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Massachusetts or the USA is proving very difficult

Written on May 23, 2008 by KIOSK

Doing some­thing in the United States is more dif­fi­cult then I imag­ined, it’s a depress­ing experience…maybe we have 5 items in the col­lec­tion and then move back over to Asia.
read on…

From a local cheese maker in north­ern MA:
Hi, We really don’t have any cheese to sell you and we are two busy for a visit, (we are not open to the public).
have fun, Carolyn

My reply:
Hi there

I just got off the phone with the people at west county cider and we were both speak­ing in such good terms about your product

what a shame, I am not sure what to say to you actu­ally, every amer­i­can pro­ducer has more or less responded to me about our project with either skep­ti­cism (what do I get out of this? what does it cost me?) or a response like yours (I don’t have the time) It’s nonsense.

funny, so many small pro­duc­ers com­plain to me again and again and again and again how hard it is (it is hard for us too, no salary to speak of for almost 3 years) and we want to sup­port the amer­i­can pro­duc­ers and guess what! none of them have the time to meet! or the inter­est! Pretty dif­fer­ent from when we did Hong Kong! I think I cam coming to under­stand more clearly why the United States is in the state we are in, truly depress­ing but some­thing to learn from it, here we are a small amer­i­can com­pany trying to sup­port other small amer­i­can com­pa­nies and they could care less

at least this starts a dialog of a sort…

thanks very much for your time,

Alisa

In: .

7 Comments

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  1. Comment by Carrie S.:

    Oh, this is so frus­trat­ing! I’m sorry that you’ve had such a glum response in my home state.

    I’d love to rec­om­mend the Sarah Eliz­a­beth Shop in Rock­port, Mass. They create block printed tex­tiles that are absolutely gor­geous.

    Sarah Eliz­a­beth Shop
    5 Whistlestop Mall
    Rock­port, MA 01966
    http://​www.​sarah-​eliz​a​beth-​shop.com

    Good luck on your quest!

    May 27, 2008 @ 7:30 am

  2. Comment by Veronika Baspaly:

    Wow, I’m so sur­prised and dis­ap­pointed for you! I own a bou­tique in Van­cou­ver Canada and every time I go to NY on buying trips we visit your store. If you ever do any­thing about Canada I’d love to help you in any way I can!! I’ll make time!

    May 28, 2008 @ 2:16 am

  3. Comment by Tim:

    Please don’t give up! If you guys start to lose faith then what hope is there for the rest of us! :(

    May 29, 2008 @ 9:24 am

  4. Comment by Ian McFaul:

    Here here!

    So Alisa, were the folks at West County inter­ested or no? Whatabout West­port Rivers?

    What a depress­ing response from Amer­i­can small-​business owners in your own prover­bial back­yard.

    By the way, that cleaver is sharp indeed! It made short work of my fresh toma­toes to pair with Moz­zarella di Bufala. I was wary to keep my fin­gers away!

    Best

    Ian

    May 30, 2008 @ 2:23 am

  5. Comment by admin:

    Hi there!
    Many thanks for the nice notes.
    People are still miss­ing meet­ings or not having the time, I am start­ing to wonder how many things we will have for KIOSK, a few…
    The great news is the people and the places we have gone to are amaz­ing. I am from New Jersey orig­i­nally and have been going to the Cape since I was 2 and never knew Mass­a­chu­setts was like this. As far as trips go we are having a great, enlight­en­ing time. The people are either Yankee strange and inter­st­ing or warm and talk­a­tive. Amer­i­cans in gen­eral amaze me more than ever. Now that’s a reason to do this trip. Less about goods but every­one is giving me their polit­i­cal opin­ions!
    Oh, the people at West County are amaz­ing and we have not made it to West­port Rivers yet. We are head­ing to the Vine­yard today and will be coming back up to do the North Shore and the Cape and some other points in July! Alisa

    May 30, 2008 @ 6:35 am

  6. Comment by Rick Hamelin and Garine Arakelian:

    You can’t meet two nicer people than Alisa and Marco (Marko?). After their visit, my wife and I regret­ted not think­ing of pick­ing up two pizzas and bring­ing them up to the Hard­wick Winery for a vine­yard picnic. Hope­fully next time we can intro­duce them to the drool­ing Mas­tiff and the frisky goats up there.
    Their direc­tion and energy is inspir­ing and refresh­ing.
    We believe that our polit­i­cal and eco­nomic cli­mate has done noth­ing more than sab­o­tage trust and coop­er­a­tion with the smaller busi­nesses and each indi­vid­ual.
    We can either sink or swim and these two are offer­ing some sort of life­jacket. Jump on board! But you will have to help them paddle!
    Rick

    June 1, 2008 @ 9:54 am

  7. Comment by Adriane:

    Hi Alisa,

    I hope things are work­ing out better for you. how unfor­tu­nate people have given you the cold-shoulder…since there really are some amaz­ing, warm, friendly people/places in MA. I just left you a list of some things to check out on your orig­i­nal post and real­ized another place I should men­tion: Buz­zards Bay Brew­ery in South­ern Ma

    June 3, 2008 @ 2:19 pm

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