Fariha and I were not expecting to go to Qbedding. Our itinerary comprised mostly cafes and bakeries. Unfortunately, they all were unavailable for an interview. The answer was either the manager wasn’t there (and the employees seemed too uncomfortable to speak to us) or that they were too busy (even when the stores had no other customers in sight but we still respected their answer). We were walking around Flushing in below 20 degrees Fahrenheit and panicked at the thought that we wouldn’t be able to get an interview with any business in Flushing. It came to the point where we walked into every business on the block. Qbedding was the first of these businesses as it was next the Latin café that said they were unavailable to do an interview on a Saturday afternoon. At first, we didn’t notice the small English letters on the front of the store as the Chinese characters seemed to stand out more. The entire place looked abandoned except for the two workers there. As we approached them, they were laughing. I got the impression that the workers were friendly with each other and were relaxed with the lack of customers. When we asked permission for an interview. They happily agreed and Fariha and I were overjoyed to get our first interview! I was fumbling though the papers on my clipboard and my tote bag to get a pen but they highly encouraged us to take our time and that there was no need to rush.
Turns out Qbedding is a big thing in China where it’s called Shuixing jiafang and is translated to Mercury Home Textiles by Google Translate. The employee, however, translated the name to be Mercury Bedding. She was also unsure how the translation of Mercury Bedding became Qbedding in English. They have a five stores in America but two of those five stores are in Flushing while one is in Brooklyn and the last two are in California. We the employee why she believes there are two Qbeddings in Flushing and why one wasn’t enough but she said did not really know how to answer that. Sometimes we would have to reword the question for the employee to understand as it seemed that she didn’t know English very well. In fact, it seemed Qbedding was in Flushing to appeal to the large Chinese population The employee specifically said “We have regulars. Here, lots of Chinese like to buy something here” and repeatedly mentioned how Qbedding satisfied Flushing’s Chinese population. The store sells comforters, pillowcases, and beddings from China and emphasizes its appeal to Chinese Americans. They even play different types of Chinese music in the store. They usually play traditional Chinese music, but sometimes they play songs that are popular at the moment.
We asked if Flushing affected the business and her thoughts on it. She replied with a “Let me think” and paused for a while to answer “We have websites like Facebook to give information”. She meant it in both ways where the store receives a lot of information from customers and customers easily hear about Qbedding through the internet and social media sites. Fariha and I asked ourselves after the interview if she would have answered in the same manner as in China as the internet is worldwide but we did not know how to approach her with the question. Qbedding opens at 8:00 AM everyday and has different employees working throughout the day. Despite her easygoing attitude, she explained how winter times are hard for the store. She said “We have another store. Winters (January and February) are quiet and summers are hard” in terms of business and the number of customers. They found that people would buy their bed items in the summer to prepare for winter. Thus, the below 20 temperature emphasized her point on how the cold weather means less customers. I found this quite shocking as I thought blankets would be in more demand during the winter. We asked the employee if she had any final notes or words of advice and she mentioned how people are able to walk to Qbedding. While a little strange at first, the employee elaborated that the store has done so well with the crowd because Flushing is easy to walk around and Qbedding is one of the easier stores to walk to. In general, Flushing is easily accessible and its large Asian population allows businesses from Asia or reminiscent of it too thrive and survive in America.
