PERU IMPORT EXPORT

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I am trying to purchase clothe materials here in Cusco, then hire a person to make these small secret pockets I sell. I have increased the size to roughly 20 Centimeters wide and 14 Centimeters in depth, this should work a little better for larger passports of some countries and plane ticket.

It is fun to have projects when you are travel 365 days a year, I suppose the big project for most long-term travelers is drinking, but for me trying to think of great travel products is fun.

If I had to pay myself by the hour to do this, even at 5 dollars an hour I would be broke, this type of product is a real killer. Eventually I hope to perfect this and make thousands at a time, but as for now I am still worried about design and quality, but I do think I will purchase 1000 of these little babies, and that should suffice. I am 95 percent sure I have a perfect design.

This little thing will take the place of the encumbersome money belt, and much safer because there is no way to sit it down and walk away because it is sown inside your pants.

So first attempt to locate a place to have made....
The guy kept saying manana, then in the end lost my example.

Next guy made it different than the example.

I took a break, walked into the open air market here and thought I get some MONEY, oops, I mean Mani, this is peanuts in Spanish, at least here, Coacahuates or something like that in Mexico. Well, while walking around I see ladies or Campesino ladies sewing inside the market. They are more or less the Quechua and not the Mestizo bunch. I walk around till I see this happy 25 year old girl by the name of Carina. The name is probably more or less Carinosa, meaning caring in English. Well she made a perfect little bag in 15 minutes and no mananas, and we agreed to make 50 more starting on lunes, or Monday. Tomorrow is Domingo or Sunday and I cannot help but respect that.

I have discovered if I pay a couple of dollars to a vendor that does not have a product and says down the street they sell them, I can do better if the person is paid and shows me. This saves hours of time walking around.

So I am making progress, I will probably send home with DHL, strangely Fed Ex and UPS are almost never to be found. They only are in strategic location, they must subcontract out most of their shipments overseas, so I trust DHL because their trucks are everywhere in the world.

One of these days I will learn how to put that little mark above the n in Manana, but until then it is spelled wrong.

Shipping links
http://hobotraveler.com/shippingpackaging.php

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Reader Submitted Comments | Deleted Comments (0)

Crazy Jane said on Sunday March 13th, 2005 07:09:00 AM

Andy, get them made in (sorry for the term) ethnic fabrics. This will increase their cachet. I don't know what the local possibilities are, but in Africa you'd have all that indigo fabric.... Anyway, see what's available. You could write really great advertising copy around something like that. (Be careful not to get something that will fade off on people's clothes when they sweat!)

Andy HoboTraveler.com said on Sunday March 13th, 2005 09:10:00 AM

This is Andy, adding a reader comment mailed to meAnd also when you're letting the happy 25 year old Quechua woman sew your stuff, you are in some way helping her out... I think Quechua people like other indigenous people in South America are losing out a lot economically and socially because of discrimination against them by the mestizos and the whites...ANDY ANSWERSIt is strange, last time I was in South America, I was not so aware of the subtle discrimination, now that my Spanish is better, I can feel and see it better. There is always the obvious, but the more insidious and damaging type is the secret type.For Crazy Jane,I am staying with whites mostly, will try to add some colors slowly, but I am not sure of best test for color, hard to test.In Guatemala the soaked my jacket in salt water to seize or make the color permanent. I would say just throw in the washer to see if it fade or bleeds, but they wash by hand around my neighborhood. Ergo, the reason why this is less than a five dollar an hour job, so many variable to learn about, but I suppose that is the fun.