What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography (26 page)

I was scheduled to meet Waco Trading the next day, so I sent a telex from the hotel to the fellow from the United Africa Company giving him my contact details and saying I'd get in touch if I could help him with the purchase of some radio cassettes.

Seeing Waco Trading was an interesting experience. In stark contrast to
Shomei, Waco's headquarters were quite plush. Walter Colson, an elderly man in his seventies, sat behind his giant desk in a grand, wood-panelled office. Outside sat what looked like some quite serious executives, including one European-looking gentleman who turned out to be Walter's son, Ronnie. I discovered later that Ronnie was fluent in both Japanese and English, which he spoke with an American accent, and was a bit of a playboy, mixing with Tokyo's mostly foreign elite.

Walter expressed the usual surprise at my age, then introduced me to his general manager, Mr Sakai, a round-faced man in his forties with slicked-back silver hair. He was Japanese, but dressed like a Westerner, in fashionable clothing. He was a real smoothie and must have spent some time in the USA, as he also spoke with a slight American accent. He was totally untypical of what you'd expect a Japanese man to be like. Walter also introduced me to a trendy young man called Joe Oki, allocated to me by Waco as my contact man.

After the niceties and introductions, Walter sussed that Ann would be bored out of her brains and offered to send her around Tokyo with his wife, so as to free me up for his band of vultures. Walter's wife was Japanese - tall, attractive and thirty years his junior. She spoke perfect English and I was happy that Ann would be in good hands.

Most of that first meeting with Waco was spent exploring what else they could sell me. Joe and Sakai gave me a grand introduction to all their staff and so-called specialists.

Sakai had heard that I was Jewish (as was Walter, of course) and thought it quite cool to include in his spiel a few Jewish words here and there. There is nothing worse than a non-Jew using Jewish quips and expressions in the hope of impressing a group of Jews. It's bad enough when English gentiles attempt it, but when someone Japanese tries it, it's like watching white police officers trying to dance at the Notting Hill Carnival. Embarrassing.

I've witnessed lots of attempts by non-Jews to speak in this way and, looking back, I guess Sakai would have got 4/10 for effort. Colin Lewin would get a creditable 8/10 and Gulu, bless him, 9.9/10 - he had great pronunciation with his 'huchs' and 'nuchs'.

Anyway, despite the plush offices and trendy staff, it was clear that Waco Trading were agents sitting between manufacturers and overseas importers. I placed some more orders for cassette decks, but stipulated that they had to have the new Dolby noise reduction system; without it, orders would dry up. As middlemen, they fed this back to the manufacturer, Orion.

I also gave them some information about the United Africa Company's
requirements and they told me that Orion also made radio cassettes and could accommodate some orders for a version with shortwave radio, as required for the Nigerian market. They quoted me some prices later that day. I added a big margin and telexed the United Africa Company chap in London. I wanted to honour my promise that I would look for radio cassettes for him, but having thought about the logistics of him paying me, me paying Waco and then arranging all the shipping from Japan to London to Lagos, I thought, 'This isn't going to work - it's just a dream.' So I gave him a 'go away' price, a price so high he would say, 'No thanks,' and go away. And that would be it.

When I woke up next morning, a light was flashing on the panel beside my bed - it was a message from the hotel's Business Centre. I rang them and, with impeccable service, a telex was immediately brought up to my room.

I couldn't believe my eyes! The fellow told me to order as many shortwave radio cassettes as I could get hold of in the next two weeks, taking into account the limitations of component supply and factory output.

I told Ann about this. She didn't understand how crazy this situation was - she must have thought that this was how business
is
- but she could see I was excited. All she said was, 'Oh good, that's good.'

I was on a roll with this nutter. It seemed that he was going to buy bucket-loads of every product I offered him. Clearly the guy did not know what he was doing and, quite honestly, I knew deep down that this couldn't go on.

