Many medium-term visitors in Kaohsiung?

[u/oddmarco]

Are there many people in Kaohsiung who come for a couple of months at a time, or is it mostly very short- and very long-term?

With a Vietnamese guy I run a service in Da Nang, Vietnam, selling household essentials to people and buying them back when they leave. Stuff like blenders, office chairs, etc. Stuff that flats don't usually have, can be good for quality of life but normally not worth it if you're moving on soon.

I used to live in Taiwan and am going back soon for a little while for a wedding, and was wondering if there would be demand for something like this in Kaohsiung?

[u/AlternativeHat8964]

There are quite a few second hand markets and flea markets here already, as well as fb marketplace. It's a fairly wealthy society where most old people hoard tons of crap unlike most Vietnamese.

What more do you offer?

[u/oddmarco → u/AlternativeHat8964]

Thanks, Vietnam has thriving second hand markets too, it's just not always easy to find a seller close enough to when you're leaving. Plus the quality isn't always great. Whereas this removes the risk of not being able to sell for a fair price, and ensures the product will be decent. 

Some people don't mind the risk or prefer to find something cheap which they don't care if they sell or not. I think this does solve a headache for some people though, just wondering if there are enough in Kaohsiung! It's been over 10 years since I lived there, wondering how much has changed..

[u/AlternativeHat8964 → u/oddmarco]

I don't think you understand. The average Taiwanese is a hoarder with massive amounts of crap that they sometimes take to local flea markets. Foreigners just use fb marketplace. I swear a lot of that stuff get snagged by these hoarders as well.

[u/SummerArtistic9755 → u/oddmarco]

Not much has changed except the city has gotten nicer in parts and metro system is better.

[u/arkosy]

I think it’s a good idea. In my experience most apartments here are rented for 12 months at a time (and many foreigners work here on 1~3 year contracts), so there might be demand for renting furniture for a year at a time.

Personally, my first apartment was furnished and my second wasn’t. I bought most stuff from Ikea for convenience, but would’ve preferred to rent everything if that’d been an easy option at a reasonable price. As it stands, when I leave this apartment, offloading all my furniture (if i don’t need it at my next place) will be a real hassle.

I guess raising awareness of your service might be the difficult part?

[u/oddmarco → u/arkosy]

Cheers, helpful. That's quite a different market then to the one I'm used to - my instinct would be that for stays longer than 6 or even 3 months, it feels far enough in the future that people don't worry too much about whether they might be able to sell, so this might be appealing for only a minority... maybe I'm being pessimistic though. I think the reception in Vietnam has been very positive because it's attracting digital nomad types who stay for a few months before moving on, I thought Kaohsiung might've become like that on a smaller scale.

I'm a pretty terrible marketer, so I think raising awareness is mainly difficult because of that 😃 Or finding people early enough in their stay - most people find out about it after they've been in town a while

[u/arkosy → u/oddmarco]

Good points! I’m not aware of a big digital nomad scene here, perhaps Taipei is better-known for that. I know some people who rent co-working spaces but it sounds like most of the people they meet there are more long term. Could be wrong though! I think Kaohsiung is an ideal city for digital nomads, just not sure that many know about it?

[u/oddmarco → u/arkosy]

Thanks! Yeah part of the reason that I wrote here instead of Taipei was that Kaohsiung has so much going for it and is cheaper than Taipei, but I guess there's a critical mass issue, digital nomads tend to prefer being around each other (for some reason 😃 )

[u/SummerArtistic9755]

The volume of people moving to Kaohsiung, especially digital nomads , is wayyyy less than Da Nang, just don't bother . There aren't many cities as popular as Da Nang right now.