coffee business strategies

…so much so, in fact that they decided to steal it for themselves! Now I’ve done business in China before and this sort of designer knockoff approach to business is far from unusual in the country; however, the typical Chinese intellectual property thief is more discriminating. For example, why would the Big Island of Hawaii appear in the logo for a Chinese company?

The genuine article:

Aloha Barista School

Many mahalos go out to Matt Milletto of Barista Exchange and the American Barista School for sending this along my way after his recent business trip to Hong Kong. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the photo.

We have not yet started running scheduled classes for the Aloha Barista School… truthfully, I’ve just been too darn busy doing work in other places around the world. The lab is now finished, so we should have instructors and a class schedule set sometime in January ’09, only a couple of months behind the original schedule. We have no immediate plans to open a branch in China, but clearly there is demand there for our concept! (or at least, our graphic design)