Chapter 16

“You are gonna to have to go back to China, Sasha,” Peggy was saying. “That’s the only way. Well, not the only way, but the quickest and cheapest – the most cost-effective – way.”

“Oh my god! I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

“Wow!” Peggy exclaimed. “To say that you are unenthusiastic would be the understatement of the century, it seems to me. It can’t be that bad. Can it?”

“Oh! If you only knew, Peggy. If only you knew. China is hard. Negotiating with suppliers is hard. Shipping is hard. Hell, even, shopping is hard!! I really don’t want to go.”

“I don’t know what else we could do, Sash. If we postpone the opening to a month, maybe six weeks or so, max, after the date we had original decided, we would still fall into the seasonal schedule, otherwise we would do better to wait for next season, but in order for us to do that, to stay within the schedule, we will need to move really, really fast, which means you go to China, do some purchasing and ship them as freight that travels with you. Expensive proposition, I get it, but it would be less costly than to wait for next season, or to just wait for the container to arrive and then just go with whatever schedule we can recuperate.”

“How much of what we need can we source from the US?” Sasha asked.

“Well,” Peggy began, “technically, everything we need we could source from the US. The reality is, though, that some of our suppliers there will be sourcing from China, anyway, to sell to us, so we’ll be working with long lead times, and we will have no control over when they arrive.”

“Oh! That’s not much of an option, then.”

“No. It isn’t. Let’s look at how we can get the China thing to work, then. Maybe Lionel knows somebody we could trust to do the purchasing and shipping for us at such short notice – that would ensure that the things arrive on time – barring some disaster or something, and then you wouldn’t have to personally go over there.”

“Well, yes. I suppose we could ask him. I just don’t want to bother him too much, what with his brother being so sick and everything.”

“What’s everything?” Peggy wanted to know. “There’s his brother. What else is there?”

“Well, you know,” Sasha tried to explain, “Erm! Erm! Oh, I don’t know. His work, his family. Maybe he might just not be feeling so good. You know?”

“No, I don’t know, Sasha. What’s the problem? I’m sure he knows someone. His father’s company has been shipping out of China for years, not so?”

“Yes.”

“So, ok then. He would know how to find somebody there who knows how to do this and do it quickly. That’s all I’m saying. It wouldn’t even necessarily have to be Lionel himself organising this. He could just tell his people what we want and put us in touch with them and then we can take it from there and he’s free to take care of all his other business.”

“I suppose,” Sasha reluctantly agreed. “You’re right, of course. And he did say he will continue to work on this for us, even from California. It’s just me being silly, I guess. I’ll talk to him about it. I will.”

“Good,” said Peggy. “Very good. Now, this is the list of the things we are going to need urgently. These must be procured first of all. With these we have an opening and a working spa that can take appointments, without these we can’t continue. We might just as well go home.”

Lionel, when Sasha did finally speak to him about her decision, sensed her uncertainty and doubt and immediately set about to reassure her. It had taken her a couple of days, however, before she was able to get over her hesitation and specifically ask him for help. She had known that Peggy was right. She knew, of course, that she needed additional assistance and of course, he had been helping her all along, and she had not had to ask him. He had offered his help right from the start – in fact, he had been offering her his help and support, unstintingly, ever since Dandan had brought them together in New York. He had been very open and forthcoming right from the start, asking questions, offering suggestions, sharing his experiences to help her make her plans and possibly avoid certain kinds of business errors. She had not been very receptive, she acknowledged now, not for the first time, but this time without trying to make excuses or to rationalise anything.

She finally acknowledged that she probably would have been much further ahead with her business plan, and quite likely would have avoided the catastrophe of her first months in international business, had she allowed Lionel to help her right from the start. That was an entire year that had gone spectacularly wrong. She had lost a lot of money and used up a lot of time. She had learned some lessons, but she was finally realising that she really should have listened to Lionel’s advice. And, furthermore, she should at least have trusted her friend Dandan to have connected her to someone who was not only able but was also willing to help her. She should have trusted Dandan to know, but she had not.

Over the last few weeks, Lionel had spent a lot of time and even used his own resources to help her, without her having asked. He had offered. He had volunteered. He had even shown up at the spa and put in the work exactly as if he were an employee of SasSha’s in Provo, and yet, she was still feeling uncertain. Now, after her conversations with Peggy, she was beginning to wonder if this reluctance was about Lionel or if it really wasn’t just to do with her. She looked back at the way she had struggled with the China piece of her business plan, how hard it had been to find somebody in China to work with. She looked back at the many hours she had spent online searching for companies and agents and equipment and materials, all by herself, and at all those additional hours on the phone, plus the five or six trips she had made to China, and grew despondent. She could have saved herself much of that, prevented much of that from happening, had she been trusting enough of her friend Dandan, even if not of Lionel himself, all those months ago. She was beginning to realise that.

