Page 18 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

so trips out with my dad were a real treat. To this day, if you
blindfolded me and gave me a piece of leather to feel, I could tell
you if it was calf’s leather, sheepskin, lambskin, pigskin or suede,
thanks to those trips out with my dad. When you buy leather it
comes in rolls of ten skins, and my father would always inspect
each skin. As they are a natural product, sometimes they would be
an awkward shape, or have a hole in them and the pattern
wouldn’t work. He could visually calculate how many pieces he
could get out of each skin, and if he couldn’t make the right
patterns he rejected the skin because otherwise the wastage was
huge.
As we’d be leaving, I’d asked him why he’d agreed to pay more
for the leather than the trader had initially asked for. The dealer
had been prepared to sell at £10, but my father had asked him if
that was enough.
‘You could have got it for less!’ I told him.
‘Sure I could, but if he had sold it to me for the lowest price, he
wouldn’t have made any money on the deal himself.’
I didn’t understand, so he explained that everyone was entitled
to make a living, and if dealing with him allowed the trader to stay
in business rather than go under, then he was building a
relationship with the trader that benefited everyone. The trader got
to expand his business and find better deals, and he could then pass
those deals on to his best customers.
‘Successful business’, he taught me, ‘is not about good transac-
tions, it’s about good relationships.’
There are few things anyone has ever said to me that have had
more of an impact than that.
My father’s business did well, and as kids we always had nice
clothes and toys and food on the table. However, I knew my dad
could have afforded a much nicer house, a far better car and that
we could have had holidays like the other kids at school, but he
was still saving his money so that he could go back to Pakistan.

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