The Fat Controller (Ironlak’s Founder and Company Director) runs us through his latest adventures in China.
For the first few days of my trip I had my parents in town checking out our factory and spending a few days in Hong Kong before moving on to Europe
On the Sunday we visited a castle from the Ming Dynasty located in the north of Guangdong Province. Way back when these people living in central China fled the emperor, and moved to the south to build their haven. Inside the castle was pretty cool and deceptively BIG. It was incredible to hear their story and how it was built by a boy whose father had fled to a remote part of China; they built the castle while they lay in hiding.
After two days it was time to say goodbye to my folks and start hooking into work. We’ve been developing some new markers over the last 12 months and we’re about to release them so I wanted to do the final checks personally. Approved.
I was also able to nail down some small tweaks we’ve to the Sugar formula which will take it to the next level. It now delivers better performance between the extremes in hot and cold climates.
At the moment I’m spending a lot of time on products that are still very much in the early stages of development so there isn’t much to report. Factory management also eats a great deal of time and let’s be honest, it’s pretty boring.
The following weekend we drove about four hours to visit one of our suppliers. We had dinner with him and talked about a few new concepts we have in the works.
On the Sunday we awoke, ate and went fishing. We went to the outskirts of town to a small and uninviting lake. There were some local farmers living nearby so we asked them for permission before fishing. Based on the look of the lake, I wasn’t all that impressed, but as the saying goes; “never judge a lake by its surface”; because fuck me did this thing have fish. It was virtually idiot proof! All you had to do was dangle your line in the water and and you were guaranteed to catch something every 30 minutes. Unless you were the poor bastard next to me that walked away with only one fish. We had to throw half of them back for being too small. Still, between me and my fishing partner with we ended up with eight fish ranging from 20-30 cm for a lousy couple of hours work. I’m sure my brother who loves fishing would be envious of those odds.
For the next week I had less on during the day, which is rare, so at 4pm I’d knock off and go paint each day before dinner time. The piece with the pink fills is my fave and was done with Sugar. The more I use this product the more I grow to love it. It’s hard because every product is like a child and I hate taking favourites. It might just be the pure enjoyment of something different, with lower pressure, no smell and a matt finish, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience.
-Fatty.
