His face fell.
“A good Christmas promotion should give our sales the boost we need, but to make it work I’ll need a little help from you by lowering those prices.”
“I knew you would ask me for this, Felix,” the winemaker said. “Our business is good but we live in competitive times. Allow me to introduce you to our new Export Director, Signor Rizzo.” Morelli beckoned to someone unseen behind the dark veranda window and a smartly dressed, beaming man with immaculately oiled black hair stepped through the sliding doors.
“Signor Hart-a!” He grasped my hand and clapped me on the shoulder. A waft of rich, musky perfume enveloped us both. “It is such a pleasure to meet our biggest and most-a favourite customer!”
“The pleasure is all mine, Signor Rizzo. Please call me Felix.” His muscular perfume started to prickle my nostrils and I felt a sneeze building. “And our businesses will have an excellent future together, so long as we can agree on a special price for the Christmas season.” I looked him in the eye and he winked back, rather impudently I thought.
“Felix. Please call me Marco.” Then in a lower tone, “I agree. We must revitalise our business. And we have a business proposal for you. We want to make this the biggest ever Asti Spumante Christmas for Gatesave-a!” Rizzo sounded the vowels with an Italian flourish. Amazing how the Italians can make even a British supermarket sound glamorous, I mused.
A sudden pop and a broad smile from Morelli signalled the opening of a rather lovely Franciacorta, an altogether more serious fizz. Condensation dripped from the dark green bottle as he poured three glasses, the bubbles frothing up the glass furiously then subsiding just as they reached the brim.
“Here’s to a sparkling, market-a-beating Christmas!” sang Rizzo. “Salute!”
“Salute!” Morelli and I chimed as we clinked glasses.
“Dinner at nine,” purred Rizzo. “I think we should open some very special bottles.”
Morelli’s winery was set in a beautiful old farmhouse with a huge patio abutting the vineyards. For the evening meal a large table had been carried outside and filled with plates of salami, croquettes and metre-long grissini bread sticks. Morelli and Rizzo were already at the table, talking seriously in low tones, while a dozen or so winery staff chatted noisily among themselves. Rizzo broke into a wide smile on my approach and rose quickly, gesturing to the seat next to him.
“Felix, sit here next to me as our guest of honour, of course-a! Sergio, you go over there, the ladies, when they arrive, can go there and there… Ah! Signorine!” he exclaimed as two excitingly dressed young women joined us at the table. “This is Anna, my girlfriend, and this is Teresa who helps me with exports. Teresa can sit the other side of you.”
She sat next to me and held out her hand. “Hi Felix, nice to meet you, I am Teresa. Like Mother Teresa, but I am not really like Mother Teresa,” she teased.
No shit, I thought, wondering whether my gaze had already lingered longer than appropriate on the liberally unbuttoned orange silk top, half-covering her firm, tanned breasts. Her bare brown legs, of which only the very tops were covered by her brief suede skirt, knocked against mine as she slid along the bench to take her place next to me.
“Scusi,” she grinned, with a flash of perfect white teeth.
“Buon appetito!” declared Morelli, and the table was filled with outstretched arms, lifting slices of melt-in-the mouth salami and scoops of carne cruda, seasoned raw veal mince, onto plates. Corks popped and the estate’s own superlative Gavi wine was sloshed into large glasses.
“Salute!” grinned Teresa, bringing together our glasses, her leg still pressed against mine, not that I minded in the slightest. Teresa grabbed a huge grissini stick and broke off the first few inches. She bit the piece in two and placed the other half on my plate. Placing her hand on my shoulder she confided, “I could never do the Atkins diet – I just love bread too much.”
I nodded, my mouth stuffed with grissini dipped in molten Piedmontese cheese.
“And who wants to be a sad, skinny girl with no curves anyway?” she demanded, pouting prettily.
“Who indeed?” I replied, my charm well-oiled by the excellent wine. “You clearly have the perfect diet because you look absolutely perfect.”
Teresa moved even closer, a breast now grazing my arm, and spoke quietly but assertively into my ear. “You are a gentleman. A fabulous English gentleman. No wonder you are so successful and powerful. I look forward so much to working with you.”
