Serendipity

Serendipity

Progress in developing the new rented space is slow.  The main problems are the lack of funds and the lack of a clone.  I am overwhelmed with work.  This is a limiting factor, to state the obvious.

I have vague notions of using all the shelf space to display items for sale, items that foreigners find it hard to find.  But that would mean wholesale bulk purchases, which requires large cash reserves.  Then there is the pickiness of the foreigner.  If I carry mustard, and it’s not the kind of mustard the foreigner prefers, will they walk away empty handed?

Expat A: “Mustard?  Here in Changzhou?  Well, there’s Metro.”

Newcomer: “But what about Grandma’s Nook?  I hear they have imported stuff.”

Expat A: “Oh, they only have Gulden’s Spicy Brown; you have to go to Metro to find German Dijon.”

Newcomer: “is that the store an hour away on the bus? But Grandma’s is a ten minute walk.”

Expat A: “Well, if you want Dijon, which is what I always use at home in *pickacountry*….”

Another idea floating in my brain is to create a deli.  Imported cheeses, cold cuts, sausages, salads.

DuoDuo (dwo dwo), also known as Louisa, has been coming around for coffee since back in the day that Tina worked for me.  They would talk up a storm, they became fast friends.  After Tina left we didn’t see that much of her. 

In those days, once she walked in and gave me a message from my vet who, it turns out, is also her vet.  That was when the cat-on-a-string had a litter of kittens in my home.  The vet said that the next spay or neuter is on the house.  You know, like buy four and get one free.

To share a vet is to have a special bond.  We discovered that we both had a deep love of animals.  It took some months after Tina left for Louisa to start coming back, but she did.  One time she brought her boyfriend to sit and have coffee.  It was like she wanted another opinion about him. 

Louisa is tall and thin.  Black rimmed glasses hide her eyes on a long thin face.  She dresses conservatively, Town and Country style.  There is a gentle air about her, in her voice, in the way she carries herself.

When I put the VIP sign up in June, to try to raise enough money to pay the rent, she approached me. “I’d like to help,” she said.  She offered me ten thousand yuan.  She said she could make that twenty if needed, she could ask her sister.

I took the ten, while I was waiting for my funds to arrive from the States.  I returned the money a week or two later.

One day I was delivering an order to a German customer at a complex less than a kilometer from my shop.  As I was riding along the store fronts looking for the access door to the complex, I saw DuoDuo.  I stopped, we chatted.  She waved vaguely towards the stores and said her office was on the third floor above these shops.  These storefronts are usually two or three stories.  I had been hoping to run into her, because I was ready to ask for an investor.  I was stumped how to go forward with the new shop without an infusion of cash.  And so I asked her.  Would she be able to help.

A few days later she came to the shop.  Could I use 20,000 or maybe 30,000?  This was coming not just from her, but from her mysterious family.  They want to invest in my business.  Who are these people?  Have I ever seen them in my store?  I remember one time a woman, older than Louisa, said over the counter ‘My father is obsessed with you, I don’t know what that’s about.”  Could this have been Louisa’s sister, referring to their Dad?  I never found out.  This time DuoDuo phrased it to mean an investment.

This led to a series of talks.  She and her fiancé came the next Sunday, we sat down in the empty salon, and we discussed the serious matter of giving and receiving money. 

On what terms am I receiving this money?  Is it a loan?  Is it an investment?  What is my obligation?

After some back and forth it became clear this was not a loan.  They wanted to be part of the business, backers. 

“We can offer you 20,000 yuan.  It would be more, but my father is taking care of my wedding in October. “

This is the first I’ve heard of the wedding.  You would think she would have mentioned that earlier.

“That would be a very timely sum.  I am most grateful.  Now, what are the terms of this investment? “

She looked at him, he looked at her, she looked at me, I looked at him, between us was a benevolent cloud of unknowing.

“We’ll figure it out.”

And that is how we left it.

A day or two later she came in with the 20,000.  She apologized that it was so little, but she said her father would send another 30,000 after the wedding.

My jaw virtually hit the ground.  My eyes popped out on springs, boing.  Fireworks came out of my head, pop pop pop.

