gabegarwick

Cool! Tell him from a happy repeat customer!

As for requests... You, Trigger or someone else may know this and answer, in which case don't bother asking Johnny.

-Are there any plans to carry more Japanese,Korean,Thai titles? If not, can/will dddhouse obtain specific titles on a -per request basis?

YH, I'm jealous! I've wanted to go back to HK and see the sights and hang out again... I was in HK in '94 for 3 days (was in China for around 10). I enjoyed my stay immensely. Have fun on your trip!

Cheers,
Gabe

taxidriver6

Can you ask him about obtaining Versus, Cure, Wild Zero, Junk and other hard-to-find Asian Horror titles.

Also, how about getting some more Takashi Miike titles?

------------

Trigger

Ditto on those titles.

benedict

Enjoy your trip, Yellow Hammer!

Trigger

Oh - also YH - do you mind asking him if he plans to (or if he could) carry Dangan Runner and Postman Blues and any other Sabu titles? I just realized I'm not even sure if these are on DVD - maybe he knows someone at Mei Ah or Universe that could grease the wheels or something.

Hope you have a blast out there... At least tell him we all love his service out here in the US. Oh - and take pictures so we can see some cool stuff! I'll host them if you need me to.

Benedict - wanna split this OT stuff from the thread?

Yellow Hammer

humid but in the low 20's right now (around 70 for you Celsius-challenged folks).....lots of new DVDs but no blockbusters really since LOZ. I've bought about 45 so far in just one day here. Can't resist all the 3 DVDs for $90 and 3 for $95 specials....

Having dinner with Johnny from DDDHouse tonight, gotta figure out a way to hide these DVDs in my hotel room in case he comes up. He might get mad at me I have all of your questions listed down, but I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be the same - he's only selling DVDs from HK-authorized distributors.

Saw Dummy Mommy.... in the theatre tonight. Entertaining and funny movie. But for $50HK, not sure if it was worth it. Someone tell me there's a better theatre in HK (I saw it at the one in Mongkok on Soy street).

Liersi

Is that the one you're talking about? It's down Soy street off Sai Yeung Choi I think. It's a very old theater and obviously is not up to our standards comfort-wise. I saw midnight screenings of FTK and Shaolin Soccer there a couple of months ago. Although it did have a distinct "retro" touch, I kind of liked the whole atmosphere of those late night shows packed with annoying-as-hell teenagers and their mobiles lol.

If you're looking for similar experiences check out the South China Theater on 180 Portland str., it's a little better although it looks terrible from the outside, and they also have those inexpensive mattinee screenings of older films (as does Empire I think).

Hope you're having a good time!

Liersi

gabegarwick

Authorized? Okay, that's cool. But he doesn't carry everything that's authorized does he? (I would think that'd be a lot of $$ tied up in inventory...) I guess what I don't know is... Does dddhouse fill requests for authorized titles that they do not list on inventory?

Theaters-
This article at totallyHK... lists their favorite 3 theaters as:
AMC Festival Walk,
JP Cinema,
UA Pacific Place & UA Sha Tin.

Showtimes, addresses, and phone #'s are all listed on the page.

I don't think those are near you though.

These might be though. Listing of all theaters here.

Astor Classics
Dynasty
Empire <--(I believe you saw your movie here)
GV Mongkok
South China

My memory is foggy... it sounds like you're in the Kowloon district?
Looks like a good number of theaters there.

Hope that helps a bit,
Gabe

yangshouwen

Ask him whether he could implement a comments box when you checkout, sometimes it might be useful. I.e. if he was to allow people to request specific titles, it'd be convenient. Also it will be easier for customers to put comments across.

Also if you're able to, ask him whether he could track down the official Taiwanese releases of Kiki's delivery service and My neighbour Totoro, as they seem like the japanese releases and are as cheap as the Hong Kong releases. I would think Jonny could do pretty brisk business on these if the specs are the same as what's been published here and here for more information about eventual releases (and if you can read chinese) look here

feuxdartifice

Yellow Hammer,

See if you can get Johnny to stock the Mei-Ah Hou Hsiao Hsien VCDs and some of the DVDs (City of Sadness, Good Men, Good Women). Also, Faye Wong music CDs!!! Thanks!

dleedlee

Then he's got to carry the Edward Yang's vcds, and add Creative Workshop distributors
and finally, promise to carry any Fruit Chan release.