She speared a fried pig’s trotter with her fork and shook it onto my plate. “Here, try this. It’s called batsoa. It means silk stockings.” She lowered her voice and made a mock-serious face. “But it is not the season for stockings, is it?” She laid her hand high on my thigh and gave a little squeeze under the table. A flush of heat rose to my cheeks and another started to build an inch or so from her fingers.
“So, Felix,” said Rizzo to my left. “Let me propose my business idea before the next course arrives.” With more than a little disappointment I turned away from Teresa, who kept her hand in place.
“We want to sell more Asti Spumante. So do you. Our problem is you have so many other wines to choose from. Prosecco, Cava, Champagne. Even those wines from Australia.”
A snort from Morelli.
“The Australian wines are good!” scolded Rizzo. “The people in England drink these wines. From Australia, from Chile, from the South of Africa. This is our problem, we cannot be arrogant!” Then back to me. “So, for Christmas we will offer you the best price you have ever seen on Asti. Ever.” He paused, glancing at Morelli.
“And what might that price be?” I asked, waiting for the inevitable wafer-thin discount off the normal price.
“Twenty-five cents per bottle.” Rizzo stared at me with apparent seriousness.
I paused for a moment. “Twenty-five Eurocents? Signor Riz… I mean Marco… Twenty-five cents is a tiny fraction of your production price. I assume that’s a joke?” I gave a thin smile. Bloody idiots, I thought, is this their idea of fun? Where’s the next course anyway? I was still hungry and could see the kitchen staff hovering just inside the cucina doorway, waiting to serve. I picked up my glass and took another mouthful of Gavi.
“No Felix,” said Rizzo quietly, “I am one hundred percent serious. I will offer you this price. And in exchange…” another pause and a glance at Morelli, “you will-a buy five million bottles.”
My mouth was full of wine and I mis-swallowed, sending a painful lump of air and Gavi down my throat. I goggled at Rizzo, trying not to choke.
“You see,” he continued, picking up his own glass, “we want to dominate Christmas in Great Britain. We want Asti Spumante to be the only sparkling wine the British people buy. And with your super-low price, it will be. When they have tried it once, they will buy more and they will never go back to dry old Cava or expensive Champagne again. The future will be Asti Spumante – the future for both of us, Felix.”
He continued to look me dead in the eye. I had to admit there was logic to it, but it seemed a pretty desperate gamble on their side. “Do you even have that much wine?” I asked. “That must be half your annual production. And you’re proposing to sell it all to me, ignore your other customers and lose a fortune?”
“Not lose, Felix. Invest. Yours is a healthy, growing market, people love to party, they love to drink. In this country,” he waved his arm towards the town beyond the vineyards, “people are moving away from wine. We want to make our own future, create a new market. Think about it over the pasta!” Rizzo waved to the staff and they approached with the next course.
“Salute Felix,” said Teresa from my right. I turned and she chinked glasses once more. The red Barbera paired the tangy, salty gnocchi perfectly, its initial bite followed by a warming fruity body on the finish. I took a long sip.
“The offer is aggressivo, yes?” smiled Teresa, “But we can offer it only to you. Only you have that buying power, the power to make a whole market. The oth
er supermarkets, they are too small.” She raised a dumpling to her lips and a drop of buttery sauce ran down her chin. She wiped it away with her napkin and grinned. “Your business would be very happy, I think, if you made such a success of Christmas. Maybe they would promote you?” She turned her face closer into my ear. “Will you remember us when you are CEO?” she breathed, a hand moving very slightly higher up my thigh.
The plates were cleared and more wine arrived, an old Barolo. “This is from our wine library Felix,” called Morelli. “We usually keep this for family. But serious discussions call for serious wine.”
A great bowl of Brasato al Barolo was placed on the table – thick, moist slices of beef and chunks of vegetable, marinated in local red wine and herbs. A waiter opened the wine.
“So what do you say? Do we have a deal?” pressed Rizzo.
“I need the cold light of day to think about this, Marco,” I replied, transferring a fabulous-looking chunk of glistening beef to my plate.
