China Versus India

Backstory: When I met my second husband, he wanted to move south, out of the snow and rat race of Boston. Problem was, I owned a B&B with my ex-husband’s last name (my married name) proudly displayed on the sign. The B&B had a great reputation with significant return clientele – I couldn’t change the name. Second husband felt his need to put a “man-stamp” on the house, and we decided to renovate and build a pool. Well, the pool tile was $112,000. I didn’t care how much money he had, I wasn’t about to spend $112K on pool tile. I knew what I wanted but wasn’t about to pay retail. And thus began my sojourn into the import business. It took me a year, contracts with Maersk, background checks by FBI, licensing, etc., but finally the pool tile arrived —–>>> $7,000 plus shipping.
Over the next year, I made several mistakes, trusting foreign nationals to honor their word. Frustrated but unwilling to capitulate, I got the crazy idea to hire the most highly competent foreign nationals I could find, men who were highly respected in their own communities, to work for me…. Their job was to act as my “second”, to check on blocks of stone BEFORE they were cut, to supervise our orders within a factory, and to properly manage the packing of our delicate freight. As our backyard project grew, 12 containers arrived from all over the world. I made quite a ruckus in a small town.
My former husband was a general contractor and I kept the “rolodex” in the divorce. Pretty soon, I started receiving phone calls from other architects (and girlfriends), “Hey Daughn, do you suppose you could get me some slabs of Italian marble….. A x B dimensions….” and so on. Soon, my side business was born. When the crash of 2008 happened, that business became a necessity.
I placed a Christmas phone call to a company owner in Brazil, to wish him well in the new year. He was desperate and mad at me — the American. He thought I should have an answer, be the leader. And I got an idea. Because of the dire economic conditions, I spearheaded a “consortium of sorts”. We saved about 200 factories, assets that were generations old, and their employees, along the way. Many proud men cried to me on the phone, grateful for our cooperation. I kept their secrets, their moment of weakness carefully guarded, and never – ever, held it against them. We built amazing loyalty among the best factories, small and large, all over the world. It worked. We survived and kept the lights on and our families fed. It was an incredibly emotional time.
In 15 years, I have 64 employees, all men, thousands of years of experience, working for me in 14 countries, plus all the factories and quarries we work with. My ex-husband was hired to do take-offs for large condo projects, and my son was hired by one of my clients. Current husband handled a lot of the banking transactions and worked as house counsel…. being a lawyer and all….. I hired over-educated girlfriends with incredibly sweet southern accents to provide basic customer service and track shipping. I did the heavy lifting and played Diplomat.
Here’s the deal. Without realizing it, and because of my mistakes, I set up our company to do what no other company could. Imagine, for instance, you’re building the Burj hotel in Dubai. You want white Thassos marble from Greece, a blue granite from Peru, a gorgeous gray marble from Italy, and you need a gold from Egypt or Pakistan, plus a black granite in a thin panel…… only made in China. Well, that meant a project manager in Dubai had to call and find companies to sell him all the material, from 5 different countries. Often, the project manager would have to travel, endlessly, to approve material, and argue with the vendors…… cuz once you arrive…. it’s never quite what you ordered. OR – that project manager could sit back, sleep well at night, and call Daughn. You know Daughn? She’s the one who sits upon her mountain top, in rural Mississippi, but could reach out and touch a quarry with a phone call……. and had people on the ground, in every corner of the world, all the time. The savings and ease of order for the project manager made my company successful in a very strange and complex market.
Now, what I haven’t told you is that the above example was an actual job for the Burj Marina. I was sent the specifications in one year, spent weeks pricing up the job, locating and shipping samples, only for the architect to decide he wanted to do it himself. Okay, fine. I was mad, but it happens. Three years later, I received a phone call from a buddy who was an Indian national, working in Doha, Qatar. He had this great order and was sooooooo excited, but didn’t know how to fulfill it…….. it was the same damn order. You think it’s a little odd? One of the most famous buildings built in the last 20yrs ended up on my desk, in lil’ ole Mississippi…….. twice? Funny that.
It has been one helluva ride….. all because I wanted a better price….. and made a whole lot of mistakes along the way.
That I was a woman was a shock to most quarry and factory owners. Contrary to America, most countries in the world don’t believe in “equality” for women, women in business, or politically correct……. anything. That I was an old-school woman, who understood the promotion of a husband’s career, was a blessing in disguise. To large factory owners, 12th generation quarry owners, and project managers, I became their business wife. I was the good wife, who could find their keys and read their thoughts. I was the problem solver who could take care of the budget for the project…. and deliver stellar material, correctly, and on time. I took care of their stress, and was often the ONLY person who could step between two powerful men who were arguing….. and, boy-oh-boy, did they ever argue.
That I was an American AND a woman, in the back end bowels of the stone business, made me a freak of nature. Many in our group, at Q Tree, are foreign or were American and now live overseas. They can vouch for this statement. I had no idea when I started, but there is a strange automatic deference given to the “American” in the room. We are presumed to be in charge. It is assumed we will lead well and…….. fairly. It’s a FACT, and as Americans, we have to be benevolent leaders as we represent more than “a regular customer doing an order” overseas. We also represent our country. No use in fighting it. Wear that red, white, and blue with pride.
