooms, back to back, for two weeks straight.
The moment that stayed with me most was seeing something I'd designed standing physically in front of me. It had existed as an idea, then a brief, then a spec sheet, then months of email back and forth, and suddenly it was just there, on a factory floor, real. I don't have a clean word for what that felt like. Quietly confidence-altering is the closest I can get.
What surprised me almost as much was China itself. The business infrastructure, the sheer scale of how efficiently everything runs, I found myself in genuine awe more than once. I care a lot about how things get built, and being that close to the process, at that scale, was electric.
One thing I didn't expect to learn was how to actually read a good supplier. The best ones weren't the most accommodating or the quickest to smile. They let the work speak instead of the relationship. We met one supplier who took far too long to even produce a sample, was slow to respond, and when the products finally came through, they were subpar, mostly replicas of designer pieces rather than anything original. Our actual supplier was different. Friendly, professional, but honest in a way that only comes from genuine confidence in the work itself, no unnecessary flattery, no overselling. They didn't need to charm us into the relationship because the samples did that on their own. That distinction has changed how I evaluate every partner I work with since, warmth is nice, but it's not a substitute for standards.
The trip taught me something less glamorous too, and it's stuck with me since. I learned to factor material weight, cost, and product size into design decisions from the very start, not after the fact, because of how directly those choices ripple into shipping costs and operational complexity down the line. We had to switch ZAROS to a slightly lighter leather once we saw what the original weight was doing to costs. Bag size turned out to be its own lesson entirely, a few centimetres larger and the shipping costs jumped in a way that wasn't obvious until we saw real supplier quotes in front of us. And with one client, the numbers made it clear we had to pivot the product niche altogether, the cost and complexity of designing and shipping it would never have been profitable against their target audience and price point.
It's the same discipline I try to bring to every product decision now, operational and financial reality before aesthetics, because a beautiful product that can't move through the supply chain profitably isn't a product yet, it's an idea. I just had to see it play out in a factory in China before it fully sank in.
Business travel is my favourite thing in the world. This trip is the reason why.
I came home from China a different person than I left as. Two weeks with James and the team, and I don't think I've ever come back from a trip with that much changed in how I think about my own work.
We were there for everything at once. Sourcing new products, visiting our ZAROS suppliers to finally make the call between two manufacturers we'd been going back and forth on for months, helping a client find new suppliers of their own, upgrading the design of an existing product line. Factory floors and showrooms, back to back, for two weeks straight.
The moment that stayed with me most was seeing something I'd designed standing physically in front of me. It had existed as an idea, then a brief, then a spec sheet, then months of email back and forth, and suddenly it was just there, on a factory floor, real. I don't have a clean word for what that felt like. Quietly confidence-altering is the closest I can get.
What surprised me almost as much was China itself. The business infrastructure, the sheer scale of how efficiently everything runs, I found myself in genuine awe more than once. I care a lot about how things get built, and being that close to the process, at that scale, was electric.
One thing I didn't expect to learn was how to actually read a good supplier. The best ones weren't the most accommodating or the quickest to smile. They let the work speak instead of the relationship. We met one supplier who took far too long to even produce a sample, was slow to respond, and when the products finally came through, they were subpar, mostly replicas of designer pieces rather than anything original. Our actual supplier was different. Friendly, professional, but honest in a way that only comes from genuine confidence in the work itself, no unnecessary flattery, no overselling. They didn't need to charm us into the relationship because the samples did that on their own. That distinction has changed how I evaluate every partner I work with since, warmth is nice, but it's not a substitute for standards.
The trip taught me something less glamorous too, and it's stuck with me since. I learned to factor material weight, cost, and product size into design decisions from the very start, not after the fact, because of how directly those choices ripple into shipping costs and operational complexity down the line. We had to switch ZAROS to a slightly lighter leather once we saw what the original weight was doing to costs. Bag size turned out to be its own lesson entirely, a few centimetres larger and the shipping costs jumped in a way that wasn't obvious until we saw real supplier quotes in front of us. And with one client, the numbers made it clear we had to pivot the product niche altogether, the cost and complexity of designing and shipping it would never have been profitable against their target audience and price point.
It's the same discipline I try to bring to every product decision now, operational and financial reality before aesthetics, because a beautiful product that can't move through the supply chain profitably isn't a product yet, it's an idea. I just had to see it play out in a factory in China before it fully sank in.
Business travel is my favourite thing in the world. This trip is the reason why.