Shipment with lithium battery

Deutsche Post banned shipping by air anything containing a lithium battery. Shipment with lithium battery up to 5 kg can be sent via UPS with this label

How Grund creates their design?

As part of the project muzespodnikat.cz (see the previous article) I had a presentation at a grammar school in Jilemnice in the Czech Republic, where I spoke with the owner of the company Grund. It´s a company which produces bath mats, they have altogether around 190 employees 40 of them are in Germany. It´s a family company and it´s built on traditional values. I liked how they make the design for their products. Their designers are e. g Blanka Matragi (a Czech designer, her clients are women from royal families from all over Europe, influential women from the USA etc.), Karim Rashid, Mel Weisweiler (design for Esprit, Hugo Boss, Swarowski, Willeroy & Boch, ...), Luigi Colani (cooperated e. g with ALFA ROMEO, LANCIA, VW, BMW, BOEING and also with NASA), but they also have designers within their own company, who normaly don´t design. They just wanted to start cooperating. They then get a commission from the sold goods, which they designed. To be concrete we are talking about the Mandala Team, who make mandalas. We aren´t going to hire Blanka Matragi to design our website yet, but for the time being we already did put a small team together ;)

Do you really need an investor?

A few years ago I took a boardgame Cashflow to our company party. We struggled with it for quite a while, but at the end it was fun. It can´t be counted as one of the cheapest boardgames, but it´s a profitable investment. Because allows you to go through the basic vocabulary and the rules of investment and of course it also helps you to widen your financial awareness.

Not long ago I read a reflection about investment written by Sharon Lechter  - a co-auther for this boardgame, which is according to me fundamental for every start-ups. While starting the company which produces this Cashflow game, they had to set some rules for the financing of overhead costs. Those are, in my opinion, the most important components (or a weak spot) for every start-up. They already said it beforehand, that they won´t buy anything, which couldn´t ensure their sales increasement. At the same time they have to earn enough to get this overhead material on their own. They can do that if they´ll set up a sales target, which could cover the costs. When they couldn´t get a new copy machine for 3000 Dollars (which is as tempting as many other things at the begining for start-up companies), they bought a used one for 300 Dollars instead. At the end of the same year they could already change it for a new one, but not until their game became a so called bestseller.    

I like this way of thinking a lot. The number of contracts causes us inside the company a lot of pressure, mainly in the field of technology and also advancement altogether, so sometimes it´s really funny, what interesting things could be dig out. When we are presenting some new releases, I can tell them that it´s something we found in the waste collection. But think about it this way, that a problem occures out of nowhere, we aren´t capable to constantlly manage such a quantum and we don´t want to get into debts or we don´t have time to go to the investors to explain every detail of what we want to do in the future and that a new technology for each warehouse would cost us a million. So we start to do everything our way, which also includes our own developement and at the end we buy the technology from somewhere on the other side of the world literally from a scrap, we contact our manufacturer with our order, we tell them what kind of parts we want and in the most cases we can put it all together for just a fraction of the price. The manufacturers are very pleased, when they see someone so enthusiastic, someone who also found out their problem with the processor, so they even sent us some parts for free as thanks. We also do the same thing with our customers, when they find a problem in our system. I dont´s see anything wrong with choosing the path of optimization and economize on the things which can be economized in this time and age, when the company is successful, those are the keys for further investments.     

eBay.de Contact Information, Telephone Number, E-mail Address

eBay International AG
Zweigniederlassung Deutschland
Albert-Einstein-Ring 2-6
14532 Kleinmachnow
Germany

E-Mail: impressum@ebay.de
Telephone: +49 33203 851 021
Daily 8 AM - 10 PM

What is cystic fibrosis?

On the 30th of September 2015 I had a stopover in a café without a concept in Liberec in the Czech Republic, I wanted to visit a vernissage of the calender called Salty woman. It was a great get-together which presented many beautiful models. On the introduction page was a photograph of a model and the author of a very gripping blog about the life with cystic fibrosis. She died 15 days after this vernissage. She lost her fight with cystic fibrosis. I didn´t went to this vernissage just by chance. I went there because of Claire, a dear friend of our family and a beautiful young lady, who in the same time as this article was written became three years old. Claire was born with cystic fibrosis. 

