Who is HKHowie?

When I was in junior high school, I started at Tandy as a sales clerk to make some extra spending money. Years later I bought the Tandy Leather franchise store in Lubbock, Tx. I had a certain knack for buying and designing products that sold well, but weren't typical Tandy Leather products. I was approached by Tandy Leather corporate management and asked to move to Fort Worth to head up the Research and Development Dept., which was a dream job for me. I always wanted a job where I got paid to come up with new ideas.

After a couple of years designing new kits and finding new products I was promoted to Buyer and Market Manager. Within months I went from a West Texas good ol' boy to international traveler. I traveled through Canada, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and visited factories in Mexico, China, Thailand, and India. I ate things I had never seen before and went places where very few anglos had been. In some of the villages in India that we visited, they told us that the young children had never actually seen someone with blonde hair. As if being blonde and white wasn't enough, I am 6'4" and really stood out in crowds. I took a Polaroid camera along and had my photo taken with many groups of children and left them with the momentos. It was a fun and rewarding experience, and it seemed to be as special to them as it was to me.

Meanwhile, back at the offices I was given a new moniker. The girls around work had started to call me Howie, and now with the added traveling I was doing...I became known as Hong Kong Howie, or HKHowie.

Tandy Leather was going through some trying times and was sold to our only competitor. I was contacted by my Indian friend and asked to help form a new import company. So, I left Tandy Leather and we went back to India. We met with several factory owners and formed Rickshaw Delivery.

As a new company, we are still plotting our course. But with our combined backgrounds, we hit the ground running. Rickshaw Delivery will act as an import agent and a wholesale distributor. Currently, some products that we have brought in are in Dillard's, SteinMart and several other large department stores. We have a strong infrastructure established in India and China, and are working on Vietnam.

We are also establishing a line of packaged craft supplies, designed for retail sales. Our craft products include: suede lace, artificial sinew, imitation leather cord, round leather lace, beading threads and cords, stretch jewelry cord, rattail satin cord, resin cast claws, stone arrowheads, and many kinds of beads.