Hello from warm Hong Kong! We have already reached my sixth post. A lot has happened in the East since the last blog post.

Business in Hong Kong is currently slow because prices are very low at the moment and many western companies are not ordering large quantities of products as many countries are already on their summer holidays. For us in sales, this means more effort to get hold of customers’ shipments. The competition is very fierce and it is a challenge for me to keep up as I don’t have a fundamental network yet and I am also new to the Asian market.  

My colleagues and I try very hard to continue to do business and help each other out. For me, it is an advantage that I speak several languages and therefore have no major problems conversing and communicating with different customers.  

At the end of June, I went on a business trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for the first time. My main objective was to get to know my new colleagues and to work together with them to change the existing business that was being handled with other companies to our own. We had several internal meetings, which were also held online with the departments in the Basel and Kloten offices.

As it was my first business trip, I didn’t know what to expect. I did get tips from experienced colleagues, but every business trip is different. I have had good and not so good experiences. You learn from your mistakes.

Now I have been back in Hong Kong since the beginning of July and am going about my daily life. However, there are also special assignments that we take on for our clients, for example, I was allowed to go to Macau and had to destroy a server and the hard drives at a bank there and then dispose of them.

At the weekends I often go swimming because the weather is warm and you don’t really feel like doing anything. The in-house swimming pool comes in handy, otherwise we also go to various beaches in Hong Kong and spend our weekends that way.