I have hundreds of wild stories of Russian oligarchs, rich Arabs, hiring Polish mafia “to collect”, building embassies for countries who don’t like each other, shipping gold, oil contracts, and wild sons of rich men who get in trouble, BUT………. FLEP’s post about the new alliance he sees President Trump forming, Japan/India/USA, to throttle China, reminds me of of how much the Chinese and the Indians detest each other. For them, it’s personal. We have 11 people in China and 15 in India. I was the bridge between the two.
We won’t get into the thousands of years of wars between the Indians and the Chinese, many of you are better versed in this subject than I. This story however, will encapsulate the natural born contempt between the citizens of these two countries.
Prada is a luxury Italian designer which makes items I can’t afford and don’t need. Nonetheless, they were building out a store at Lenox Square in Atlanta. For their store, they needed black granite, but they wanted the best black granite possible. Their Italian designer for the store had rejected 36 different samples of black granite over 4 months. The project manager in Atlanta and the architect in New York were growing frustrated and the project was at a standstill. Somehow, I got the desperate phone call for superior black granite (we sell about 30 different shades of black – just out of India).
I had a hunch what they needed but promised nothing. “Oh please, you have to help us”, Antolini said. I paused for that glorious moment, hanging in the air, and said, “I’m right here. It will be okay. I’ll call you back in 12 hours. Go to bed now.” I love it when they beg, but quickly turned my attention to the task at hand. My head man in India had been waxing poetic about a new black granite quarry. He spoke of the perfection of the stone like he would his first love, the one that got away. The owner of the quarry was an old school chum. They played on the same cricket team 40yrs prior and they were both Christians, which was very important to them both. My head man was pushing me to invest in the quarry because it was “a sure thing”, but I was reluctant to drop $200K on a whim. In any event, whether I invested or not, we needed a customer for the “new” black. I had him send me a sample ASAP….. and it was truly, extraordinarily, fine. He was right.
In the meantime, the Chinese learned of the new black quarry, and I was dragging my feet on “investing” or giving the cricket guy an order. The Chinese scurry over the land like ants, looking for raw material. You can squish one, or burn down the ant hill, but the Chinese always return…… like ants. A team of purchasers was dispatched from China to make a deal for the quarry. My head man and his friend…… left the Chinese team…..in a hotel, cooling their heels…… for three solid weeks. The Chinese were at their wits end.
My sample, the 37th sample, was approved by Prada, but we were in a rush to manufacture the stone. Whatever we did in India, shipping would take 6 weeks. It’s a long way from Chennai to Atlanta. Prada, the Project Manager, and the Architect could not wait six weeks. I was ordered to charter a plane and fly it, $83,000 for the plane ALONE, and given 10-12 days to manufacture it. It was an impossible task…… that we managed to complete. My head man called an old buddy, a Raj, who owned several factories. We split the order among the three, he supervised everything, kissed the packages lightly, and sent them to Atlanta.
We pulled the best black blocks from the quarry with borrowed diamond saws from a friend of mine, and other trucks and equipment from more friends. The Chinese were jumping up and down, taking photos, making phone calls, gesticulating wildly…… and sneaking into our factories where we were manufacturing……. to drool ALL OVER our black granite. But – there was nothing they could do. I played the bad cop to the Chinese on this occasion. They were stymied by the vision of an illusive but clever American, when it was really the two Indians who would rather do business with the devil than the Chinese.
As luck would have it, when we got close to the end of the order, the luxurious silken black granite started to run bad. Very unusual, quarries usually run for years. My head man was terrified we would not be able to finish the order. We were pulling 5 blocks for one block of good material. Fortunately, we finished on time with perfect material. The rest of the quarry, by then, was pretty much a crap shoot. Bad silver veins….. and cracking. As my head man said in perfectly crisp British, “No large blocks, only pebbles.”
Prada was elated with their granite and my reputation was bolstered among the NY stuffy architects. The project manager in Atlanta was a joy to work with and I sent my ex-husband to deal with him. The cricket playing quarry owner made a small fortune on our order. Plus, he sold the quarry to the Chinese for $750K, more than his original asking price. He moved to Sri Lanka and opened another factory for manufacture of tiles. The Chinese ended up with a worthless plot of land……. and lots and lots of pebbles.
I moved on to the next order.
For perspective, this story happened about ten years ago. Yet, to this day, I can mention the perfect black “Prada” granite to my head man, and he howls with laughter over how he and his buddy screwed the Chinese. He loved it. The Chinese and the Indians are like the Hatfields and McCoys……. they’ve been fighting for so long, they can’t remember what started the argument. Yet, the Chinese and Indians are WORSE…….., they’ve been fighting for thousands of years. It’s weird though. With me in the middle, the American woman, they all get quiet, straighten their backs, and act like 8yr old school boys, who poke at each other when mom is not looking.
If Flep is right, and I think he is, we are in for a super-duper special treat with Donald J. Trump at the helm of this new alliance between Japan/India/USA. Plus, we will get a master class in geopolitics for how it all spins around the Chinese.
I can’t wait. Not enough popcorn in the world.
End.