“Come on Felix,” whispered Teresa. “This is the most exciting deal I have ever seen. Let’s do it.” I could feel her breath on my neck and my blood was up again. Rizzo took the bottle of Barolo and poured me a glass. I gave the glass a swirl and an intoxicating perfume of roses and dark berry fruit filled the air.
“What’s there to think about, Felix?” insisted Rizzo. “The price is unbelievably low and you know you could sell-a the wine. You have hundreds of stores, put a nice big display at the front and there will be a bottle in every basket. A whole case in every trolley.”
“Five million bottles,” I muttered, shaking my head. But it dawned on me that it might just be possible. I’d be fighting for the prime spot at the front of our stores with that bastard George Bolus and his half-price Irish cream liqueur. But nobody would have a cost price like mine. I’d have the superior margin and that would give me dominance over the other buyers’ products in the fight for space. In retail, he who delivers the highest margin triumphs.
“And this is the same wine that we always buy, same quality of bottle and cork?” I asked. “We would need to conduct tests on the wine as it arrives in the country. If it’s sub-standard, you can take it back. And the same goes if we start getting customer complaints.”
“Naturally!” Rizzo raised his hands, palms up, making a face as if I had questioned his parentage.
I thought for a moment. The words of old Clive Willoughby at Charlie’s Cellar floated through my head, ‘If a deal’s too good to be true, it probably is’. But this seemed watertight. They were clearly desperate, but that was to my advantage.
“I think we may have a deal,” I nodded.
Teresa squealed and clasped my head in her hands, turning my face to hers. She planted a very firm, slightly open-lipped kiss on my mouth, ending with a very brief invasion from her tongue. She looked me right in the eyes. “I am so fucking excited!”
Rizzo, meanwhile, had risen to his feet and was holding his glass aloft. He tugged on my arm to rise with him and I reluctantly removed my hand from Teresa’s thigh, where it had found a warm and uncomplaining home.
The hubbub around the table died down and Rizzo addressed the group in Italian, announcing the deal. Before he had finished, the table erupted in applause, cheers and calls of ‘bravo!’ Rizzo turned to me and clinked glasses, beaming from ear to ear.
“You’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse!” I smiled.
Rizzo broke into a grin and clapped me on the back before regaling the crowd with a translation of what I had just said, giving me the chance to try the exquisite old Barolo. It slipped down very easily. Everyone burst into laughter, and one of the winery workers shouted something back, upon which they roared even louder. Rizzo put his arm around me, staggering with laughter. “He just said, ‘That’s a Sicilian winery deal. Tell our client he can relax, we’re in the north!’”
I laughed along, helped by the infectious hilarity and the barrel-load of wine I’d consumed. Funny buggers, I thought, something lost in translation there. Still, whatever makes you laugh.
4.5
Conference Season
It was the end of September which, in the retail world, means conference season. Every major supermarket chain competes to put on the most bombastic show possible, boasting of their formidable sales growth, thrusting developments in e-commerce and exotic success in foreign markets. And Gatesave, with its monstrous market share, was expected to put on the best spectacle in the industry.
As a newly minted Senior Buyer, I was obliged to attend. And so, with a heavy heart, I returned from Italy to the somewhat less glamorous environs of Birmingham, where I joined the CEOs and sales directors of Gatesave’s thousands of suppliers at a huge arena just out of town.
The agenda remained the same from year to year. Gatesave’s directors mounted the stage accompanied by a burst of soft rock music, to present evidence of the company’s prowess. The aim was to build an overwhelming sense that every supplier should be moist with excitement at the prospect of selling to us.
The presentations always ended with an ‘ask’ – a heartfelt request for suppliers to do more, to stretch every sinew to make the mutual relationship even more successful. It was an ‘ask’, of course, in the same way that a machete-wielding burglar ‘asks’ an old lady to contribute to his weekend cocaine fund.
You might expect the normal reaction of a crowd being ‘asked’ to drop their trousers and take a painful rogering would be displeasure, bordering on a rock-hurling riot, but the truth was these suppliers were completely reliant on their business with Gatesave. Many of them supplied more than half of their turnover to us, meaning the loss of their contract would almost certainly be the end of their company. And Gatesave knew it.