Here comes another business lesson, one that I used for many years afterwards. I've got an order with a big margin - so that's in the bag. I've got the prices from the supplier, but they don't know I've got an order. The stupid thing to do at this point would be to rush back to Waco Trading and say, 'Okay, we'll take so many of these and so many of those.'

As soon as it was office hours, I called them from the hotel and said, 'Okay, I could use 3,000 of these and 2,000 of those and 1,000 of those, but I think you must have made a mistake. The specification is correct, but the prices you have quoted are surely the retail prices I've seen in Akihabara.'

What must have seemed strange to the Waco Trading people was that they'd offered me some products that were alien to my range and within twelve hours I was interested in buying some - this was not normal practice. Anyway, Waco went into some bullshit about how domestic prices were really low because Akihabara sold at low prices to attract customers, blah, blah, blah. I told Sakai that, as he liked to try to speak like a Jew, he really should understand that I was twenty-eight years old and my Bar Mitzvah had been fifteen years ago - so cut the crap.

Truth was, I never saw any of this stuff in Akihabara. I made Waco a counter-offer, which I just plucked out of mid-air, about 30 per cent lower than their price, while still banging on about what retailers' margins would be.

Time was of the essence, of course. In truth, there was just a small window of opportunity to juggle with and get this thing done, but it's never a good thing to be seen to be rushing to conclude a deal. I took a risk and told them to forget it, that their prices were a joke. They must have thought
I
was the joker because no one makes their mind up that quickly. One minute I'm saying I can take thousands, the next I'm saying forget it. Anyway, it paid off because they left some frantic messages for me at the hotel to call them.

To cut a long story short, after a few twists and turns, we made a deal. Then there was a bit of dancing around, with them trying not to be rude. What they were trying to ask (but didn't have the balls to) was: could I come up with a letter of credit or guaranteed payment, because they didn't really believe in me that much. To be fair, it must have seemed odd that someone of my age could just swan in one day, ask for a quotation on products I hadn't even seen or tested, then give them an order a day or so later.

I'm quite perceptive at recognising this type of thing, so I came out and told them to their face, 'I can see you are worried about getting paid. I can understand this and it's no problem.'

I explained the unusual set of circumstances and was able to confirm with my office that I had been paid upfront by the United Africa Company, which meant that I, in turn, could get the money to Waco within a few days.

When I confirmed with the chap at the United Africa Company that everything was going ahead, I also supplied him with some specifications for clock radios made by Orion. Sure enough, the next morning the light was flashing beside my bed.

Ann must have thought, 'This seems easy, this
work
that you do. You send a message and quote a price, they send a message back and say they want to buy it, and you just organise it - quite easy.'

I told her, 'What you are seeing here is an absolute, one-off phenomenon.'

Very rarely in life do you come across opportunities like this, and you have to grab them. Realistically, this was not long-term business - it was opportunistic; strike while the iron's hot, make some money and get out.

Two factors combined to bring about this windfall. Firstly, as I've mentioned, it was quite clear that this man was not an experienced electrical buyer, as he never negotiated on the prices; and secondly, there was the one-in-a-million situation in Nigeria, whereby all civil servants had been given
loads of money to spend on themselves. Obviously it all dried up in time, but I reckon I must have earned around PS50,000 from that episode, a phenomenal amount of money for a twenty-eight-year-old in 1975.

One evening, we arranged to meet Walter Colson at the American Club, where they were screening a Western film for American and British ex-pats living in Japan. It was close by, so Ann and I decided to walk there from the hotel. On the way, we were stopped by a policeman who demanded, 'Identification! Identification! Identification!'

No one had told me that we needed to walk around with identification. My passport and business cards were at the hotel. There were no such things as credit cards in those days and we certainly didn't have identity cards. In fact I had nothing at all on me to show who I was.

The policeman only seemed to know one word of English. Fortunately, we were just about outside the American Club and Walter's wife was waiting for us. She saw the policeman talking to us and came over. I asked her to tell the policeman that we were willing to get in his car and go with him back to our hotel room to show him our passports.

