Resuming from Part 1, posted earlier this week…

From London, it was on to Hong Kong. Thankfully, this was an overnight flight, so I was able to get some rest & make my tight connection. Arriving to Hong Kong was pretty seamless – I hopped the Airport Express & my hotel was right off one of the stops. After resting up, I had to get my Chinese visa the next day. I’d read a few forums & travel advice beforehand, which mentioned that the Visa office was closed daily from 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (quite a lunch break). I arrived early enough, but even with the rush express service, the visa wouldn’t be approved until the next afternoon. I had meetings immediately scheduled in Shenzhen, which is just across the Chinese border from Hong Kong.

The next morning, I caught a few HK sights & got to the visa office early to be at the front of the afternoon line. I’d packed only a small bag with a toothbrush & extra shirt, as I thought I’d need some extra room to bring items back. From the visa office, I left immediately & had three hours filled with metro subway systems, customs officers, and swine flu checkpoints. Finally in China, I met my translators & guides – Eric & Maggie (not their real names, obviously).  We hailed a taxi and headed straight for the scheduled meeting. Conversation in the taxi was fun – they each had so many questions for me.

For the sake of privacy & future planning, I’ll only say that we see huge potential in working with this OEM. They have a few multi-featured e-reader models under development, so we were able to discuss different features, projected cost, completion deadlines, as well as suggest improvements, revisions, and usability adaptations. I was unable to bring a sample home, but expect one later this month, as production of the first model is wrapping up.   Thinking back, the language barrier was funny (but difficult) to experience. Often, I would start talking too fast & realize I’d lost them. So, we’d backtrack & I’d slow down, using better pronunciation and hand gestures, then I’d lose them again. All in all, it was a very beneficial first meeting & one that wouldn’t have been nearly as productive without the face-to-face opportunity from British Airways. I can’t imagine having that meeting over the phone or email.

After our meeting, I strolled through Shenzhen with my guides, including a dinner at KFC.  I had another meeting the next morning, and unfortunately, I couldn’t head back to Hong Kong due to my visa guidelines. I’d applied for a double entry visa & going back for the night would’ve killed my second entry. I’m definitely planning a trip back by the first of 2010, so I had to find a hotel in Shenzhen for the night. The next morning, I walked through the local computer markets, most notably the SEG, which spans over six floors. I met with a few manufacturing contacts there, primarily regarding processor & memory supply, while comparing prices to American wholesalers. As we pursue an e-reader, we’ll need strong connections for built-in NAND flash memory, or at the very least, expandable mini-memory cards.

Moving forward, I’m staying in constant communication with their product development and waiting on model samples. It will be very important to test each function, offer criticism & improvements, and then get back to work. Time will tell, but we’re all very excited about the possibility of offering our very own, customized e-reader, as well as an expansive list of digital titles, to our growing customer base. The e-reader market is getting crowded quickly, but we’re confident that investing in continued product development and setting a lower price point will give us a considerable advantage.

All in all, thank you to British Airways for this amazing opportunity. The experience has positioned us strongly for future growth, but with so much more to accomplish (and on a tight budget), we’ve also applied for a British Airways Business Opportunity Grant. We are keeping our fingers crossed, working hard, and are very excited to see what the future will bring. Stay tuned, and thank you to our wonderful customers for continuing to support our ideas.

- Jonathan

Now that it’s been a few weeks, I’ve really had time to think through my September trip & the incredible experience presented by the British Airways Face of Opportunity Contest. When I read a tweet from Inc. magazine mentioning the contest, I flagged it to review later & spent the next few days thinking about the opportunities that a trip to London & the Far East would bring. More specifically, the terms of the contest really fit right in with FreeTextbooks & what we’re trying to accomplish (on a tight budget) over the next year.  So, keeping the deadline in mind, I began drafting a few ideas & finally submitted my entry.

Essentially, the contest was searching for small business owners who could really benefit from a face-to-face meeting anywhere British Airways flies. In our case, we had some preliminary contacts in Hong Kong for designing & manufacturing a digital book reader (e-reader), and really needed to meet to test functionalities & offer suggestions. The one problem: travel, especially to Asia, is very expensive and hard to squeeze it out of our tight budget. The contest seemed like a perfect fit for our business needs – now, all I had to do was win.

Fast forward a couple of months and, of course, we were all very excited to find out we were lucky enough to win. I scrambled to put together an itinerary in the two weeks leading up to the trip, making more contacts, setting up additional meetings, and even finding a friend to stay with in London.