Sitting on a rented boat in the Turks and Caicos Islands with the prospect of another period of challenge and failure looming large in her very near future, was not a good place to be, she reasoned. She thought about this space she had rented in this large hotel in a part of the world that was as unfamiliar to her as China was, and began to despair. She had tried to remain positive – or even just objective – ever since the container went missing. She had been determined not to fall into that trap of what-if, and “maybe I should have” and she had managed fairly well, until now. Today, it seemed that she was unable to talk herself out of that particular hole. She was not having much success. She realised that, and it only made her feel worse.

She had listened to Peggy. She had listened to Lionel. She had looked at her situation and what she saw was failure threatening, again; more money going down the drain; more time being lost; more plans gone awry. It didn’t matter that Lionel had tried to reassure her that this happens with businesses all the time and that she would be able to recuperate and successfully open her business. Right now, she was entirely unable to process any of that. It took her a while, but finally, in desperation, she put in the call to Lionel in California.

“Yes,” he told her, “I will have my guys continue to work on this, of course. I’m back at the office tomorrow, so I will sit with them and explain everything we have done so far. I’ll have you on the phone, too, so you can all coordinate, and we will get this done.”

“Peggy has made a list of the things we absolutely need in order to open,” Sasha explained to him, “and she had this brilliant idea! She thinks we should offer a limited suite of services for like the first three months – because we will have limited availability, anyway, and we will promote it, as time goes by, as us offering additional services because of demand, to build up interest and engagement, she says. So, I ran it past my marketing advisor and she also thought it was a brilliant idea.”

Lionel agreed. “I think so, too,” he said. “It is a fabulous idea. And you see, Sasha, that’s what I mean when I say that all is not lost even with such a huge inconvenience. Even when stuff like this happens you can almost always figure out a way to do even better business from it. This is a masterstroke. Peggy rocks!”

“She does, she does,” Sasha added. “She does, so she and I did up a roster of services that we will offer for the first three months, and Winnie, that’s the marketing advisor, she is working up the strategy, the language etc. It’s coming together, it seems.”

“And, yet, even with all this, you sounded like misery itself when you called me.”

“Aww, man! You have no idea,” Sasha said. “It just all seemed like such a huge, hopeless task – call China, go to China, buy new stuff, follow up on the original stuff, deal with US Customs, not to mention TCI Customs all over again…Oh! I was… I was…man! I can’t even begin to describe how I was feeling. It was awful. It was hell!”

“I understand. But, now that you have made a decision – and it is a good one, too – and now that you have a new date, and a plan, you realise that it is not impossible, and in fact, it is not actually the end of the world!! Yes?”

“Yes!”

“Ok, so, now, we can really get to work. Now we know exactly what we’re trying to accomplish, we know where we’re going…and we know who’s having to go to China...” Sasha moaned loudly as he said the last part of that sentence, and he laughed out loud.

“It’s not so bad, amore. It’s not so bad. I’ll help you with it. Don’t worry. We got this. Ok?”

Sasha was still struggling with the thought of that trans-Pacific journey and the hustle, bustle and bureaucracy of Shanghai. Her “Ok!” was half-hearted and pained. Lionel laughed again.

“I got you, babe. I got you. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. It’s just…I’m still…processing. I’ll be fine. I’m already feeling much better. You’ve been great. I don’t even know how to thank you.”

He laughed again. “Erm! Don’t worry about that. I’ll tell you how, eventually! I’ll tell you.” She laughed with him.

“Ok,” he went on, “So, let Peggy make whatever arrangements you need to make about travel and so on, and I will continue working from my end. Let me know what dates you decide on for China so that I can keep my people in the loop. Ok?”

“Ok.”

“Cool. I gotta go now, babe. We’ll talk later.”

“Yes. Ok. Be safe. Thanks again. For being so wonderful.”

“For you, my darling. For you.”

“You’re filling up my heart, Lionel. I don’t even know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Sasha. Or, you can just say whatever you feel to say, whenever you feel ready to say it. I love you. We’ll talk later.”

And before she could even think, he was gone. When she did finally say what her heart been telling her to, she suddenly realised that he was no longer on the line.