The Order of the List

Venture in Play · Case 6 — A Racine Story

Twenty-six months since the evening on Southwark Street, a year since Bristol, and two months since the four days in Montpellier that nearly reorganised the business without her.

This one is about a particular kind of blindness: not missing a number, but never having put the numbers beside each other. Racine has been run for two years on three partial views, each accurate, none of them the whole. What follows is what happens when someone finally reads across — and what it costs to fix what she finds.

As you read, notice how often the answer to a money problem is a person, and what each of those people takes in return.

Part One — The order of the list

Claire came down on the third Saturday of December and brought a spreadsheet, which was not a thing she usually did.

She had taken the five lines out of Romane's notebook and put them in order, cheapest first. The protocol for when Romane could not be reached sat at the top and cost an afternoon. The exclusivity terms sat at the bottom on their own, because exclusivity meant committing to volume, and committing to volume meant money in advance.

Cheapest first, Claire said. It's the only ordering principle I could defend without asking you things. She put the pen down. And you should know it's spent. Not spending. Spent. The last of it went into the October freight bill and I didn't tell you because there was a campaign running.

Romane looked at the sheet and not at her.

I know what I put in and I know how long I said it would last. It lasted longer. That's not a complaint, it's a fact, and it's why I drove down instead of emailing you a list. Claire waited until Romane looked up. So this is the first year the business pays for itself or it doesn't.

Then we do the top three.

That was my instinct. Claire turned her laptop a few degrees. Then I tried to work out when you'd pay for them, and I couldn't, and I've been irritated about it since Thursday.

It's on the sheet. There are dates.

Those are the dates you'd want to do them. I'm asking when the money leaves. Claire waited. Take the safety file. Lab account, specification templates. When does that get paid for — monthly, or up front, or per batch?

Per batch, mostly.

Per batch when? When the material lands, or when the customer orders, or when you invoice?

Romane opened her mouth and then did not use it.

Right, Claire said. That's what I ran into.

They cleared the table. Romane brought the folder, and then the second one, and then her laptop with the campaign file open, and Claire looked at what was in front of her with an expression Romane had seen before, at nineteen, over a different kind of mess.

Where's the one that has all of it?

All of what?

Every month. Money in, money out, one line per thing, going across. Claire turned a page. This is the autumn campaign. This is the mastic file. This is a bank statement. Where's the sheet that has the whole business on it?

I know the whole business.

I believe you know it. I'm asking to see it.

There was no such sheet. There had never been one. She had built a campaign model in the spring, which answered the question it was built to answer. She kept a running list of what she owed producers and what formulators owed her. She looked at the bank most mornings and always understood it. Between those three things she had been able to say at any point whether Racine was all right. She had not once put them beside each other and read across.

Two years, Claire said.

They worked until half past three.

Claire built it one column per month, running from the December Romane resigned to the one they were sitting in, and then a year further, because a sheet that stops at today tells you nothing. Romane read out invoices. Claire typed. Twice she had to find a folder she had not opened since the year before last, and once she had to admit that a payment to Daphne the previous March had covered two things and she could no longer remember the split.

By four they had the two years down and the columns added.

The campaign had worked. The sage had outsold the three other Sloe lines together, and the reorder rate was doing something Romane had not seen at that price. What the columns showed was what it had returned.

Claire put a box around the number at the bottom.

That's the whole campaign, she said. Your best year. That's what's left.

It's not a loss.

No. It's not anything. Claire scrolled left, then right again. And your twelve formulators are running at about break-even once you carry them properly. So the campaign holds up the business, and the business holds up the campaign, and neither is producing the money to buy next year's material.

Romane got up and filled the kettle.

Show me where it breaks, she said.

Claire showed her. It was not at the bottom of the list, where the expensive things were. It was May.

In May the sage was cut, and in May Racine paid for it, and the money did not come back until the campaign sold through the following autumn. Eight months. Every year, at the same point, the business handed over more cash than it held and then waited two seasons to be repaid. For two years it had been survivable, because Claire's money had been sitting underneath it and neither of them had said so out loud. It was not sitting underneath it now. Margot had called on the Wednesday wanting three times the volume.

