My feeling is ’13 is looking set to be a good year. Mind you, having got my tax return off to my accountant before the end of January deadline always fills me with optimism but there’s more.
Nina’s ‘vorsprung durch technic’ hip-harness seems to be very well received by the shibari scene after recently posting a video tutorial and so it should be, it’s damn good. I hope you like video as it’s my first experiment since installing the new firmware on my 550D. The quality seems very good due to the extra flexibility it gives but I’m sure I can do even better with some tweaking. Of course, you are only seeing it at about 40% resolution due to the need for web compression. I’m working on my ‘Rising Sun’ hip harness and will do a video of my box-tie too shortly.
Talking of tutorials, we are drafting the agenda for Volumes III & IV of my ‘Japanese Rope Bondage’ shibari tutorial DVDs. I’m confident they will be ground-breaking, covering areas not previously addressed and in unprecedented depth. The idea is to take the teaching of shibari further into what constitues the heart of kinbaku, i.e. what the tier puts into the tie, rather than the tie per se. As I always say, “It’s not about knots”. This is not to ignore the importance of undertsanding the components (ingredients) and how they can be used creatively. To illustrate their use, we will also be covering some traditional ‘recipes’ and some ‘nouvelle cuisine’ from Chez Esinem & Russ.
After my frustrations with extracting much practical information from the Fetlife Kinbaku group, I saw that my knowledge was being constrained by not being able to understand Japanese and not having wider intelligence on the shibari scene in Japan. Consequently, I put out some feelers for a Japanese correspondent. I already have a couple of offers! One is from a student undergoing intensive training with Kazam sensei who is keen to blog about his experiences and the Osaka kinbaku scene. This is particularly exciting as most of the news has been from Tokyo from adherents of the Akechi derived schools. Kazami has a very distictive style and Osaka has a rather different mindset to Tokyo. It’s a bit ‘in your face’ and anarchic (by Japanese standards), whereas Tokyo is somewhat more understated, on the surface at least. I think we will see a different slant. It looks like we might end up with several contributors who will each have their own perspective, no doubt. Hopefully, this will bring us a wider and more balanced picture.
This is to be a year of some major media whoring. In the next few months, some major projects are likely to come to fruition which have had to remain top secret. Let it suffice to say that they involve an artist selling work with six figure price tags, some prominent photographers, a premier league designer and TV.
Meanwhile, rope and DVD sales have been surging in spite of the alleged recession. Maybe when the going gets tough, everyone gets kinky or it’s the 50 Shades of Crap phenomenum? I hope it’s down to good products and service, feedback and forum comments certainly give that impression. Our days are becoming more filled with packing orders and I am loaded like a pack-mule when I go to the post office. It can’t go on like this. So, this year will require a proper grown-up system to integrate eBay, Amazon and direct sales. The crappy PayPal interface is painfully tedious and clearly not orientated to anyone other than a casual user. I feel sure any computer savvy pre-teen could have done better.
To address my woes, I installed LinnWorksExpress version yesterday and even the cut-down version of this industry leading multi-channel solution is a godsend. Merely using it partly set up with a fraction of the features, it looks like it will save hours, improve my customer service immensely, create the free time to expand operations across other platforms, develop other ideas and, most importantly, to tie more.
Last but by no means least, BOUND will be in its second year. Looking back over last year, Nina has made great strides with its development. Now Gorgone has joined the team, we have extra resources and a more international coverage. I think we will have a Time Out journo at the next event on 25 January so, with this and the latest Sang Bleu article, its fame will spread more in the mainstream. You can look forward to it getting bigger and better in ’13.
Yes, ’13 is gonna be a good year!