Kona 2011 was actually the first time afte 8 years in Kona that we have been able to sell our Biestmilch products. The whole project of selling Biestmilch on US soil was definitely like walking the tightrope by the skin of our teeth.
The company got registered by August ’11. Only then we could start the test shipments, and see whether we were able to pass FDA scrutiny.
[one_half] This was exciting, really. At customs in Memphis Tennesse – the place were costums clearance takes place, when stuff from Germany arriives on US territory– our Biestmilch was sitting still, and we were again and again pushing papers to an fro. Finally, uff … our parcels arrived in San Francisco, our US home base. While this procedure was dragging along in the US, we tried to get things ready at home that we needed for selling and bulid a proper store. The time lines were extremely short, and we realized fairly late, how many things we actully needed to be able to sell. In Kona we had rented a place with 3 other companies. Rent was cheap, [/one_half] [one_half_last] as we thought in case Biestmilch won’t make it into the country, losses were kept minimal. Okay, then. We had solved the shipment issues, Fedex had delivered everything in time from SanFra to Kona. Unfortunately, we were only able to enter the store place in Kona two days before the opening. It was a mess, we were shoked. How to get this job done in such a short time? Off we drove to Walmart buying stuff for cleaning and straightforward black furniture. We wanted to give our corner at least some style. We rolled up our sleeves, and were ready to rock and roll. In the end we had a decent little place well received by our visitors. [/one_half_last]
Clip 1 from our store shows despair and enthusiam at the same time. Enjoy.
Cast: Mark Hughes, Kjell Schiöberg, Susann Kraeftner, Chris McCormack, Nick Gates