Rank them again, Claire said. Not by what they cost. By when the money moves.

Romane did it on the back of the folder.

The protocol stayed where it was. Almost everything else moved. The exclusivity terms — the expensive one, the one at the bottom, the one she had already decided she could not have this year — came up to third, because paying a producer early was the only item on the list that bought her anything back.

This is the one that's true, Claire said.

This is the one I can't afford.

Those are different sentences. Claire closed the laptop. You've been running the business you can see. It's a smaller business than the one you have.

Part Two — What Kostas gets

She called him on the second of January, because she had spent Christmas not calling him.

He was in from the groves. The olive harvest had finished late and badly — a dry autumn, a thin yield, three families in the village who would not do it again next year. He reported it without complaint, as he reported everything.

So, he said. You did not call me for the olives.

No.

Then say it.

She said it. She wanted first refusal on the material from the producers he had introduced her to — Daphne, Nikos, and anyone he brought her in future. Not exclusivity. Not a lock. If someone else came, she wanted the right to match, and she wanted notice before the season, in writing, so she could plan ground and volume the way a serious buyer did.

He let her finish.

You want to match, he said. With what?

I'm sorry?

If a house in Grasse goes to Nikos in June and offers him twice, and he comes to you first because you hold this paper — what do you do? You match, or you do not. If you match, where is the money? If you do not, you have a sheet with a signature on it. He let that sit. So I am asking. With what do you match?

She did not have an answer and she did not produce one.

Then let me say what you are actually asking, Kostas said. You are asking me to take fifteen years of my own name and put it inside your company. Daphne answers me because it is me. Nikos answers me because in 2011 I did something for his brother. This is not a network, Romane. It is me. And you would like it written down so that it belongs to Racine and not to Kostas.

Yes, she said.

Good. That is the first true thing in the conversation. She heard him move, a chair, a door. And what do I get?

She had prepared four answers. A commission on introductions, which would make him a broker. A guaranteed volume, which she could not fund. Equity, which Claire would say made him a shareholder and a supplier at once and would have to be papered before anyone sane invested. A longer contract, which promised nothing the handshake had not.

I don't know, she said. That's the honest answer. I don't have anything to give you that isn't a promise.

No, he agreed.

Then he said: Come here.

What?

Come here. In the spring, when the sage is cut, come and stand in it. Not for me — I do not need it. For them. Nikos has never met you. Daphne has never met you. Two years, and they know a voice. He waited. You want their names in your company. They do not know your face.

I'll come, she said.

Then we do not need the paper. Of course you have first call. You have always had first call. If someone goes to Nikos I will tell you before I tell him anything.

Kostas — I need it written.

Why?

She could not say the true reason, which was that a signature is worth something to an investor and a promise from Kostas is worth nothing to one, and she was about to go and ask someone for money.

Because if something happened to you, she said instead, I would have nothing.

He laughed, the first time in the call.

That is a better reason than the one you were thinking of. Then, before she could answer: You need another Margot.

She had not said so.

I have been doing this since before you finished school, he said. You think I only know the people who grow. I know the people who buy. There is a man in Antwerp who has been asking me for two years where I send the sage. I could telephone him on Monday.

Let me think, she said, and he took it as the yes it nearly was.

Of course. Send me your paper. I will look at it.

She sent it on the fourth of January. He did not reply that week, and she did not chase. The paper was never signed.

Part Three — The standard

The email had come in the first week of December, in French, from an address that was somebody's name and a village.

Madame Tessier — Kostas Papadimitriou gave me your name some time ago. I have not written until now because I did not know if you were still going. I understand you are.

Isabelle Roux had eleven hectares above a village in the Drôme, planted with lavender and, on the poorer ground where the lavender sulked, helichrysum. She had taken the land over from an uncle who grew it for a co-operative that no longer existed. She distilled on site, in a still she described as older than she was. She had one buyer, a broker in Grasse who took everything at a price she called correct, and left the word there.

She did not want to leave the broker. She wanted a second buyer, so that leaving him would one day be possible.

They had spoken on the Thursday, and Romane had not understood the call properly until January, with the sheet in front of her.

