China Airport Bush Adventure

A story about how Nick Mowbray and his partners started their toy business in China with almost nothing.

"We were so naive. We didn't know that you could contract manufacture your product - we were planning on setting up our own little factory. Me and Joe got into some trouble, and Joe had to fly home to New Zealand, so my brother came over. We tried to get a hotel but everything was too expensive, so we decided to sleep in the bushes at Hong Kong airport. I remember getting completely attacked by mosquitoes all night. We didn't want to sleep in the airport because the fluoro lights were so bright.

We then went up to China and set up a little factory on the side of a river - it was basically a small shed. My cousin Simon, who was an engineer, came up to help us. He welded a production line. We spent all the money we had on an injection molding machine. We employed a few people on the production line, had a little old lady who cooked for us every day - the budget was 2 RMB per meal, about 30 cents. We started making our first product there, and then our second product, which was a night frisbee - which we ended up getting sued over and had no money to defend ourselves."