Over the summer of 2014, I spent a lot of time in China. I was working on an acquisition, and part of my role was to convince the employees that they should join my company. While my company was buying the Chinese company, the employees actually had the option to take their severance packages and leave. This was an unique aspect of the acquisition process in China – the seller had to give the employees severance packages that were quite large in some cases, and the buyer had to make job offers. Given that my company couldn’t actually run a manufacturing plant without the workers, getting them on-board was key to our success. This fell to me, as the HR person leading the process, it was my responsibility to convince the employees to join us. Chinese culture is such that everything is done based on personal relationships. You can’t develop a relationship with someone via email, phone or video conference. So, long story short, I was spending two weeks a month in China during the process, which extended over 5 months. Going to China from London involved an 11-hour flight to Shanghai, followed by a 3 or more-hour drive to the city where the manufacturing site was located. Given the time involved in getting there, I chose to stay for 2 weeks at a time. The benefit for the company was that they weren’t flying me back and forth to London that often, and for me, it gave me weekends to explore the country.
During one of my trips, my Finance Director and I were spending the two weeks together working on various aspects of the acquisition process where our roles overlapped. We decided that for the intervening weekend, we would go to Shanghai and explore the Chinese Markets and make a visit to the Bund (waterfront street with amazing architecture and beautiful sites in central Shanghai). The Chinese markets in Shanghai are famous for selling knock-offs, factory seconds and other dubious goods. You can also buy jewelry and pearls (that may or may not be real) very inexpensively. While I wasn’t really all that interested in going to the markets, I agreed to accompany her in her quest for a new purse (or, as it turned out, several purses). So, we made our way to Shanghai at the end of the work week. What normally is a 3-hour journey by car, becomes 45 minutes when you take the high-speed train, and we quickly shifted from work to pleasure.
Since my company had several offices in China, we ended up meeting up with a sales rep from Sweden (typical Swede – tall, blond, blue-eyed) and one of the other male managers from the UK who worked in our Global Security department. They agreed to accompany us to the markets, and to help with the bartering so that we got the best possible deals on what we were buying. I told them all that I was just along for the ride, but I might be convinced to buy some little things for Christmas stockings, since I couldn’t really think of major gifts my family would want from China.
So, we proceeded to one of the larger markets on Saturday morning. The one that we went to was in a warehouse type building where there were stalls selling various goods. Many of them sold the same thing, so the variety wasn’t that great – stall after stall of purses, selfie sticks, headphones, scarves, jewelry, and other things ‘made in China.’ We attracted a lot of attention having a very tall Swede with us (lots of requests for pictures with him, which he thoroughly enjoyed – or at least put up with since he was used to all this attention when he traveled in China). I eventually settled on buying some fingerless Ugg gloves for the girls on my Christmas list (with labels set askew, so maybe factory 2nd s). The Security manager from the UK was able to negotiate these down to about $7.50 each, so quite the bargain. The negotiation process is quite drawn out – you ask, ‘how much?’ And, no matter what price they quote you, you roll your eyes and exclaim that there’s no way you’re going to pay that much! After some back and forth, you state your final price, which the shopkeeper will flat out refuse. You then start to walk away, and the shopkeeper would come out and chase you – usually, they’d agree to your price, but sometimes they’d just come down a little to meet you half way. If you agreed that the price was good, you then bought the item. Of course, you were accused of taking food off the shopkeeper’s table, but the Brits assured me this was all part of the process. We learned what the bottom price point was using this process – if you offered a price, they refused, and you walked away without them chasing you, then you knew that you had gone below their threshold. Given the duplication of shops, you could test pricing in one stall, then go to another selling the exact same thing and start from your last stopping point with the first shop (or, if you had gone too low before, stop before you got there and agreed the price).
Using this method, I also bought some beautiful natural pearls – I wasn’t that concerned whether they were real, since we settled on the equivalent of $25 for them. I figured that the necklace was pretty enough that even if they were fake, I didn’t mind that much. This was one time where we offered a price that wasn’t accepted, and when we walked away, the shopkeeper didn’t give chase. I liked them so much, we came back later and agreed on her final price. So, all in all, it was fun (I guess, if you like that kind of thing – me, I’m much more a ‘just tell me how much this costs, and we’re done’ type). My Finance Director successfully procured a couple Mulberry purses (very popular brand in the UK). She explained that she tended to go through purses quickly, so liked to have some back-ups (I have no idea what she did to ‘go through’ purses so fast).
