Not the margin, but the person first
23. It is enough to have done today's part.
He booked the flight on a Tuesday. No particular reason for the Tuesday. He had the number of the factory contact from the first trip — the man who paused before answering because he was calculating honestly. He sent a message the night before. The man replied within the hour. He would be there.
This time David knew what he was looking for.
The factory was the same. The smell of it, the particular temperature, the sound of the floor. He moved through it without needing a tour. The contact — Mr Leong — had pulled out a tray of cables for him. He picked up each one. He was not looking for the cheapest. He was not looking for the most advanced. He was looking for the one that would still be working in two years, that would not fray at the connector, that would charge without generating heat you shouldn’t be able to feel.
He found it in the third tray.
He asked about the specification. Mr Leong told him. He asked about the tolerance on the connector housing. Mr Leong asked the floor manager. The floor manager showed him. David picked up the cable again. He bent it at the connector joint, twice, where cables always broke. The joint held.
“This one,” he said.
Mr Leong nodded.
He asked about the poly bags.
Mr Leong pointed him to a trading company two streets over. He walked.
The company was on the second floor of a building that also housed a lamp parts supplier and something that smelled of adhesive. A woman behind the counter, mid-forties, who spoke barely enough English to understand what he needed and ask the right questions.
He described what he wanted. The padded bag sealed flat around the cable. Instructions printed on the front — simple, honest, not a wall of text. A clear section at the bottom for the address label. Enough white space around it that the label would be readable from a metre away. He was thinking about the postal worker, about the customs form, about the moment the bag had to do several jobs at once.
She laid out samples.
He picked one. “Can you print two colours,” he said.
She said yes.
“Black and white.”
She nodded.
He described the layout. Brand name on the front, clean, not large. Instructions underneath in two sizes — the main point in readable type, the secondary point smaller. Space at the bottom. On the reverse, nothing except a small mark for the production batch. The black cables will go in the black bag with white lettering and the white cables in the white bag with black lettering.
She wrote it down.
He asked about minimums. She gave him a number. He could live with it.
On the way back he stopped at a stationery shop. Not for anything specific. He was thinking about the cable inside the bag — how it would sit, how it would come out. He’d ordered cables before for the studio, for trade shows, and they always arrived in a snarl, wrapped around themselves, needing to be unwound before they were usable. A small annoyance. The kind that made you not want to buy the same thing again.
He found what he was looking for in a bin near the door. A roll of velcro strip, the self-adhesive kind, cut into small sections. He bought the roll.
He brought it back to the factory.
Mr Leong turned it over in his hands.
“Small,” David said. “Pre-applied to the cable. So it comes out of the bag already held.”
Mr Leong understood. He said he’d have to check the line, it would add a small cost per unit. David said he understood.
He waited. Mr Leong came back with a number. David said yes.
He sat with Mr Leong over tea before leaving and thought about the price.
He thought about the actual person.
Someone who needed a cable, who was not thinking about cables, who would see the price and either buy without hesitating or not buy at all. Below the threshold of deliberation. Below the point where you weighed it. And good enough that when it lasted two years, when the velcro still held and the connector still seated cleanly, they’d come back without needing to be reminded.
He arrived at a number. He wrote it down. He looked at it.
For a moment he saw the other thing — the range of it, how you’d extend a product line from here, adapters, multi-port, the categories that would follow naturally if you let them. It was there, full and legible, the same way a room layout arrived before he’d finished walking through the door.
He let it pass.
It felt right — not optimized, just right. He didn’t adjust it.
He placed the order.
Minimum. Two colours: black, white. Four weeks for production and the bags.
He shook Mr Leong’s hand. Mr Leong walked him to the lift.
On the flight back he didn’t open his laptop.
He had four weeks. The bags would be printed, the cables wrapped, the velcro applied. Someone on a line he’d never see would do that work.
He wasn’t going to spend the four weeks preparing to sell. The platforms would take an afternoon when the stock was ready. He knew the names — Lazada, Qoo10, a few others. He’d set up the accounts when he needed to.
He looked out the window. Cloud, then sea, then the particular green of the peninsula coming into view.
He thought: it is enough to have done today’s part.
Two weeks later he ran into Rena — he recognised her from the building where he’d had the studio. She’d worked two floors below — he’d seen her in the lift, at the hawker stall across the road. She had a coffee cup in one hand and was carrying a rolled mat under the other arm.
She said she was setting up a yoga studio. Small space, Orchard Road — lease signed, renovation underway, business name sorted, website still being built.
“How far along is the website?”
She made a face. “Quoted me two thousand.”
He took out his phone. Scrolled, then turned it toward her — a name, a number. “Filipino team. I use them for the e-comm side. Half what you’ll pay here. Fast, they understand what you actually need.”
She photographed the screen.
“Don’t stretch it with all the features,” he said. “Clean, fast, done. For the relationships — use WhatsApp. That’s where it actually happens.”
“Come for class,” she said. “Tuesday and Thursday, seven in the morning.”
He said he would.
He went on the Thursday.