You should know what you're asking before you ask it, Isabelle had said. I cut in July. Between now and then I have costs and no income. The broker knows this. He pays me at the end and he prices it accordingly, and that is the arrangement, and it has been the arrangement for nine years.

And if I wanted to buy from you.

Then you would have to be better than him. Not by paying more. By paying earlier. A pause on the line, the sound of a room. Everyone who says they care about where things come from wants to pay at the end. The ones who mean it pay at the beginning. That is the whole of it, Madame Tessier. It is not complicated.

She spent two days of January finding out that Isabelle was describing the standard rather than a preference.

Buyers who took provenance seriously advanced money against the harvest when the producer asked. They were expected to price the advance no worse than their own cost of borrowing. They issued a plan before the season began saying what they intended to take, so the grower could commit ground to it. It was set out in half a dozen places by people who had been doing it properly for thirty years.

Racine had done none of it. Every producer Racine bought from was paid on delivery — the broker's arrangement under a different name, run by a woman who sold closeness for a living.

What Isabelle wanted was an advance of roughly a month of Racine's running costs, sent in March, against a July cut. On the re-ranked list it was the same item that had come up off the bottom: pay the producer early, and the producer holds ground for you.

She would have to send it in March. The sage would not be cut until May. Margot would not pay until the following November.

Part Four — Two ways of asking

The mastic order came in the second week of January, from Priya, who had grown.

Her brand had two products now and a third in bench trials, and the new one needed mastic — a proper quantity of it, well beyond anything she had taken before, for a launch she had already booked studio time for. She wanted Nikos's, specifically. She had never met him either, but her label had read Chios for two years and she was not going to change it.

Racine held the stock. It was the previous summer's cut, hand-cleaned over the autumn, sitting in a bonded store outside Rotterdam because that had been cheaper than bringing it in. It was the one material in the range that could sit and wait without spoiling, and it was worth more than anything else Racine touched.

Romane read the order twice. Then she called Priya and asked her to pay for it up front.

It was, she had established over two evenings of reading, an ordinary thing to ask. High-value material, limited supply, a quantity well above the buyer's history. Cash in advance was one of four standard terms in the trade and it existed for this situation. It was also the least competitive term available, and offering it alone was how you lost people.

Priya was quiet for slightly too long.

Can I ask why?

Because I need the money in March, Romane said, and you'd be paying me in May.

Right. Another pause. Is Racine all right?

Romane had two seconds to decide how much of the truth to spend, and spent less than she should have.

Racine's fine. Racine's growing faster than it's funded, which is a different problem.

That's a very good sentence, Priya said. Did you practise it?

Yes.

Priya laughed. And then she said yes — half on order and half on shipping, which was not what Romane had asked for but was more than she had any claim to. Priya had taken the first order when Racine was a woman with a spreadsheet and a sample, and had asked for nothing then.

She called Margot on the Thursday. Three weeks had passed since Margot's own call, and Margot had been waiting for every one of them.

Three times the volume, she said. Tell me you've done the numbers.

I've done the numbers.

And?

And I can't buy it. The sage is cut in May. I pay for it in May. You pay me the following November. That's eight months where the money is out of the business, and at three times the volume there isn't enough of it. It isn't a pricing problem and it isn't a demand problem. It's a calendar.

The Bristol end was silent long enough to be an answer.

So what do you want.

Three things, in the order Claire had put them in.

The price went up by a quarter, because the campaign had been priced when neither of them knew whether it would work, and now they both did. Margot argued that one for eleven minutes and then stopped, because two stockists were asking and she had said so herself in December.

The sell-through data became a term rather than a favour — not the summary Margot had built by hand, but the numbers underneath it, every month, in whatever form the till produced them. That cost a discount off the invoice, which Margot proposed before Romane could.

Then the third one.

I need you to pay for the material at the cut, Romane said. Not on delivery. In May.

You want me to buy your stock for you.

I want you to buy the stock you've already ordered, at the point it exists, instead of six months later.

That's the same sentence.

It's the same money, Romane said. It's a different business.

Margot took a day. When she called back she had conditions. First refusal on the following season's sage before it was offered to anyone else. A say in the phase-three volume. A delivery date — the autumn, in time to run the campaign again, at whatever the May cut actually yielded. And a clause, phrased pleasantly, about what would happen to the material if Racine stopped trading.