Yellow Hammer

Howdy. I didn't mean to be so conspicuous and have a separate thread for this but oh well.

Interesting evening with Johnny. I had what you might call a techno-nerd's dream evening. First of all we conveniently had a nice dinner near my place of stay in the Mongkok area, which is always packed with humanity (I've read where Mongkok has the highest concentration of people per square kilometer in the whole world). We did the usual Chinese-style fighting for the bill, except that I'm too American and did the Ralph Kramden too early and said 'ok thanks for paying' bit! Then we spent the rest of the evening looking at warez, fake DVDs (yes that's correct) and Malata N996 machines.

As far as warez goes, I won't admit to buying anything, but let's just say that whatever you see on the shelves at CompUSA, I pretty much saw last night. 1 CD for $10HK, 8 CDs for $50HK, 16 for $100. A mass of humanity browsing thru the titles. I don't keep up with computer games but what is the hottest gnarliest game out there these days? Looking at the fake DVDs was quite an experience, especially with Johnny being with me. Tons of anime by the way. Business suggestion - very few if any anime distributors exist in HK, so there's no policing of anime products at this point. We were just simply trying to see if we could tell the difference between the real and the fake. We looked at Iron Monkey for instance (which was selling for $30HK) and saw that it was pretty easy to tell that the cover was fake, but once the DVD was played, zero difference. Same with the American movies. Johnny's so cool - rather than doing some preaching about the perils of fake DVDs like one might have expected, he simply said 'well if you have to do it, buy it in Shenzhen, it's cheaper!'. Not that I had any intention of doing that though...All kinds of Category IV (X-rated) stuff sold also, which is illegal in HK. Didn't stop these folks though...

As far as the Malata N996's go, they ranged from HK $1650 to HK $1888. Tempting offer, most places had a deal where you got a 30-pack of random DVDs (the example that I saw had a mix of American and HK movies included such as Young Guns, Dangerous Liaisons, Full Moon in New York, etc) if you bought any Malata machine. I couldn't get myself to buying one because the model sold had the VGA port in it, and I thought I read in the Malata Busting Thread that that was not the correct version to buy. There was a more expensive model that supposedly did everything that the N996 did, but since I didn't research it, I didn't consider it. Damn me, I forgot to write down the model number. I'll have to wander back in there today. Something embarrassing happened at one of the stores though - so Johnny and I walk in there looking for the N996 and the salesperson blurts out ' hey I remember you - you were the one who bought all those DVDs yesterday!'. I took the 'mistaken identity look' route and politely did the 'what are you talking about?' gesture. And this after I told Johnny that I cut down on buying DVDs from him this time around (I bought 5 DVDs from him) cuz the wife is keeping a close eye on the budget. Which is actually true, but well, that's another story.

Anyhow, back to all of you guys' questions. Apparently most of you have already sent email to him regarding a lot of these questions, cuz he was well versed in most of the titles that I asked him about. The way he approached the questions was by describing how he does business:

He is constrained by the fact that he sells DVDs and VCDs from HK distributors only. He is further constrained by the fact that sometimes the VCD rights and the DVD rights are separate, as with the case with some of the Japanese and HK DVDs. He can try and import Japanese and Taiwanese-distributed DVDs, but then he would be paying a hefty price for it, and feels that a person could find the same DVD from a local shop for cheaper. He has a couple of imports - the Taiwanese Megastar DVDs for example - but that's about it. So to answer the questions in this thread, basically if the titles become available through the normal channels he'll try and carry it but otherwise didn't commit to carrying it. But he has all the requested titles on paper now. There are some small distributors such as Nicetop (the Fruit Chan ones) that he doesn't deal with but he might in the future. I'm going to continue to work on him though...

