AM in Belgium, and other such diversions

January 26 -  An unexpected turn of events took me and AM to Belgium.

Long standing readers of this diary will recall that more years ago than I care to remember we nearly acquired a Belgian supplier of kit that was at the time key to our business. For what I still think to be good reasons we did not do so, but we did help them with cash flow at the time to ensure their survival and our continued supply.

I learned the lesson. We diversified supply and ended up making a lot of our own kit (not as hard as it sounds – it’s basically an assembly process rather than actual manufacturing). The result was we ended up a lot less dependent on the Belgian supplier. 

We may not have been alone: they have gone bust. But in that I saw an opportunity. Someone has to supply their customers for the sort of kit we use and now supply. We went over to see if we could acquire the customer base. We made a modest offer and have come back with the list we wanted, having also had a bit of time out to talk about things.

I am aware taht I am not objective about AM anymore. Don’t get me wrong: my affection for her is fatherly, nothing more. She is young enough to legally be my daughter although I admit I’d have been a teenage dad. Since giving her away at her wedding, only to see that fall apart after discovery that her new husband had been pursuing a long term affair whilst engaged and married to her, I have been especially concerned for her well-being. It was therefore good to see a new spring in her step when we went out for dinner last night. Even her dress sense seems to have lifted – and her hemline with it! I knew she was attracting attention and I got the sense she was enjoying it. It looks like she’s ready to move on, but not from this company I hope.  She’s invaluable and much as I value East for all his practical qualities AM is the person in whom I have greatest confidence now to deliver sound business judgement. She proved that in these negotiations, playing the tough cop to my good cop. It worked. And she’ll be the one who will now be working to extract value from the spend as we go into overdrive to supply some new continental customers.