We discussed the structural modifications that would make this almost perfect environment better.  The sink space needed to be expanded, the wash room was too large, wasting space.  The electric outlets were clustered on one wall in each room.

She said, we have workmen at our place right now, we are doing some remodeling.  We can send some to you tomorrow to begin work.

The next day, two men came and started knocking down the wall between the sink and the wash room.  I took a break from baking to check it out.  She told me I needed to give them 300 rmb.  I asked if they would start the new wall tomorrow.  She said no, that would require other skilled labor. As these two dusty men were carrying out the debris, she extended her hand towards one of them and said, ‘this is my father.’  He nodded and smiled as he carried a load of smashed drywall past me.

Later in the week she brought a contractor in.  We walked around the place and discussed what needed to be done. 

Days went by.  Weeks, even.  She came by for coffee, and said that she had called the contractor, who told her he was waiting for her call.  She told him she thought they had agreed he would call her when he was free.  At any rate, it took another week before he actually showed up.

In two days he and his team had built a new wall and frame, built a cabinet for the new expanded sink area, laid a raised floor that extended out from the bathroom to the hall so that the wider sink area was all on one level, and left the café floor an utter mess with powder from plaster and cement and dusty shoes. 

We are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays in August, and this was Tuesday, the second day of work.  They were clearing away the trash, he the contractor was doing his best to wipe up the debris from the floor.  The security guard caught my eye and pointed to the wooden scraps leaning against the trash can.  He said this stuff could not be discarded here, it had to go to the large trash bin that was a bit of a walk away.  This brought to my attention two lovely pieces of veneered wood, left over from the cabinet making.  I brought them back into the store, and suggested that maybe the contractor, whose specialty was apparently wood work, that they be used to make a shelf in the cabinet he made.  He looked a little chagrined, scratched his head, but in the end assented.  In the blink of an eye, my new cabinet had a shelf in it.  Nice.

The only thing lacking was a slab of faux marble for the counter top.  I fussed over a chunk of wasted space behind the cabinet where the wall jutted out, but in the end could find no way to make use of it.  I fretted on it for a while, jealous of every square meter I was paying rent on, but in the end there seemed no easy way to access it.  Sigh.  The counter top will be laid, covering it forever.

I fed Mother Goose, cleaned up her litter box, and went home.  I would have to return later, to begin the bread for the next day.

I had a 12:30 appointment with Emily Wells, a Taiwan lawyer friend.  She and her British husband, the headmaster at the international k-12 school (OIC) had a six month old son, Jack, who would come along.  She had arranged a meeting with an investor friend.  We had clarified that my business was too small for his company to invest in, but I wanted his advice on how to determine the terms of Louisa’s investment.

They were almost an hour late.  I was able to get a head start on the bread I was making, and begin the sponge that we would use over the next few days.  Xiao Lan and Julie had been resisting my efforts to have the bread shaped into loaves at night and baked in the morning.  They insisted on stopping before the shaping, and leaving the bulk dough in the fridge for the next day.  They said the loaves rose too much and would then fall, and it was a mess; it just didn’t work.   I was going to see for myself whether this method I’d read about could really work.  After Emily left the dough would be ready to be shaped, and I would seal it well in the fridge.  Instead of using the lids for the pans, I would cover them with well-oiled plastic wrap and encase them in a garbage bag.  The next morning I came in at 6:30 and sure enough, the loaves had risen perfectly and were ready to be popped into the oven.  I was a little nervous about baking cold dough, but it worked perfectly.  I just needed to add five minutes to the baking time.

The young man with Emily spoke English.  I had assumed she would be needed to translate.  There were times when Chinese was needed for clarification and confirmation, but it was easy to speak with him.  We tossed around a lot of ideas on how to evaluate their contribution in terms of the larger picture of my investment in the business.  We considered not only the money I’d put in, but my sweat equity and my ‘intellectual property’ , my term not theirs.

In the end, I decided on offering them a ten percent interest in the business, and giving them the revenue from the first franchise.  The latter would pay back in full whatever investment, current and future, they made.  Chinese entrepreneurs love franchises.  They prefer a proven commodity over creating something new, and risky.  Admittedly, it would be a long uphill climb before that day would come.  It might be a stretch to say that Changzhou could support more than one deli, or even one for that matter.  But time would tell.