Cystic fibrosis is a fatal inherited disease, which affects primarily the respiratory and digestive system. It is still an incurable disease. There are per year around 40 children born in the Czech republic with this disease.  At this gethering I found out that from the time Claire was born they began in Germany and in the USA to test the first drugs against some of the mutations of this disease. Although the first cure for the mutation for this disease is curently still developing, I began to think that there is still hope for Claire to lead a normal life, when there will still be volunteers who are willing to help and gather information and provide support to patients. For me personally was the information about the developement of the cure so unexpected and sensational, that I decided to help to increase the awarness of cystic fibrosis and present ways to help those in need.

The patients with cystic fibrosis in the Czech republic are united and supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Club o. s. whose bank account and Paypal account is below this article. The club speaks directly with the health insurance companies but also with the Prime Minister or the Minister for Health about the establishment of the cure. According to the Club is this matter still not so very successfull. The cure is very expensive and the approval process for a new cure is very unpopular. The Czech doctors from the center for cystic fibrosis are calling out for the patients to take this matter in their hands with an open letter, they say that for the acceptance of the new cure, which the state should pay for is mainly in their hands (the open letters are on the website cfklub.cz). I think that this matter isn´t just in their hands, that´s why I decided to create an update under this article which I will gradually complete. You can also contact me via e-mail (ondrej.krabs@mailboxde.com), when you want to publish whichever milestone.  

Ondrej Krabs
Mailboxde.com GmbH



Czech Cystic Fibrosis Association
Kudrnova 22/95, 150 06 Prague 5, Czech Republic
Tel. + 420 257 211 929, E-mail: info@cfklub.cz
http://www.cfklub.cz

Bank details:
IBAN: CZ58 0800 0300 1519 2110 1329
SWIFT / BIC: GIBACZPX

PayPal:

The organization will gladly issue a deed of gift on your request.

PayPal: Shipping to a Buyer’s Confirmed Address

How a Buyer Can Confirm an Address

1. Add a credit card to your PayPal account. PayPal will confirm the credit card billing address (i.e., the address where you receive your credit card statement).
2. Apply for PayPal Smart Connect. If you’re approved, the address on your application will be a Confirmed Address.
3. Alternate address confirmation. This process takes several days and is only available for U.S. accounts. To learn more, log in to your PayPal account and visit the Alternate Address Confirmation page.

How to buy e-books for Kindle on Amazon.de

Amazon.de gave access to buy books only for those clients which are from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This restriction can be bypassed if you change your mailing address to Germany. On the website www.amazon.com/myk click in the left menu the tab Country settings and choose Germany and your mailing adress in Germany. After that you will receive an announcement from Amazon in the upper bar "Great News" that you can also now shop in Germany and at the end of this announcement click to change: 

Great news! You can now shop for digital content at Amazon.de in Euros. Learn more about transferring to Amazon.de

At the bottom of the information page click on the butten: Transfer your Kindle Account to Amazon.de.

It is necessary to be registered on Amazon.de and Amazon.com under the same login, in order to successfully end the whole process. Afterwards you will receive this message:

Vielen Dank dafür, dass Sie Ihr Kindle-Konto auf Amazon.de übertragen haben.

Sie können jetzt mit dem Einkauf von digitalen Inhalten im Kindle-Shop von Amazon.de beginnen und die Artikel in Euros (EUR) bezahlen.

And it is done!

Another round of Scotch for your delivery?

Sometimes I think of a best way to comply a request and there are many things, that come to my mind while I read through the e-mails, which I get from various corners of Europe. Today came an e-mail saying: Could my delivery get a little bit more scotch? They told me at our place, that the package should have another round of scotch on the sides in order to get to the required destination....I thought really hard about those lines, what could they possibly mean. I rather not answer right back any more, when it is  a heavy task like this one and also we don´t have any Scotch in stock anyway. Fortunately after a little bit of thinking just like a flash a picture from my childhood apeared in front of me. Yes, Scotch is a still existing company which produces adhesive tapes and most likely in some regions this designation probably became naturalized....

Good news from UPS about "de minimis" in the U. S.

Not long ago we received a quite interesting information which could make our life again somehow a little bit easier. I got this information through nobody else but UPS (one of the world's largest package delivery company and we could say a leading global provider of specialized transportation and logistic services).  

The year 2016 is said to be a big step forward for the limits of shipping from the U.S. This change in law is said to take effect in March 2016. This great change will in fact be a great oppurtunity for small- and medium-sized companies. The whole importing process from the U.S. will be faster and cheaper. What´s there to say about that right? 

Till this day were de minimis amount adjusted to 200 Dollars per shipment this was held since 1993. Today it is 800 Dollars per shipment. According to these numbers we can say it´s four times the previous amount. This speaks for itself.  