By the way he's got pretty much zero inventory, his turnaround is tremendous and the distributors for the most part do a decent job in fulfilling his just-in-time methodology of inventory handling. He literally orders DVDs every day from the distributors.

Another interesting fact is that he is trying not to get too big and conspicuous. Strange for a business person to say that but he apparently makes a good comfortable living at this and is quite satisfied. Apparently both Disney and Miramax are pressuring the HK distribution companies (Universe for example) not to distribute titles that they own the North American rights to Internet and mail-order shops. So far DDDHouse hasn't been noticed yet. He has a good working relationship with the distributors and doesn't want to disturb the relationship by importing and possibly tampering with either current or future rights.

As far as CDs goes, he actually does a pretty good business selling CDs but only sells it wholesale to a few places. He has a few CDs on the site basically to make himself look like a full-service place.

Some other interesting notes:

- He's closing down for a few days or so after Christmas if I'm not mistaken. Originally he was simply going to turn off his website and simply display a message that 'we're on vacation' but I might have talked him into keeping the site up and accepting orders, but to have a message stating that 'no customer service or order processing will occur during this time period'. Didn't sound like he's hard up for money though, really. Laws in HK mandating vacation time apparently are pretty strict, even for family-owned businesses from what it sounded like from him. I actually find that hard to believe but that's what he said.

- Questions most often asked in the last few months:
- Legend of Zu has parts of the movie with missing subtitles - is the DVD defective?
- My Shaolin Soccer DVD is defective (dual-layer problem)
- My package hasn't arrived yet, and it's been x days...

that's all for today. Off to Shenzhen later, we'll see what's in store there....

p.s. yes it was the Empire that I was at on Wednesday...and yes it was the midnight show.

gabegarwick

Thanks YellowHammer for sharing your experiences and insider info with us!

Gabe

Trigger

Wow - that's alot of info! Thanks! I feel like I'm living vicariously through you since I can't travel to HK like that. Someday perhaps. Certainly sounds like a blast. I envy you and your potential purchasing power.

tangno

thx YH, maybe you can track down this guy that is screwing me on EBAY he in HONK KONG, bout some dvd movies sent him cash. .... that jerk!!!

Well i hope you enjoy your stay....

dleedlee

YH, I would be forever indebted if you could persuade Johnny to carry
the HKIFF and HK Urban Council's film related publications. I'm pretty sure the POV (?) bookstore carries them. These are great film reference books and impossible to get overseas, as far as I know. And not too easy to get directly from HK either
Bordwell and Teo, et al, often cite them in their respective books.

http://www.hkiff.org.hk/eng/publicat...ighlights.html

I think there are a couple branches but this is the address I found online:
P. O. V. BOOKSTORE2 (³ü¨¤«×)
Address: Shop A, 1/F Hong Kong Mansion, 137-147 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Tel: 2865 - 5116 or 2771-7093

Krug

Always a risk ain't it? I hate sending cash. Some HK guys can accept paypal now but most don't.

hardtack

It's simple really - if they only deal in cash, then don't deal with them.

Enough of the regular HK sellers on Ebay use PayPal and the vast majority tend to carry the same list of titles at (for the most part) much the same prices - so the choice is easy

regards, Tim...

Yellow Hammer

sorry if I go a bit DVD off-topic as I ramble...

So, the weekend was spent in Shenzhen, China. To those uninitiated with Hong Kong and China, Shenzhen in a couple of respects is to Hong Kong as Tiajuana is to San Diego and Los Angeles. To many people, it's a place for knock-off shopping and cheap eats. However, Shenzhen is a vibrant city which in many respects parallel some of the great cities of Asia.

The train ride from Mongkok Hong Kok to the Lo Wu border stop where Shenzhen is located is a 40 minute ride. Since I went on a Friday late afternoon, the train was more packed than usual with commuters plus the weekender folks from HK plus the laborers who have been in HK all week and heading back home. Once the train stops, there is a mad rush to the customs clearing center, not unlike the scene at the entrance to a rock concert. What the really bad setup is is that you have to go through two sets of very time-consuming customs, one for Hong Kong and one for China, even though theoretically HK is now part of China. The one-country two system setup sucks for this situation. Luckily the non-HK resident lines are much shorter this evening. After the two customs clearing, I then encountered the numerous touts offering rides and 'dates' and all that sort of thing.

