进口商业者的采访(2/3)

Though I've mostly done things my own way. But making a profit is incredibly difficult. Is that because of competition? I'm not quite sure what the competition is, really. Actually I have to admit I'm hopeless at driving a hard bargain, and I know some of my suppliers are taking advantage of that. So I have to pay a lot, which makes it difficult to sell to customers at a profit. Are margins the only problem? Well not the only one. You see, at first I tried selling lots of different products to a variety of small shops, toyshops, jewellers, and so on. But I got very few actual sales. So then I considered supermarkets. I managed to see a product development manager, who seemed interested in my range of specialist food products. But then I heard from the company that they weren't going to order anything, a new buyer had been appointed, and if I contacted them again in due course, they'd reconsider. What happened next? Out of the blue, a restaurant chain placed a large order for food products. There was some difficulty about the price, but that was settled. It sounds like a turning point. Unfortunately it wasn't. The first consignment arrived from my supplier, I called the restaurant chain to fix delivery dates, only to be told they'd stopped trading. That was quite a blow. I can imagine.