Hey,how do you like my design ?

By 阿杜.Steward
Shanghai


Hey, just would like to know how you guys like my freshly designed poster for Feiyue. Actually I stole this idea from an ad hanger on the street the other day :P

-I'm pretty satisfied with this vintage touch of combination
-"请走型人道" and Feiyue's double arrows symbol "<<". -In Chinese,“请走型人道” has the same pronunciation with "请走行人道",which means, "Please Follow the Zebra Crossing".

-while-“型” in Chinese, means fashionable,stylish, and “人” means people.

Now you learn Chinese on this as well :) ,"型人"->stylish person, "行人" pedestrian.

Have a good days! Continue Reading...

Grab a pair of Feiyue in LA !

By 阿杜.Steward
Shanghai


This morning a friend from USA sent me a link of "Lions Den". It's a garment shop who choose its own fashion labels and favors Chinese element ambience as well. You won't find large paragraph of text introduction or fancy flash animation on its website, but with a simply click through you would probably be glued by what they offer.

What I like best is that they put on the site photos of youngster wearing Tees and other accessory from the shop, instead of officially well-designed sexy professional model. Well maybe I can email them my photo to see if there is a chance to get published :P

Oh,last thing, our favorite icon Feiyue shoes and T-shirts are also available in this shop in LA. No idea if it's the first shop that brings in this hit in USA, but sincerely hope they would make another sweep like they did in Europe over the last few years.

And today is Chinese lural date Aug 15th, happy Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone,enjoy your mooncake :)




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Grab a pair of Original Feiyue in China@legendary Feiyue 585 Store

By 阿杜.Steward
Shanghai

Feiyue 585 Store
Now let's take a trip to the legendary Feiyue 585 store at Shanghai. It's reported to be the only existing Feiyue shoes store that has a direct root with its original factory. (see Lifeweek's article)

1. How to get there

View Larger Map

Above's a snapshot from Google map, you can use it get yourself familiar its location.
- you can click the blue balloon to see its actual site on the map

- the blue line helps you find a way from the subway Exit to the shop (Total distance:473.831 m )

- if you're taking a cab,it's located on No.585, Changning Distric, Shanghai :)

- Be careful, it's easy to miss.Anyway as more and more people coming from all over to buy original Feiyue, they're now hanging a red paper to help you find them a bit easier "飞跃专卖店 585" (Feiyue 585 store).

2.What's in there ?
Small, the shop is very small that's the first impression when I stepped in, probably much smaller than you ever imagine(only about 5m x 6m) and according to saleswoman Ms.Zhao, it's always crowded with people especially during weekends, coming to buy feiyue shoes and other classical Chinese sneakers like Warriors (another classical sneaker brand rooted in Shanghai), Double starts Sneaker etc.

Shoes were everywhere,lots of shoes,hung on the walls, displayed disorderly in the counters or plies up on the floor. And many brands too, Feiyue, warriors are not quite eye-catching as scattered with other shoes like Converse and Levi's even many other nitch brands (yes,you can get very cheap Converse and Levi's here as well, since the factory of feiyue also do OEM for the C and L brand).

3.Additional info about the visit

Saleswomen were extremely nice. I was curious about what did they think of the successful re-branding of Feiyue in France and is it making any impact on the shop now and in the future. They think branding is important, and they want to understand what a brand is. But they don't have any experience. If you haven't grown up with brands it's hard to understand them. There's a lack of experience in what a brand is and what it takes to build a brand. As to the manufacturer of feiyue (and all these sneakers), TopOne(大博文) is putting much of its capacity in OEM for overseas. Its organizational structure, its human capital and many many others factors causing the change less likely to happen (as least in near future).

Ayi is helping me packing the shoes like wrapping up a Chinese Zongzi,and you don't even get decent box for you shoes. You're probably thinking they're lacking good package design, well that reflects a growing concern over branding among Chinese enterprises.

Chinese brands that are at a disadvantage in the world and to avoid losing control of domestic brands when cooperating with overseas investors.Currently in China, only three in every 10,000 enterprises own intellectual property rights (IPRs) and unique techniques. And more than 60 percent of enterprises do not have trademarks. An enterprise without a trademark is unable to become a famous brand.

Most of "Made-in-China" products are made for overseas firms, thus bearing those firms" trademarks. As a result, the majority of profits, made by taking advantage of a large amount of land and mine resources, as well as cheap labor force and even at the price of environment pollution, do not go to the OEMs (original equipment manufacturer) in China, but their foreign counterparts.If you don't have the skills of marketing, the only way you can differentiate is on price....