He wasn't interested in hearing that. I asked Walter's wife to reason with him that if he took Ann and me back to the police station, what would he then do other than go to our hotel and get our passports, which is what I was offering?

He finally agreed and got on his walkie-talkie to call a police car. Then something must have happened because he just waved us on, as if to say, 'Okay, go away.' Walter's wife explained that there were student uprisings going on at the time, and some American students were involved. I guess to this cop, Ann and I looked like a pair of Western hippies. From that day onwards, I kept my passport with me whenever I was in the Far East.

This first visit to Japan was a great eye-opener for me in all sorts of ways, not least in helping me start to get an understanding of Japanese culture. First of all, they are very nervous and are always seeking assurances that the people they're dealing with are honourable. Honour ranks very highly in Japan. An early message came through from both Harry and Waco that it is better to bite your tongue than make idle promises. Respect within the Japanese business community is gained by actions rather than words. This was to influence my future ethos - I adopted a Japanese mentality from then on. Regrettably, I would find that this mentality was not shared by many of the people I did business with outside Japan. One's word had to be one's bond - simple as that. One's promises had to be honoured. I think it is fair to say that if you speak to any supplier of Amstrad over the past forty years, they'll tell you that a
handshake from me is better than any letter of credit or hundred-page contract. This would be my hallmark going forward, a decision that paid dividends in the end. I built up a trust with my suppliers - I would not lead them up the garden path or intentionally cause them any financial embarrassment.

We were entertained very well by Harry and Waco. Harry kindly invited us to his house, where we met his wife and two children. Talk about a culture shock! The first thing that was alien to Ann and me was that we had to take our shoes off. Okay, no problem. What
was
very difficult to live through, however, was the slap-up meal Harry's wife had arranged and had no doubt spent the whole day preparing. In the middle of the table was this metal object boiling away and in it were lumps of meat and odd-looking vegetables. Also on the table were strange looking shellfish, creatures I'd never seen before in my life. Having been brought up in a Jewish household, one didn't really know about shellfish. Up till now we'd mostly eaten Western-style food in the coffee shop at the Okura Hotel, but here we were in the embarrassing situation of being confronted with what looked like items you'd be forced to eat if you were a contestant on one of those reality shows in the Australian jungle.

I tried to explain politely to Harry that we were suffering from jet-lag and that in England we prefer very plain and simple food. I apologised for not eating some of the stuff. In hindsight, this must have been a tremendous insult to his wife, but both Ann and I simply couldn't consume what was put in front of us. We struggled through that meal.

The evening was topped off with a traditional green tea ceremony performed by Harry's daughter. It reminded me of doing art in infants' school, when we used to prepare the paints out of powder, because what was served up in my cup was a lurid liquid that looked like bright-green paint. The evening was becoming more and more embarrassing. As part of this ceremony, the guest of honour, namely me, had to drink the first cup of this stuff, which I reluctantly did. It was
atrocious
- worse than Milk of Magnesia or Pepto-Bismol. How I didn't throw up, I don't know. To be honest, we couldn't get out of there quick enough. And when Harry dropped us off at the hotel, we rushed to the coffee shop to get something to eat.

Regrettably, the hospitality continued, and inevitably Walter's wife invited us to dinner. They had a far more Westernised apartment, as Walter's origins were German, but alas, once again the food was Japanese. We were served stuff which turned my stomach so badly, I had no alternative but to ask to go back to the hotel. Again, very embarrassing.

I don't know whether it was the fact that we'd travelled thousands of miles to the other side of the planet, but something had thrown my metabolism into a complete tailspin. So much so that on returning to England, I visited a number of doctors to try to find out what was wrong with me. Their best diagnosis was that my trip had kick-started a duodenal ulcer. Can you imagine - an ulcer at the age of twenty-eight? I thought that ulcers were associated with stress in people who are much older. As life moved on, I would find that one of my weaknesses on the health front was my stomach, but that's another story.