With the official opening scheduled for this Sat, Aug 1st, we decided to warm up the SOLEGOODZ space with PUMA and friends 3 nights before.   An easy night of food, booze and shoes.

We invited about 20 friends to come in and check the latest PUMA goods, at the same time, catch up on what has been going on in this crazy city of Shanghai.

From DJs to interior designers, streetwear brand owners to tv hosts, hip-hop dancers to corporate directors, we had the crowd-mix of a Chinese hot pot dinner. I hope the interactions that took place was fun for everyone. I’d rather have this than a 300 people crazy party where you won’t even remember how you got home…

DISC BLAZE is definitely making a strong comeback. Diggin’ those ill colors.

A good friend from the PUMA camp, Erik Troppenz, was in town. He was commenting on what was on the feet of product designer Scott Hung.

Soon after, Nicole and I joined the conversation… Notice how we talk… with all eyes looking on Scott’s shoes.

This type of judgement was no fun for Scotty! Okay, we were just being mean.

The boyz from DUSTY and Hitz trying on a few pairs.
With some things, you just have to try it on for size.

Yoyo and Denson. Both dance-a-holic.
Yoyo is responsible for alot of our management work at adFunture, she’s also the one with that Bumble Bee fixed-bike I blogged a while ago. Yah, that’s HER bike!

Eddi: “So, what was it?? The water? The milk? The steaks? How da hell do I grow taller?? Tell me!!”

I went with the PUMA Suede Angeler. Not a limited edition or what not, but just a fine looking pair of kickz.

So, back to Scott Hung and what he had on…

the PUMA Cabanna Racer.
We were actually saying how nice this shape is, and we understood why Scott chose to use this Cabanna Racer as base for his 8 designs for 2009 Winter collection. It was a very good choice on Scott’s part.

Scott, it was nice seeing you again. I’m sure we’ll work together again, be it on shoes or on some other platform. You are a cool dude, take care.

Days before the opening, I’m sure there are tons of things not yet covered, but then I don’t feel the panic yet. Wait til Friday nite, it’ll hit me hard. Always a last minute guy..

Had to take mug shots this week, Neil did a great job and made me look half decent.

Was asked to make a YOKA for the opening, and decide to draw inspiration from the gradient 580.
Nothing crazy, just looks cool.

These will go into goody bags for the Saturday opening event.
SOLEGOODZ, come check us out if you are in town.

Visited ICONIC-1 Store on this beautiful day.
The window decor we did for the adFunture x Devilock promo brightened up the store front quite a bit.

This will be changed into something else again soon though.
Want to keep the store looking fresh.

Two YOKAs on my desk; NINJA YOKAs.

Made solely for my own amusement. Consider these as “customs”.
No production plans for these. (Note to lawyers: don’t bother emailing me)
If they remind you of something else, ……..NAAAAAH!

SOLEGOODZ Sneaker Boutique will officially open on Aug 1st, 2009.
Nothing too fancy, just the opening of yet another sneaker boutique in Shanghai. What makes this one different is what we will do with it down the road. If you love sneakers, come check it out.

Located right beside ICONIC-1 Store, SOLEGOODZ is on #351 Zi Zhong Lu, Lu Wan District, Shanghai.

I’d like to introduce Indonesian artist, ARKIV, to you readers. He’s one of the artists we are working closely with, and upon product launch, we had the chance to meet up at Taipei a few weekends ago. Really cool dude with alot of heart for what he does. Fellow toy-blogger TRE did an Q&A with ARKIV after the festival, so I figured I’ll just re-post it here.

TOYSREVIL: How many times have you been to TTF so far? (Including this year)
ARKIV: this year was my very first time of TTF. it was really exciting.

TOYSREVIL: How was the experience - especially with the debut of your toys, and live painting! How was the response?
ARKIV: i dont really know what to expect from TTF, but it was wonderful experience and a really good exposure for my debut figure, ARKIV INSTANT. They seemed to respect and like what i do, and meeting people is always great experience. The response was lovely, there was one Japanese guy who bought 6 pieces of my figure at the same time, so he must be a very serious collector.

TOYSREVIL: Hardcore! Besides “work” - did you enjoy the event? How many days were you there?
ARKIV: Yes the event was terrific, and i stayed there for the whole event. The Air Cond on the first day was off for a couple of hours, so it was sucks haha, but when its on again, it was pretty enjoyable event.