The Shenzhen Lo Wu Commercial Center is the mega-shopping center connected to the train station. It is a totally bustling 5 story indoor mall brimming with knock offs. The most popular items are Louis Vuitton/Gucci bags, near-perfect Rolexes (not the $10 cheap knockoff kind, the kind that is really really hard to tell the difference), all kinds of athletic shoes (but no Nike in sight), and of course DVDs and VCDs. Even though there was a major crackdown recently with pirated DVDs and VCDs, it was pretty easy to find pretty much any major American and HK movie around. In some weird respects, people who have vested interest in these movies might find these bootleg stores to be of interest. If it's carried, then the movie must be of some popularity. (Wasn't there some HK movie about some singer who's made it 'big' when she finds out her songs are being bootlegged?)

Quickly observing the negotiations that go on for handbags, it's pretty easy to see that you always knock off about 50-60% off of the original asking price. However, if you're a foreigner (read: someone who doesn't speak fluent Cantonese or China Mandarin) the salespeople will start at even a higher price. Luckily for DVD shoppers, prices are pretty much the same all around - 1 for $15HKD, 8 for $100HKD. (This mall prefers HKD over RMB). A bit higher than going inland a bit where the standard rate is $10RMB. Copies of Harry Potter, Monsters, Inc. and Dummy Mommy... are abound. In general, prices are a bit higher than inland Shenzhen, but certainly much cheaper than HK and quite convenient for the many HK-goers who trek up to Shenzhen to basically go to this one place only and head back by train.

Another observation is that the English-speaking level of people in general in China, even at the border mall, is much lower than in HK. Most salespeople know numbers and things like 'please come in' (even though it sounded like 'police, come in', which got my attention at the DVD store...) and a few other words. I strike conversations with a few Caucasian people, a couple from Sydney, a sister duo from Dallas and a bewildered lady from the Denver area. To a man (woman) they speak to me as if I were god - 'oh I'm so glad I found an English speaker', 'where do I go for this', 'where do I go for that'. A good ego type of thing, especially since I don't really know that much more about the mall and the area. But at least I speak the language.

Oh, there's more to Shenzhen, just like there's more to Tiajuana than Avenida de Revolucion. Looking at the skyline, the HK influence and investment is there. The main road, Shennan Road, rivals some of the great roads of the world - Singapore's Orchard Road, Chicago's Michigan Avenue, NY's Fifth Avenue, etc. Shenzhen has by far the most per capita income in China of any place. This is why you get so many people in Shenzhen who don't speak Cantonese, with all the migration from the north. To me it's strange that Shenzhen, which is part of Guandong province, the origination of the Cantonese language, would have so many non-Cantonese speaking people. I struggle with this, since my Mandarin is poor. Well, no big deal...

The infrastructure of Shenzhen is still developing but rapidly developing. High-rises are being built constantly. I was looking to get a penthouse (most might call it a condo) in one of these high-rises. Rates go from $5,000 to $10,000 RMB per square meter depending on the location. For you metrically challenged people a square meter is a bit over 10 square feet. A really big unit is considered to be over 150 square meters. We almost closed on a 160 square meter place for $1.2 million RMB ($144,000US) (negotiations had been done by the in-laws) but it fell through at the last minute. The same unit in Tsimshatsui by comparision would be around $15 million HKD (a little under $1.9million US). That's why anyone with any money in HK buys something in Shenzhen. A subway system is being built, hopefully it'll finish in 2 years. Once that happens, things will really being hopping.

Other things about Shenzhen are still third-world thought. People need to drive offensively (aggressively) in order to get anywhere, and likewise for pedestrians. Very common to see pedestrians in the middle of streets and in the middle of lanes trying to get across the street. I routinely close my eyes when I'm in a taxi. If you wander into one of the side streets, you will also see the ocassional restaurant that may gross you out. Many restaurants admittedly do serve dog meat, but 99% of them don't make it obvious. A few make it obvious though by hanging the dog out in the casing, right next to the ducks and chicken. Other places are wild game specialty places as well (remember the scenes from 'Needing You'?). I went to the 'Needing You' place and the snake was quite good actually. Some of the other stuff, which I can't mention, is not quite so good.

