Simon Carr: The Kitchen Capitalist

The ultimate business trick: I'll rip myself off

Some good news for a change; I've been keeping the good news from you. Nothing makes a fellow more unlikeable than success. So let's scamper through the good news without dwelling on it. Most of it's bad, anyway.

A distributor likes the project. He saw the working model and the foam models for the extensions and he likes them. He agreed they could sell two million units in three years. That is, he didn't disagree when I said they could sell two million units in three years. Actually, what he said was he'd phone his contact at one of the big catalogues and see if they were interested in thinking about how many they might take for a season with a big fat send-back clause for unsolds. That is subtly different, now I look at it, from guaranteeing a worldwide sale of two million units.

What else? China is working again. The young English-speaking manager who was running my project for his company had been promoted. He lost touch. I begged, I sobbed, I tore out my hair and waved it angrily at him - and eventually it worked. He is now looking after me again. The prototype is in production and will be finished next week. It was supposed to be finished last week, now I think of it, and there is a whopping new charge for tooling. But on balance, I count this as good news, that Warren is talking to me again. He's the only one I can understand. He's the only one who understands me.

I can't help noticing, however, that he is now saying a mistake was made with the previous quote. They now need four tools instead of two, because of my redesign. There may be some truth in some of this. But how much? And how much should I press the point? (The sums involved aren't huge, as what costs £25,000 here costs $2,500 there.)

Did my begging and sobbing persuade them to up the quote? I am a very annoying customer, as we know. There are those in the hierarchy who want to crush me like a cockroach. Am I getting paranoid? I am quite frightened of the senior executive in Taiwan. She has a voice that could order the invasion of China. Warren protects me from her. Maybe I'll meet his tooling demands.

And finally, I have a solution to the knock-off problem. Everyone says China will steal your idea, put a different label on the product and flood the market with inferior imitations. Warren cheerfully admits that's the norm. The thing to do, it seems to me, is knock myself off. If the thing is a success, I must have a cheaper, inferior imitation ready to go at a fifth of the price. The stocking-filler version. Debauch my own market. If people are too slow to compete, I must attack whoever is available, and if I'm the only person in range I must pay the consequences.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com