Seat Buddy Profiles: Meet Helena

First of all, just a few paragraphs about the five years between 2009 and now (2014), to whomever still reads this and doesn't know me. During my 2009 trip to China, I met my then-girlfriend, who now is my lovely wife. I also met the then-Consul General of Finland in Shanghai who became my first summer traineeship employer (I did return to Shanghai in 2010 to work in the Finnish Consulate during the Expo 2010 summer). He went on to become Ambassador of Finland in Seoul, Korea and we still keep in touch.

From that summer on, it was a real roller-coaster of years to me. Our film that we worked on during 2008 and 2009 was released in Finland following the participation to Shanghai International Film Festival and was a huge success. I was asked to join Rovio, a small budding Finnish company who made the hugely successful game and entertainment franchise "Angry Birds." Not so small anymore. I helped the company globalize to Asia, being one of the co-founders of our Shanghai office in 2012. We got married the same year. 

Since then, I've been traveling extensively back and forth between China and Finland, and it was during my latest flight that I decided to write about the different stories of my "Seat Buddies," i.e. random people sitting beside me on the flight. This is one of the first such profile. Please meet Helena, a Swedish silk and fabric trader-on-air.

Helena is a very nice, middle-aged woman who is a sole entrepreneur in Stockholm, Sweden. She's been to China (mostly Shanghai) dozens of times since 1997. What she does is buy silk and other fabrics in China and sells them to Swedish designers and other customers back home.
But she wasn't always a silk road traveling, wonder-bearing Marco Polo-turned-merchant in her past life.

Helena started out her career as a nurse. She did that for twenty years before growing exceedingly tired about the tough work and a feeling that no matter how hard you worked, it was never quite enough. This, even when she worked a few years as a nurse in Oslo, Norway, where the pay was really good even back then in the 80s. She then worked at a hotel reception for a while before really finding her true calling as a fabrics trader.

Why do I say that? Because even as a young, budding nurse, Helena and her friend once thought about starting a company around fabrics. However, the nursing career settled in and the thought was put into the back of her mind until much later. Lesson #1: you may suddenly find your childhood or young adult dreams coming back at you when you're middle-aged.

As a flying silkswoman, Helena visits marketplaces and local companies in Shanghai or surrounding areas. However, the first time she was in China was because of her physician husband who occasionally travels around the world lecturing. Helena tagged along and used the vacation opportunity to get to know China better. It was during one of her trips, in Tibet actually, where she met someone whom Helena calls her "Chinese sister," Mei Lin. (I made this name up, because honestly I couldn't remember what she was called, lol.)

Mei works in an American company in China as a saleswoman. The company buys and sells ingredients that makes up... make ups. According to Helena, she is a really tough salesperson. After meeting Helena in Tibet, they become friends. Mei is the one who helps Helena arrange company visits when she comes to China. She also accompanies Helena to the local marketplaces, although nowadays Helena may as well survive on her own; she described an instance where she was able to haggle the price of a fake bag from 2,700 yuan down to 300.

In the same vein, though, Helena could buy three clothespins from an old man on the street at 10 yuan a piece without any haggling, just to support the poor.

Before Helena started her new trade, she took a quick degree in the fabrics profession in order to understand the goods that she would be buying and selling. Lesson #2: to distinguish real silk from fake ones, you need to burn a piece of the fabric. Helena told me that real silk burns like your hair -- at least the smell would be the same. And it doesn't leave almost any ashes. If it's polyester or other artificial material, it will melt (and watch your fingers there!)

So I guess it's never too late to become an entrepreneur and chase your dreams from childhood. Helena's inspiring story told us just that.

This is a hopefully recurring column where I explore the stories of random people who happen to sit besides me on intercontinental flights.

P.S. This particular flight was extremely empty, about only half the seats were sold. I was lucky to even have a seat buddy. But that's beside the point: economic times are really bad now, and that's a sad fact.