This week officially marks the launch of Sweet Cecily’s in South Korea!
This whole experience has certainly been a lesson in patience, but hopefully it will all be plain sailing from here!
Back in March 2012 myself and Hugo (brother and colleague) went out to Seoul in South Korea as part of a UKTI (UK Trade & Investment) trip. We were invited to exhibit at an exclusive British Lifestyle Showcase at the Ambassador’s Residence out there. At this point we were not only looking to expand Sweet Cecily’s, but we were looking for new distributors for our range of Apiceuticals (which are medicines from the beehive) which we sell under the name BeeVital.
As part of the mission, we were fortunate enough to not only show off our products to the invited press and selected companies, but also have amazing support from UKTI in arranging meetings with relevant organisations who may be interested in partnering up with us.
What followed was a week of crazy taxi rides (and by this I mean not being able to really explain where we were going, and the traffic is Seoul is truly hectic!), long meetings helped by the lovely translator we had, my vegetarianism meaning I think I lost a few pounds, and lots of amazing new experiences (I won’t go into detail about the night 15 or so of us from all the British companies ended up in a karaoke bar!).
Hugo and I left Seoul with lots to digest, but mutually came to the decision that we both felt one company in particular really stood out as being the right one for us.
Fast forward to this week, and we have since had a great year with selling our Beevital products, and am SO excited to say that last week saw our first pallet of Sweet Cecily’s products head off on their journey across the ocean to Seoul!
Hugo is in Seoul at the moment and has just emailed me a picture of the moment the distribution contract was signed between ourselves and our new partners. Sadly I couldn’t join him on this trip as things are hotting up for Christmas here at the factory, but on the plus side, this does mean I get to attend the York Press Business Awards on Thursday night where we are up for a “Dare to Export” award.
Exciting times ahead, I will let you all know how it goes.
Love,
Cecily x