I’m French, and this week I’m not particularly proud of it.
The footage coming out of France has been on my phone between every meeting, and it’s grim viewing from a hotel in Shanghai. Here, people are working, building, selling and arguing over price points and shipping dates. Back home, they’re smashing up their own towns. I know the anger behind it is real and I’m not pretending everything is fine there, but wrecking your own high street has never fixed anything. And when a buyer across the table asks me what on earth is going on in my country, I don’t have a good answer. Just a bit of shame and a shrug.
Anyway. Shanghai.
I’m here for the China Toy Expo, and the schedule is meetings all day and dinner every night until Thursday, when I fly to Hong Kong and do it all again. Every evening someone promises we’ll order “just a few dishes” and the table disappears under twenty of them. I’ve given up pretending I’ll eat lightly tomorrow. This is where the work happens, though, across a table rather than on a Teams call, and you don’t get those conversations any other way.
Meanwhile, the LA follow-ups are going well. Conversations that started in the showroom in September are turning into proper next steps, which is exactly what the trip was for.
Thank you for saying no
And then there are the people who say no.
I want to thank them, and I mean it. A clear no is one of the most underrated things in this business. It costs the buyer thirty seconds and saves me weeks. No more chasing, no more polite nudges into a silent inbox, no more wondering whether my email landed in spam or straight in the bin. We know where we stand, I cross the name off, and we both get on with our lives.
It’s the maybes that kill you. The “let me come back to you after the holidays” that becomes after Chinese New Year, then after the spring fairs, then nothing at all. A maybe is usually a no that hasn’t found its courage yet.
So to everyone who has told me no this month, thank you. You’ve been more useful than half the people who said yes and then vanished.
As for France, I wish someone there would give the same straight answer. Say what you want, sit down and negotiate, and leave the high street alone.