"De minimis"

Now let me explain how we could understand what the minimis are and what kind of impacts can they do. Firstly "de minimis" is a term which tells us what is the minimum dollar value (in this case it is 800 Dollars per shipment) of goods bellow which no formal costums procedures are needed. This will save us from many timeconsuming things, just as the never ending paperwork or recordkeeping. The goods will arrive faster and we then could lower the costs to serve customers in the U.S. Each process in the range of 800 Dollars is absolutely duty- and taxfree which brings us back to the previous mentioned impacts on the process of shipping to the final offer of the goods.

Posted by Čanka

Excursion in DHL Deutsche Post

Stories about Czech entrepreneurs

I´m going to participate in the project MuzesPodnikat.cz for our company (the first summarized article was published in spring on ihned.cz), which takes place in different high schools and at the universities in the Czech republic. It´s organized by volunteer entrepreneurs, who aren´t there just for recognitions from the students for what they achieved and what they didn´t, but more for the purpose of talking about everyday things in life and plans of those young folks. I like this project and that´s why I immediately said ok on this matter. I got a little intimidated by the though of being in the same team with mister Dědek from Jablotron or mister Petr Novotný from the glass factory Ajeto, because in comparison with what they achieved is my little company in east Germany very small. On the other hand, the differences are easily erased, when you stand before 60 students who have absolutely no idea why you are even there and what are you going to talk about for two whole hours.   

I got the periphery Liberec and after my first presentation which took place in Jablonec nad Nisou I had the chance to feel how it´s realy like before I could get used to it. Right after my entrance into the classroom I heard someone whispering the first question: "Holy shit, what does he have in those bags?" this question was answered right back with: "He has got it crammed with cash". Mister Novotný arrived that day later, that´s why I had to talk alone before 59 boys and one girl. Most of them sat in the back rows. You can probably imagine it lively. In the first few minutes I was asking myself what I´m even blabbering about, that´s why I had to identify myslef with them which required to travel back in time a couple of years, so that at least someone will listen to me, I then grew gradually to the conclusion that it´s kinda fun (I hope it´s not just one sided:) and now I was already on my fifth school. I was even assigned to the very grammer school where I was failing four years in a row before I went over to technical school. The presentation was fortunately anonymous thus nobody from my previous teachers knew about it. The professor who used to get me detention is still teaching there :) It was a really odd feeling coming back to this school after 15 years when you knew in that time, that in fact everything you had ever wanted to accomplish is diverging from the opinions of all adults.     

Long time ago I thought about making some kind of internet shipping system and one person told me that I can do it. That same person contacted me after nine years and told me that he is organizing this project (muzespodnikat.cz) and if I´m interested in participating in it too. I was with this idea of shipping system, which you probably also use if you are our client, in the USA in 2006 where I had the chance to to see how young people are supported in every aspect outside of the bounds of posibbilities or in this case of the intergrated education system at schools. I was sitting there among thousands of people with the same enthusiastic feelings and same age as me and I was repeating the same sentece of my class teacher to myself, and that is if he would get arrested for signing all those papers which were needed for my departure. I then realized that we were brought up in an evironment with strong demotivating spirit which stood against our development and that time it got me really bad (the more cause I didn´t win the scholarship in Stanford:) But with the years passing by I can say that the Czech republic is better now than before and an entrepreneur already does not only represent something between a cuss word and an exploiter. I think that we are moving, even if it´s slow but still it´s in the right direction.

How we began our cooperation with UPS

Someone probably noticed the previous article, where I wrote about my "incapabelity" to come to an agreement with one of the carriers. I did not mention his name, but I canceled our contract twice and by the second cancellation I was so furious, that I told the sales representative directly, that I´m not interested in their all so great offers anymore. It was quite uncomfortable, but when someone makes me angry, then either I say nothing or I tell him everything which bothers me (this is after I get repeatedly furious about the same thing). But even so, I stood up for the thing which I had to deal with the carrier that time. The cooperation wasn´t in the least understood. I dealt with it another way. 

After about a year there was the same man waiting for hours for me before our warehouse. At first I thought he must be kidding me, but it never happend to me, that someone would wait for me like this - it was mostly the other way around. The management of their company prepared another supply. When someone comes to me even after knowing the awkward situation between us, then I seriously have to ask myself if I am or they are nuts. I was the one who gave up, I read through the offer and asked him if he has got the contract with him. When he pulled the contract out of the folder put it down on the table and passed me the pen, then I had to laugh and then I signed it. The previous negotiations were forgotten and now I just have to shake my head up on our functioning cooperation.