Foot massage places are on every street corner. For $35RMB this is a bargain. My feet were killing me from all the walking, so this was a great 1 hour diversion.

I have dinner with a person (Caucasian) who is teaching English at Shenzhen University. There is a tremendous tremendous need as aforementioned for learning English in China, especially in Shenzhen, and there is a lack of supply of good English teachers who are willing to stay more than a year there. So if you want to live very nicely there, here's a good opportunity.

Going inland, I try to look for the elusive authentic Thakral DVD and the Malata DVD players. Unsuccessful on both counts. The Malata does not sell well in China at all, probably because the price is too high. I found one place but the price was around $250 US. I don't think anyone needs a multi-system DVD player in China. Moreover, the Malata is considered to be a high-end expensive machine in China, which is business-wise speaking, death. Japanese brands are perceived as the higher-end expensive machines, not a machine made in China. As far as DVDs go, many of the shops as aforementioned have disappeared, mainly because their main base of income was probably the bootleg DVDs. I find some at Wal-Mart, but I already had these titles. At Men's World, a huge store for men's clothing and 'men' stuff, I find DVDs at a fairly large reputable department store where the salespeople swear that the DVDs are not a bootleg, but I know better. I know that Jack Nicholson did not star along with Tony Leung and Shu Qi in Love Me, Love My Money even though it says so on the back cover. Daniel Stern was not in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Nevertheless there are a number of non-movie type of titles that I take interest in.

I head back to HK Sunday late afternoon by car with some family friends. At the border crossing, more of the HK wealth is seen. Virtually every car crossing is a Mercedes or a BMW. Not one of those 3-series BMWs or C-class Benz cars, we're talking higher end 7-series and S-class models mostly. I swear to god I saw the border guards laughing at the family driving the Honda Accord.

I come back to the more familiar territory of Sai Yeung Choi street in Mongkok to do some night shopping and to find stuff that I didn't have enough time to find in China. Andy Lau's 2001 karaoke concert DVD and the Twins DVD are what's hot right now in HK. Everyone loves the Twins. Joey Yung's new album is getting a lot of run as well. Stores are gearing up for the legit release of La Brassiere.

Well, my trip was way too short. Heading back...

benedict

Sounds like you had a fascinating time. Thanks for the reports.

<small>No worries about off-topicality: this is an "official" off-topic thread! </small>

yangshouwen

Didn't know Twins released a DVD? I would presume it's the Twins CD. Wanna get the Andy Lau Kareoke concert DVD, so I might bug Jonny if he can get hold of it for me

It's been ages since I last went to Hong Kong and specifically Shenzhen, and the customs are a drag during the holidays.

thomasdasilva

To Yellow hammer.Thanks for the shenzen update. Can you e mail me your address. I am going there in 3 weeks and would like some advice from you. Thanks.

Yellow Hammer

Well, back in the good ol USA. Customs didn't even bother me, went on my merry way in SF sans bag inspection. Brought home a *****load of DVDs and knockoff LV handbags (gotta try and make some money off of the handbags). I come home to find that my cable modem doesn't work anymore. Thanks, @Home! And to think that I almost took a job from Excite a couple of years ago...

I stand corrected, it's the Twins CD that I meant to say.

My email is [email protected]

Might be back in HK/Shenzhen soon, so many potential business opportunities there, as opposed to here right now.

Rocky_Raccoon

Hey YH, take me with you to HK if you do go hehe. I am a good worker and would be a blast at the karaoke bars LOL.

Glad you had a enjoyable trip and made it back without incident YH. Sounds like you had a really good time.

Clint

gabegarwick

I have mixed feelings about this:
On the one side...
Beefed up airport security my foot! You must not "look like" a terrorist to the trained security personnel...

On the other hand, I am secretly happy that you didn't have to declare all your goods.

cheers,
Gabe