TOYSREVIL: Besides debuting your toys - Did you score any good toys yourself? What do you collect?
ARKIV: People are nice and I scored a lot of free toys actually so it was great haha

TOYSREVIL: Anything interesting that caught your eye? That made you want to own or try to own the toy/figure/s?
ARKIV: nope.

TOYSREVIL: What was your personal impression of the event? A Success or Failure? And Why?
ARKIV: yeah, this is a big success for me or maybe a great step for my career, I think everyone seemed to love my works, even though there were more people buying cute and small toys rather than my toy haha cheaper and small toys are the ones that sold and suit the most at TTF.

TOYSREVIL: Any suggestions you would like to give to the organizers or attendees or exhibitors - to improve for TTF 2010?
ARKIV: The event was great and well planned. Lets hope there will be more exhibitors from the U.S and Europe or Japan. This year most of them came from Taiwan and Hongkong.

TOYSREVIL: What was your most memorable happening/incident/item of TTF 2009? I saw your tweet about the earthquake in Taiwan firs thing in the morning - that’s how I knew about it happening!
ARKIV: The earthquake. I was chatting with friends and all of sudden there was really huge earthquake. It was really scary and i try to calm myself down and the earthquake was getting bigger, near to 6.3 richter. I never experieced that before, and what scared me the most was i heard that the building is starting to crack, and i thought i was gonna die here. what a day and what a great experience.

TOYSREVIL: How about 2010? Looking forward to going / exhibiting again?
ARKIV: 2010 is the time for me to make more moves. I hope there will be someone, or more people want to promote ARKIV in the U.S or anywhere else. I’m also hoping i can do an exhibition in the U.S since i want to focus more on painting now, and be a great painter, but of course im still gonna design toys as well.

TOYSREVIL: In closing - please do share with us on TRE -Who is ARKIV?
ARKIV: Well, i used to be a serious collector, but since i design my own toys, i stop buying every toys available and became very picky in buying toys. I’d rather concentrate in designing one. My education background is architecture, so i would say that I’m the architect of Arkiv Instant. Arkiv is my nickname, so yeah Arkiv is myself. check my website out Facebook / www.arkivinstant.com

Upon my return to Shanghai from Taipei, our attention went right back to the rennovating new retail space. Right next to ICONIC-1, we’re opening a sneaker boutique named SOLEGOODZ. For my personal love for sneakers, this seems like a natural step to take. With all the designer figures and designer products right door in ICONIC-1, SOLEGOODZ will purely be focusing on footwear and some apparel to match.

After using too much silver color next door, we decided to balance our taste with some wood grains.

Our craftman spending his time making our leather sofa for customers to sit on while trying on their sizes. The whole rennovation thing has been going on for one and a half months now, the anticipation is killing me. Will show you more as we move forward.

Speaking of sneakers, I’m loving this Undefeated x New Balance 580. The gun metal colorway is spot on. Very nice.

A few of us in front of our booth after Filter017 and Wade’s signing sessions.
Left to right: Jukai, Wen (Filter017), Enzo (Filter017), Wade of Revelator and some blind dude.

K from ONEWAY was helping out all weekend. Mad thanks, brother.
Lot of folks walking around the convention rocking ONEWAY gear, that put a smile of K’s face.

Our helpers; Da-Jing and Yu-Jean.
Hardworking, sincere, these two youngsters were the best helpers we’ve hired, EVER. They worked so well, K ended up hiring them full-time for his ONEWAY Taipei Store. Good!
Thank you very much.

So there we were, at Taipei, doing the Taipei Toy Festival.
We were working hard everyday and the result was very pleasing.

Here is how our booth setup looked like.
One side display windows, and the other was a live-performance window. We had the pleasure of having DGPH from Argentina and ARKIV from Indonesia doing live-paintings in the booth while the visitors enjoyed the creative process.

Some new goodies dropped at the event.

Thank you to those who came by, it was great seeing you all.
We’ll do this again next year.

One of the busiest sreet in the East District of Taipei

Went up to the Yang Ming Hills for dinner tonight.
Never been up there for the past 4 years that we have been visiting Taipei. This was new to me. Quite a few nice restaurants up on the hills that over look the night scene of Taipei City.


Amazing view of skyline, I think this is better than looking out from the Tower 101.
But that’s just me.


Taking it easy for the evening.
Waiting for a few more friends coming to the city for the crazy week.