Some Chinese brands are gradually edged out of the market and finally disappear in mergers and acquisitions between Chinese and overseas businesses.

As a college student and fans of classical I sincerely want to contribute whatever I can for the revival of Chinese classical brands. Branding is all about intellectual and more importantly emotional connection with people. When people begin to support the image, like from the more brand savvy cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, other second-tier cities will move up in good speed to catch up with the trends. All right, it's time for me to take some initiative, looks cool right? I mean the shoes!!
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My NIKE Human Race @ Shanghai 08.31.08

By 阿杜.Steward
Shanghai

About What is the Nike+ Human Race?

On 08.31.08, Nike is making a statement like no other before. Nike is putting on the World’s Largest Running Event. The 10k event will be the ultimate runner experience.

1. About my race

Overall, it was a great race, it was challenging and fresh (to most people including me, never experienced a race as far as 10K). When on the subway before the race that morning, everyone in red Tee-shirt and running shorts was agog about the game. You should know when running in such a large folk (approximately15 thousands of runners in Shanghai), it certainly provides you some additional push. It’s not only about competition,but also people enjoy being part of such a huge event and air of shared goal permeated.

So how was the race result for me? Er….as I mentioned, additional push from the folk, but unfortunately I was in the middle of the less speedy,seemed more like pull than push…yup, that was lame, got chicked and outrun by many runners even female runners 囧～

2. Something special about the race in Shanghai

- Everyone got nice NIKE gear for the race, check my photo- a T-shirt with a unique runner number, a gadget in the shoe that can sense your speed, and a gym sack (don’t understand why organizer required everybody running with it and actually made runners very uncomfortable when running.)

- Rain began to pour as soon as the race began at 7 am, stopped before 7:40 am, but the ground was wet through. It was a rainy day and has showers regularly during the whole race. Well it hampered the progress yet at least we didn’t have a burning sun :)

- I got interviewed by NIKE people :J

- By the road, plenty of water stations and bananas and even cheer girls. As giveaway after the race, everyone can get free Red T shirt (I am 180cm but got a S size Tee,囧) and gym coupon plus concert ticket for罗志祥,范玮琪,羽泉and胡彦斌 .

- The whole event was great , except the organizing was a bit messy, folk complained. But just let go the unpleasant, it's still unforgettable.

Besides an amateur athlete, here's some analyzing stuff as a part time consultant, hah~

3. Why it rocks

- Making different. Biggest running event over the world ever. 25 Cities around the globe and nearly thousands of thousands of people participating. To its participant, think about how cool it is, most of us never experienced 10K, and it provides a global connection point for everybody.

- Good timing. Right after the rocking Olympics, you should like to take some sport after watching the Beijing Olympics, well it is time. Let celebrate sports with our physical involvement!

- Combining NIKE + digital running world with physical. NIKE plus is a fresh concept from collaboration between two much-admired companies, NIKE and Apple. (Nike Plus is a technology that allows runner’s shoes to communicate with their iPod Nanos, it’s able to measure your distance, pace, time and calories burned during running). Your exercise now has data illustration, you can choose to upload to your blog for example and share with anyone in the world.

- Good geography selected. Many reason for selecting these 25 cities in the world, one of this is that it showcased many most famous landmarks in the world. My friend in Taiwan race through Taipei 101, and NY of course they ran pass Manhattan, UK through central London (but for Shanghai, we have a urgent location plan changed, and we only ran in and out the suburb Century Park,囧).

- It’s linked with charities. Disaster happened, and it people united. we are doing this for thing that’s so meaningful, delivering message about love and shared vision.

4. Some after-event suggestions

- Make it social. I was shocked when I entered the NIKE + website to check my result for the race(you can head over http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/humanrace/map.jsp for result). I simply input my Chinese Name and my data pop out! And another email will be pushed to my email address with more detailed information ,since I left my contact info when signing up for the race. So it’s a good chance, if NIKE make the most out of this information. If you like SNS such as facebook and xiaonei etc, you should be excited to know those people also running in the race afterwards. We can share photo, article and video with people running in other side of the world, even make friends with them. NIKE don’t have to build a website for this, can simply archive this by some collaboration with SNS website. In that case, it’s gonna rock for a longer time.

Did you run the race too, how do you like it if yes and what do you think if you missed the chance? There should be more such similar events in the future,anyway, marinating body fitness is something you should always keep in mind! Continue Reading...