Contrary to most of the winners from the JFK departure, I wasn’t from New York or even the Northeast.  Most lived in New York & read about the contest through a full-page ad in the New York Times. Me? I just happened to be following Inc. magazine on Twitter in little-old Birmingham, Alabama. So, I arrived a day early on a Delta flight from BHM-LGA, had an airport transfer to JFK, and checked into my hotel. After killing a day in NYC, I was excited to get an early start the next morning. Upon my arrival to the BA Terminal, I checked in, cleared security & was directed to the BA Terrace Lounge. I had no clue what to expect – how many winners there’d be, the pre-flight activities, or when we were actually leaving. I just knew that I was going to London first, then on to Hong Kong.

Upon arrival into the lounge, I enjoyed a huge breakfast & meeting many other contest winners. It was a true melting pot, as winners ranged from an educational puppeteer to the founders of a leading marketplace for illiquid assets. Speeches from BA’s EVP of the Americas, Simon Talling-Smith, & the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, entertained us through breakfast and made for an enjoyable, relaxed morning. As I boarded the plane with the 220 other winners (learned that at breakfast), I was extremely excited to find that I’d been upgraded to business class, from which the level of attentiveness & service was the best I’ve encountered (10x better than Delta’s). Really, I didn’t want to get off the plane. It wasn’t long before we arrived to London’s Heathrow Airport, where we had a reception & complimentary hotel room at the Sofitel Heathrow and a host of speakers & business seminars the next morning. The highlight of the following day was the panel of speakers, which included Willie Walsh, CEO of BA; Lord Digby Jones, former Minister of UK Trade & Investment; Andrew Sherman, small business expert & partner at Jones Day; a Harvard Business Review researcher & other BA staff. Each spoke on topics related to understanding foreign business practices & achieving business progress through face-to-face meetings, all of which were supremely informative.

With all the BA festivities over, I was on my own in London until my flight left five days later. When I made my booking, a flight to Hong Kong was unavailable, so I had to book a BA flight to Bangkok & then a semi-cheap Air Asia connection to Hong Kong. As such, getting to Bangkok was only possible on specific dates, so I did have the few days to kill in London. I had only one obligation – a meeting/tour with the bookshop manager at Imperial College.  Being back in the city was very refreshing. I spent close to eight months there during college, and it’s certainly one of my favorite places. Best part – one of my closest friends just started grad school at King’s College, so I was able to stay with him & catch up all week.

Part 2 will cover Hong Kong, getting a Chinese visa, crossing the border, and my meetings…

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FreeTextbooks.com is an online textbook buyer and seller with a real-world presence at the University of Alabama, Samford University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Auburn University, Birmingham-Southern College, Union University, and UT-Chattanooga. Providing substantial savings over a campus bookstore, FreeTextbooks.com offers cheaper prices, a higher buyback, the convenience of searching by course, cashback on referred orders, and free shipping or campus delivery. FreeTextbooks.com is also a social venture, helping to meet the underprivileged’s most basic needs – food, clean water, clothing, education, and health.

Just wanted to share some recent news…

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As university classes around Alabama resume this week, a local textbook company received some exciting news. Jonathan Robinson, founder of Birmingham’s FreeTextbooks.com, won the British Airways Face of Opportunity Contest, which provides business people round-trip flights to London & beyond for face-to-face meetings.

Robinson will depart New York City for London on September 15, and will participate in several networking events, seminars with UK business leaders & government officials, and presentations on how to do business in the UK & beyond.

From London, Robinson will travel to Hong Kong & Indonesia to meet with manufacturers of e-reader devices. There, he hopes to compare devices, test compatibility, and negotiate wholesale pricing.

Although e-reader devices from Amazon & Sony are attracting a lot of attention, their price tags remain high – as much as $489 for Amazon’s wide screen Kindle DX. This prevents students from buying digital versions of their textbooks, as cash-strapped students choose to buy print books instead. Comparatively, the cost of a reader device plus the e-books far exceeds buying print books. The attraction to e-books has more to do with convenience & environmental impact than cost savings, but giving students a viable choice is the best way to test their preferences.

Robinson hopes to offer a total e-book solution on FreeTextbooks.com and provide a student’s digital textbooks preloaded on a reader device for one low price. Robinson expects this would significantly reduce students’ hesitancy to adopting the technology & spur a shift from print textbooks to digital versions.

FreeTextbooks.com is an online textbook buyer and seller with a real-world presence at the University of Alabama, Samford University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Auburn University, Birmingham-Southern College, and Troy University. Providing substantial savings over a campus bookstore, FreeTextbooks.com offers cheaper prices, a higher buyback, the convenience of searching by course, cashback on referred orders, and free shipping or campus delivery. FreeTextbooks.com is also a social venture, helping to meet the underprivileged’s most basic needs – food, clean water, clothing, education, and health.