No business, no friendship
No business, no friendship
When browsing through my diary I came across the following
memo. More than three decades ago, when I held the
distributorship of Tiga Durian safety matches (there were only
two distributors) this commodity had no competitor (in fact the
import was banned) especially in West Java; So business was
brisk.
Many wholesalers from downtown Jakarta curried my favor and
they came to my house at any time of the day; the Dutch saying
is: Zij lopen mijn drempel plat (literally: They trampled my
threshold flat). They vied with each other to get the largest
possible allocation from me. In such a case, merchants in general
were the friendliest people on earth.
Afterwards when the shareholders of the match factory decided
to sell the factory and I was no longer doing business in the
above-mentioned commodity, those same merchants suddenly become
strangers to me. Even if I met them on the street, they acted as
if I did not exist, such was the mentality of some of the
merchants in downtown Jakarta.
Mr. Amos and Mr. Baba (not real) were bosom friends; both were
shrewd and cunning in business. When Amos was still struggling to
survive in the business world and Baba was already financially
strong, Amos had even been a hanger-on at Baba's dwelling for
some time. However, when Amos became a successful businessman and
coincidentally both were doing business in the same line, namely
stationery, competition was so keen that past friendship was
totally ignored. Amos imported the same stationery from Singapore
(the commodity originated from Japan). As Baba held the sole
agency and could not compete against Amos, who intentionally sold
below his cost price, the sole agency, was rescinded by the
manufacturer. Amos came to the fore to take over as soon as he
had safely secured the sole agency for Indonesia, he immediately
increased his selling price of the commodity in order to get a
substantial profit.
From the above example we learn that the struggle for life
among the merchants in downtown Jakarta is severe. Friendship and
gratitude do not count (are irrelevant) when competition in
business becomes a matter of life and death.
A. DJUANA
Jakarta