What gave you the idea to import Sophie?

Excerpt of a recurrent comment in a conversation:

...Yeah yeah, it is great! She is made of natural rubber...

Yeah yeah, I get it: no chemical and no harmful components in her...

Yeah yeah, you say she stimulates the 5 senses of a baby....

But what I want to know: What gave you the idea to import Sophie ???

This has to be the first question I have to answer whenever I start talking  and presenting Sophie Hagirafa.
And the answer is actually quite nice and simple and I think it shows that in life opportunities are everywhere.

A year ago, actually a bit more, I met with one of my friends, K.  She was a new mom of a three-month adorable baby girl who had started teething. As the old mom of teens that I am, I told her that she should get Sophie The Giraffe.
K. had never heard of her so I told her: simple! I will get you one as soon as I see it.
Except that after a couple of weeks looking here and there, I could not find any Sophie. Not a problem: my friend Alexandra had one shipped to me from France, the Land of Sophies and off I went back to K. giving her the Sophie.
K. looked at it, said that she looked very nice but really what was so special about her?
And I had no answer.
All I know is that in France: new baby = Sophie la girafe. It is a given, it is a must. No one will think twice.

My children were born in various countries and whenever I visited France, Sophie was on the shopping list without wondering why.

So now I had to find an answer for my friend and for me:  How can a 47 year-old teether survive all this time? There must be a good reason.

I found several.... and to the risks of boring you my dear faithful readers, let me repeat them for the benefit of new readers ( hopefully) to Sophie's fan club!  ^__^ Sophie The Giraffe is 100% natural made, 

Sophie the Giraffe is 100 percent natural rubber , Sophie la Girafe is Phthalates and BPA free. And she stimulates the 5 senses of the Baby.

Yep! All this!


With this precious information I went back to my friend K. who was very pleased and relieved that her daughter had such a safe and useful toy. And her baby loved her Giraffe!

On my way back home I thought it was really strange that I did not find Sophie the giraffe here in a country where there are so many Babies, so many parents looking for organic clothes and diapers and eco-friendly toys. I emailed Vulli the company that makes Sophies and to make a long story short: I became their exclusive importer of Sophie.

Of course that meant a lot of work, besides my regular work as QA in a Hi-tech company. We had to build a website, have the products tested to the norms of the country ( SII ) , pay here and there for those tests, papers, tax etc etc. But almost a year after here we are!

I have now decided to quit my job and dedicace 100% of my times for Sophie La Girafe. With her I became an importer, a seller, a promoter, a facebooker, a tweeter, a blogger in a country where we relocated in 2006 and where I can speak but barely write or read. But no panic! We will get through it one day at the time, learning along the way! Vive 2010....

Thank you Eddie

The first batch of Giraffes (and more) made it through Customs!

And another Victory for the Sophies! ^__^

This morning it was time to go face the Customs, keep our cool and do everything to free the Giraffes.

After 2 hours and an half, 4 back-and-forth meetings with the Gaash officer and others Customs workers whose signatures and approvals were needed, more paperwork and more proof of who we were and of course more money paid that we ever imagined...we left the Customs with a big cardboard box that barely fit in the car.

And off to the SII.

The Law says that after each arrival of goods, we have to meet a SII officer. Her job is to make sure we are not cheating and that we put the stickers required by law on each toy. Since we went there straight from the Customs, we did not have the time to put any sticker on the boxes but we had the stickers with us. We opened our precious package, took one toy of each category to check along with the relevant sticker. We passed!

The sticker should state a couple of things such as: the name of the product, the age it is intended for, the country of origin, the name of the manufacturer, the name of the importer, and warning information.

That sticker must be on every box of Vulli's Sophies in Israel.



Most of our imports are and will be "Sophie The Giraffe"...but we did bring some others too. Let me show you some of them. Aren't they cute? ^__^ 

The 3 cuties in the middle are cousins of Sophie La girafe.
They are also 100% natural, Phthalates and BPA free.

They are called: Chan, Pie, Gnon.

Do not hesitate to contact me here, by email or get in touch through the website , should you have any question. I will be very happy to answer you. ^__^

                                   

                                                                     

Thanks HokusPocusChick for the abstract!

Today's adventure: visit to the Customs and the SII

I know I promised yesterday to write about how Sophie La Girafe stimulates the 5 senses of  Baby, but instead I will tell you about the process to import here. It can be very stimulating as well ^__^.

Right now, we know our package is at the  Customs Office in Tel Aviv and that we must get it as soon as possible not only because we want it, but also because after a certain number of days ( 20 I think), we would have to pay them for storage.

So today we went to the Customs Office. I was very hopeful to get my hands on our precious package. I was ready: I had all the papers we filled, signed, paid since the beginning of this enterprise and I was determined to face every unhappy and unhelpful clerk with a bright smile.

Well, in spite of my strategy, I am sorry to report that we did not retrieve the package. However the people we met there were quite helpful, especially an older gentleman whose job is to inform newcomers in the import-business like me.

We could not get the package because one document from the SII  ( The Standards Institution of Israel) and one paragraph in the invoice were missing.

The Customs need to know where the products come from and how many they are in order to calcaulate the Customs fees. And that has to be written in a certain way in the invoice.

 So Customs: checked somehow!

Next we went to  the SII  located next to the University of Tel Aviv. This is basically where everything starts and ends if you decide to import to this country. They will tell you where and what tests to do, they will authorize (or not) the Customs to let you have your goods etc etc. We presented them with the Customs form they needed, we paid and we recieved our authorization so now basically all that is missing is the invoice with the proper wordings . Once we have it, it is back to Customs to get our package.

After that we will have to go back to the SII to show them we did not lie, that we have both the right products and the stickers conformed with the Israeli Law.

And after that .... we can show the toys, and sell them !!!

Of course this will repeat with each import but I guess it will be easier and faster. At least I hope so!