Hello, my name is Heidi. I am the owner of Weeb Express. I was born in Hong Kong and I moved to the UK when I was in secondary school. I watched bit of anime since I was little but I only got into anime when I was in year 9 due to influence of my boarding house's roommate. It started off with that one episode of Fairy Tail she showed me. I found it quite entertaining and decided to finish the entire season on my own. I have been watching more and more anime since then... This is how I turned into a weeb (⊙_⊙)
P.S. I am no longer a big Fairy Tail fan after Season 2... I am more of a SoL and cgdct fan. My favourite anime are Madoka Magica and K-ON.
Before university, I didn't know anime was a thing in the UK. My secondary school was located in a rural area in Oxfordshire with 0 anime related element. In 2017, I started my studies in University of Birmingham. I was fascinated by the amount of anime shops and anime convention in that city. And more importantly, I made the best decision in my life by joining our University's Anime and Manga Society. I had a lot of fun attending their weekly meetings and socials, and I made a lot of friends there! I became a committee in my 2nd year and eventually became the society president in my final year of uni.
In March 2020, lockdown began. I had to graduate abruptly without saying goodbye to my uni and friends. Our final society event, J-Cafe also got cancelled (one of my regrets in life, we will probably make it happen again one day). I was fortunate enough to get 2 temporary jobs after graduation. They were ok but they weren't something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I then remembered the good old days when I was running an anime society- although it required a lot of hard work and definitely wasn't an easy job, I was proud and happy to see everyone talking about anime, making friends and enjoying their time. I would love to follow my passion and continue doing something anime related in my life.
I travel to Hong Kong occasionally to visit my relatives and friends. I noticed that anime merchandise in Hong Kong is so much cheaper compare to the UK; their anime stores also stock more interesting products like Ichiban Kuji, Gachapon and Nesoberi. I always wished to see anime store like that in the UK. This is how I got inspired to start my own anime merchandise business.
Although Weeb Express is a small e-commence store at the moment, I have a big goal to start a physical store one day. If possible, I would also like to create hangout space for weebs in the UK by starting an anime karaoke bar.
Introduction