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the sole agency and could not compete against Amos, who intentionally sold below his cost price, the sole agency, was rescinded by the manufacturer.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