DAN'S TRAVEL BLOG #3 - BALI SUPPLIER VISITS

DAN'S TRAVEL BLOG #3 BALI SUPPLIER VISITS

Dan and Lisa finish their adventures by visiting suppliers in Bali, in the last of this series of travel blog emails ...

Rakhmat, one of the guys who helps us in Bali, picked Dan and Lisa up from the airport on Tuesday morning and they immediately noticed how much hotter Bali was compared to Java. They headed straight to a market in the capital, Denpasar, to look for new product ideas and buy some Balinese fabrics for Lisa's next creative project on her sewing machine at home.

It's the rainy season in Indonesia and although it rains mostly at night, when it does rain it absolutely chucks it down! After gettiing hot and bothered in Denpasar, and as it wasn't raining, Dan and Lisa checked into their hotel in Sanur and went for a dip in the pool to cool off. Dan was very amused by the toilet in their hotel room 😂 - see video.

On Wednesday the guys picked Dan and Lisa up at 7.30am and they headed off to the first of eight suppliers they were visiting in one day. This supplier is one of Dan's favourites - the whole family are really nice people and everythng he buys from them sells really well. Dan and Lisa spent nearly three hours here and ordered over 20 brand new products - pix coming soon 🙂.

They popped around the corner to a small market area with lots of different stalls selling some very interesting things - Dan spotted a couple more new things he might just have to order, where are we going to put it all?!

Their next stop was to a new recycled glass supplier - see video of how our glass is made. We struggled to keep up with demand for our best-selling hand-blown glass range in 2024 but hopefully that's now a thing of the past. While Dan was there he spotted a couple of really cool glass items that everyone is going to love - all with amazing prices to give our retailers a great profit margin. We'll send out some sneaky preview pix over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

On Thursday, everyone met up for breakfast at 8am and headed off to the school - see previous blog for details of this trip. Then they popped in to say a quack hello to another one of our duck suppliers and then waddled off to lunch in a picturesque restaurant right up in the lush, beautiful green hills of Ubud. Dan and Lisa love Indonesian food and they opted for Nasi Goreng, the Indonesian national dish, consisting of fried rice with vegetables, chicken, fresh chillies and prawn crackers, all topped off with a fried egg. This was followed by chicken satay with peanut sauce, served sizzing over hot charcoal. Their driver, Guday, had a vividly coloured drink made from dragonfruit - very tasty!

After lunch they met up with another new glass supplier who's going to help us keep up with demand, and then another supplier specialising in small driftwood-style accessories and giftware. As well as spotting a couple of new items here, Lisa came up with an idea for a new owl and driftwood product to keep an eye out for 🙂.

Next they visited our main duck supplier who was very busy getting our stock ready - there were ducks everywhere! 😂 Then on to a new hand-painted bird supplier who's going to help us keep up with demand for these popular little birds - the attention to detail is amazing on every single one of them. There's a brand new style of hand-painted bird pecking at oranges coming soon, so keep an eye out for that too! 🙂

Now it was time to chill out for a couple of days - see video of the fabulous beach they were relaxing on. On Friday evening, Dan and Lisa took Rakhmat and his family out for a meal at a great restaurant in Sanur, and on Saturday they met up with the school headmistress Mrs Desak and her family for a special Italian meal. On Sunday it was time to say goodbye to Indonesia - Dan and Lisa were looking forward to heading home to Dolly 🐶 and the girls, although after landing in Heathrow at 7am, Dan went straight to the office to try and get back into the UK time zone - what can we say? 😂.

We hope you've enjoyed hearing about Dan's shopping trip adventures - goodbye Indonesia, see you next year!

If you enjoyed our videos, please subscribe to our YouTube channel