You understand what you're asking me for, Margot said. If I'm funding the harvest, I'm not really a customer any more.

Part Five — The shelf

Sara agreed to a coffee in the third week of January and named a place near Marylebone.

Two years since the last one. Sara had said come back with a range, and Romane did not have a range. She had twelve formulators, one brand partner, and a campaign that had outsold three lines.

Sara did not ask about the range. She had heard about the Sloe campaign — she heard about everything — and she wanted to know whether it had made any money, and Romane told her the truth, which took less time than the lie would have.

That's more useful than a good answer, Sara said.

Neither of them mentioned that Romane had sat in a room with her while still employed by someone else. It was there, in the way an unpaid bill is there.

I want to ask you something you can say no to, Romane said. You see the whole shelf. I see one brand. Did it work because it was provenance, or did it work because it was Margot?

Sara put her cup down.

That's the first interesting question anyone's asked me this year. She took her time. Both. The story moves units — I've watched it move units on products that had no business moving. But it only moves them when the founder can tell it. Half the brands I buy have a provenance line on the back of the pack and not one of them can say a word about it in a room. Margot can. That's not nothing, and it's not the same as what you're selling.

So I'm selling something that only works with the right buyer.

You're selling something most of them don't know how to use. Sara turned her cup a quarter turn. Which is a worse problem and a better business, if you can stand it.

Romane had rehearsed the next five minutes on the train, and the rehearsal had the word range in it. She did not use it.

Racine was the sources. The growers, the ground, the documentation that made the claim standable-behind. And what she had that nobody else had was that she had now watched thirteen different people try to build a product on top of them, and had seen which of those attempts survived contact with a customer.

So the offer was not buy my range, and it was not buy my ingredients. It was: let me help you build yours, on material I can stand behind, using what I have learned from everyone who has done it before you.

She said a shorter version of that. It took about ninety seconds and Sara listened to all of it.

You should build the range, Sara said.

I know you think that.

I do. It's where the margin is and you'd be good at it. She let it go. All right. Then you want a founder who can tell a story and hasn't got a supplier who lets her.

Yes.

Yasmin Adeyemi. She left Mercer Braun about eighteen months after you did. She's got two products, she's about to have four, and her sourcing is a broker in Rotterdam who sends her a spec sheet and nothing else. A beat. You worked with her. Personal care, the reformulation year.

Romane had worked with Yasmin Adeyemi for fourteen months. She had liked her. She had not thought of her once.

I'll want something, Sara said. If you ever do build a range, I see it before anyone.

Done.

On the train she wrote the name in the notebook, and the date under it, and the word mastic.

Coda — The sheet again

She rebuilt it on the Saturday, on her own, and it took two hours instead of six because she knew where everything was.

The campaign line was larger by a quarter. May was no longer a hole, because Margot's money would pay for the sage at the cut. The safety file had the beginning of a budget. There was a page called If you can't reach me that had gone to four people and cost nothing to write.

The advance to Isabelle would go on the seventeenth of March. Romane checked the figure three times. To within a few pounds, it was one month of what it cost to keep Racine open.

The hire had a job description, a salary, and a note in the margin that said not this year.

Nothing sat under any of it. The row where Claire's money had been ran to the end of the previous autumn and then stopped, and every column after that was the business paying for itself.

The trip to Greece was not funded. She could reach the Drôme for the cost of petrol, three hours north of her parents. She could not reach Chios or the Mani, because the flights and the week and the fortnight of sales running at half speed came to more than the safety file, and a regulator does not wait for a good quarter.

She wrote it in the notebook, on the page after Isabelle's line about paying at the beginning:

Money to the producer I have never met. No money to go and see the one who made all of it possible.

Then, underneath:

He will not say anything. That is worse.

She scrolled left to the row she had not looked at.

She had two leads and no second customer. The larger one wanted sage, and the sage was spoken for until the following season by a clause she had signed in December, in exchange for the thing that fixed May. The smaller one wanted mastic, which was hers, which kept, and which came out of a different month.

Neither had been agreed. Neither had been sold.

Brand partners: one.