Greetings (again) from Bali...

Yes, back in Bali. Last week I was telling you about our Mooncake overload in China and our trip to a lonely mountain village. If you missed it you can catch up here.

Coco and I took a China Southern flight from Yiwu to Guangzhou, with a short transit time onward to Bali. It is always a risk, but no choice because these days there are not so many flights out of China. 

Of course, after we boarded the plane the captain announced a one-hour delay which turned into two hours. Yiwu is a military airport and if they decide to use it for exercises..  then you're buggered. Window blinds down, you're strictly not allowed to look outside, but they served us snacks (and even a cold beer) while we waited. We resigned ourselves to missing the connection from Guangzhou to Bali and assumed we would be on the next day's flight. 

The plane landed and the air hostess told us that they are going to help us make the connection but we would need to run like the wind. There were other passengers making the same connection, and as we got off the plane someone was waiting with a list of names. They slapped blue dots on us, to give us superpowers to pass quickly...  Instead of entering the terminal, we had a minibus on the tarmac that took us to the right terminal directly and even bypassed security. We still needed to clear immigration which fortunately had no queues. On the other side,
staff were waiting and urging us to run.. like spectators in a marathon. Run, run, run...

We were running and laughing, not really expecting to make it. The last time this happened in Athens airport, we arrived too late.

But we made it with seconds to spare, they closed the door right after we boarded. "Well, done guys," the air steward said cheerfully, "you made it - you're on the way to Bali".  Then told us that our luggage would not be there. We had to just go and give the baggage handling office our hotel address.  After we landed in Bali and cleared immigration, which these days is easy because we have businesses there and what they call; kittas papers, there is a VIP channel on the right-hand side of the hall. We went to the lost luggage office and filled in the forms. Where we got a personal apology for the delayed luggage and.. "could you just sign this receipt" I asked what it was for? "This.. " she said and counted out one million Indonesian rupiah each! Cash compensation on the spot. That's about £100 in total. Wow.. you don't get that with Ryanair. Coco was so happy!

I don't know why but this year, that's the fourth or fifth time me or Coco has lost luggage.in transit. I learned that you don't need to worry - the lost luggage always always turns up.  Sure enough, it arrived at our hotel on the second day.

Tomas and Raul arrived in Bali the next day... it's the reason we are here.. Peter the PPC marketing wizard from Slovakia is already here. We have a summit meeting with the Digital Marketing team. And together we can power forward to the next stage. AW-Advantage.com is taking shape and we already have a few customers, other than the AW group.  Regular readers will know we (almost) by accident bought an abandoned beach bar, not far from our warehouse and turned it into a super cool workspace, yards from the crashing surf. 

We came bearing gifts.. mostly Mooncakes (see last week's news) but also Coco brought personally made Manifestation Bracelets for the marketing team. 

Which they really seemed to appreciate... 

It seems the beach office is working great, we have had zero staff turnover these last three months, and a super dedicated team of young bright people. They start early and often have to be turfed out of the office at night. At the moment we have a foundation team of 15 people.. when we are ready we can expand step by step. If you are interested in using the team to supercharge your online businesses... drop us a line, we are only taking on a very small customer base right now, because we are still a small team and our USP is that here in Indonesia we can give your business lots more of the careful analytical attention than you could possibly get from a UK or EU agency. Contact Form here.. we will be happy to take a look at your website and see if we can actually add value, and if we can then we can quote you. My bottom line is that any investment in digital marketing should (if your product is good) earn a 10X return in the medium term. But there are a lot of factors in the mix, every business is different. But if you have an online business you have nothing to lose by clicking here.

Christmas is coming.. it's time to get organised. 

This year is going to be brutal.. only the shops with the best latest trends are going to do well - and probably do very well. Be dramatic, or dismal... you choose.  I believe this year AW has it.. the stuff you absolutely need.

To win... you need to run like the wind.. our best stock is already selling out fast.. 

Check out the products and deals below.

Take care.

Have an absolutely wonderful week.

More news next Monday

David