I took my seat near the back, next to a smartly turned out woman in a red skirt and jacket. I nodded to her and she, clocking my Gatesave staff badge, gave a nervous smile back.
“Sheryl. Great to meet you,” she lied enthusiastically, in a lovely Mancunian accent.
Poor cow, I thought. She’s ended up sitting next to a Gateway Senior Buyer so she’ll have to be on fanatically good behaviour. I looked at her lapel badge, noticing the generous bulge under her smart white blouse. Sheryl Bainbridge, Sales Director at Wigan Hardware Ltd.
“We’ve proudly supplied all your own-label mops and dustpans since 1983,” she explained desperately.
“Jolly good. I’m Felix, Senior Wine Buyer.”
Her eyes opened wider. “Ooh. I love wine!” she exclaimed. Then, suddenly embarrassed, she composed herself. “In moderation of course.”
“Well I’m a big fan of housework, actually. But also in moderation.” I gave her a smile and nudge with my elbow and was rewarded with a little intake of breath and a more knowing smile back. Fabulous, I thought, eyeing her blouse surreptitiously once more. I wonder if you’re attending the after-show party. But before I could ask, the lights dimmed and the murmur of the audience faded.
Quietly, a scrum of hard-faced Gatesave store managers fanned out through the arena, taking up station along the aisles and in front of the audience. But they didn’t face the front – they kept their backs to the stage and watched the massed ranks of the audience instead. Their job was to scrutinise the suppliers and catch any sign of dissent, whether a heckle or just a worldly roll of the eyes. A particularly thuggish barrel-shaped character with a crew-cut, who I recognised from the Sutton Coldfield store, took his station at the end of our row. I flashed him a sarcastic grin as our eyes met and his mouth curled in hatred.
Out of the silence, the chorus of Starship’s ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ erupted and a cheesy disembodied compere’s voice boomed, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to… the forty-fifth Gatesave Suppliers’ Conference!”
The hard-faced management guards whooped fiercely and pumped their hands together, eyes daring the massed ranks not to do the same. The suppliers, pale smiles in place, unanimously joined the applause.
“And now… give a massive, ta
rget-busting Gatesave welcome to our CEO… Roland Bonnaire!” He pronounced it ‘boner’, holding the final ‘errr’ sound several unnecessary seconds. Well, that’s your first and last compering gig for Gatesave I thought, as the less mature members of the audience, myself included, let out a howl of laughter.
“Behave!” whispered our tubby guard with a snarl.
Up yours, sunshine, I thought, giving him another smile. Senior Wine Buyer outranks duty fruit and veg manager, old chum. I’d love to see you try and report me for inappropriate sniggering.
Starship’s lyrics suddenly increased in volume, and Monsieur Bonnaire strode from some hidden place in the wings to centre-stage, grinning widely, white teeth dazzling under the spotlights. He applauded himself slowly and shook his head with delight and mock disbelief. His flawless orange skin shone like a genetically modified Satsuma as he pointed and waved, accompanied by a little laughs of fake recognition, at a couple of random points in the audience.
“I lurve zat song!” shouted the beaming Bonnaire, giving a little jig, still shaking his head with incredulous delight. The music and applause faded and Bonnaire took a couple of steps further forward, suddenly serious. He pointed at the audience.
“I am serious guys. To understand my strategy, you only have to listen to zis song.” He raised his hand, pointing to the heavens. Sheryl had removed a notepad from her bag and her pen was poised.
“Take it to ze good times.” I looked sideways at Sheryl’s pad. She had written ‘good times’ neatly next to a pre-printed bullet point.
“See eet through ze bad times.” ‘Bad times’ was dutifully recorded alongside the next bullet point.
“Whatever eet takes, eez what I’m gonna do.” A faint ripple of sighs shimmied across the arena, as two thousand suppliers prayed they hadn’t invested a return rail ticket and a night’s accommodation in Birmingham solely for a French-accented recital of soft-rock lyrics. The crew-cut manager scanned our row intently, trying to spot anyone exhaling disrespectfully.
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