Later that evening, we took a taxi into the city and visited the Bund. We walked around a bit, and then had dinner at The House of Roosevelt, a beautiful old building that used to house British opium traders among others, but was recently bought by the Roosevelt family and turned into an exclusive club with a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Bund. This was one of my indulgences when spending two weeks at a shot in China. I’d eat regular Chinese food the entire time, except for one night during my trip, I’d go to a steak house. The steak houses have the most amazing meat – Wagyu, Black Angus as well as local Chinese steak. Sometimes, when having Chinese banquet every day of the week, and not knowing exactly what you’re eating, you just need a good steak. The prices were about what you’d pay in London, so I didn’t consider it to be that extravagant. Our colleague from Sweden was on the Swedish business travel policy (a government dictated limit on what he could spend on meals). He told us that he was given about $60 per day to spend. When he traveled to Mongolia, this was more than sufficient to cover his meals, and he could pocket a bit of his daily allowance. When he came to Shanghai, he was lucky to get through breakfast and lunch. (The deal was that if he spent more than this, it came out of his own pocket. So, unlike the Brits and Americans who can get all their meals covered under business travel, he was quite restricted. Furthermore, if the company reimbursed him at a higher rate, it would be taxed as income, so that wasn’t an option either). We all agreed that my boss wouldn’t mind picking up his meal, so he was able to have something more than just salad for dinner.
As we enjoyed our steaks, we noticed that all the buildings so brightly illuminated at night on the Bund were suddenly going dark, one by one. It was as if someone was running from building to building, shutting off the lights. They weren’t going dark all at once, but in sequence. We later found out that there is a requirement that the lights be shut off (to save energy) at a certain time in the evening. I guess that’s when everyone is supposed to be home and in bed? In any case, it was quite a sight to see from the top of a tall building. By the time we had finished, the Bund was fairly dark overall, and the crowds of people had left for home (or perhaps the bars nearby).
The next day, the guys decided that they had other things to do, and had their fill of the Chinese markets. My Finance Director and I decided to go out again since she really wanted another purse. Not wanting to just tag along, I reluctantly decided that I really could use a larger purse for every day. I had some nice, small travel purses that held my passport holder and phone, but I didn’t have something large enough to hold much more. Given my love of all things red, I decided that it also needed to be a red purse. So, we started to go through the shops looking at more Mulberry and large red purses. We tried out our pricing strategy, but I wasn’t finding anything that was jumping out at me, and yelling ‘buy me!’
At one stall, the shopkeeper kindly asked what I was looking for – I explained, and he said, ‘I have something in my back room that you might like.’ The FD and I looked at each other, and said, ‘Ok.’ Now, I thought that the back room was the space just behind the main display. We walked back there, and he proceeded to take down some glass shelves, exposing a door. We went through this door into a small corridor and through to another room that had some shelves and not much else. As he closed the doors behind us, we felt a little unsure about this idea. He proceeded to uncover yet another door, it was at this point that we nervously looked at each other – how much further were we going? What if something happened? No one actually knew where we were at this point, and I very much doubt there was cell coverage so far inside the building, so it was definitely one of those ‘maybe we shouldn’t do this’ moments. Yet, we proceeded through the next door into another room. This room was quite small and smelled heavily of leather. There was a very nice large, red Prada bag sitting on a shelf. We examined it – the labels seemed to be real, the zipper was evenly stitched and secure, and it definitely smelled and felt like real leather. Given what we’d seen in the other stalls, I was expecting him to start the negotiations around 450 RMB (£45 / $67). Instead, he said 270RMB! This shocked me – it was very close to the price I was actually expecting to pay, so that threw me a bit. How could I insist on paying less than £27, even if it was a fake? Of course, we were expected to counter, so I suggested 250 RMB. He then told me that he couldn’t accept that as the number 5 is considered unlucky in China. Who can argue with that? So, I ended up at 260 RMB (my knowledge of numerology wasn’t significant enough to know all of the lucky or unlucky numbers, so it was the best I could do). I handed over my RMB and he carefully wrapped the purse in an unmarked bag for me to carry out of the market.
After we left, we speculated that maybe this purse had been stolen. There really wasn’t any way to know for sure, but the secret, hidden rooms made us feel like he was hiding things for a reason. In any event, I came away with a very nice, red leather purse that had a high-end sticker on it. And, we weren’t attacked or worse. Our two male colleagues were outraged when they later heard the story. They admonished us for following a strange man into an interior room – all the things that we were thinking ourselves, but ignored. The Security Manager threatened to tell our boss’ boss how horribly we had violated basic safety principles when traveling. Of course, later this became a favorite story for our boss and his boss, as we voluntarily told them about our adventures. Fortunately, we came out unscathed, but I highly doubt either of us will be doing that kind of thing again.
After months of regular use, I retired the purse since I thought it might be better to keep it in good shape should I want to drag it out again, or try to sell it myself.
