This Little Piggy (24) “Another one of those marathon financing meetings?” said Sandra. “No, not really. This is going to sound stupid, but Bob insists I buy some new suits. He’s made an appointment with his tailor who’s in town from London. I figure I’d better buy at least one suit or I’ll never hear the end of it.” “Honey, Bob is right. You dress like a frumpy old man. Whatever you want to say about Bob, he’s got style. I just love those pointed lapel suits he wears. Get some new shirts, too. Yours look like something Humphrey Bogart wore after The African Queen went through the Amazon.” “You’re starting to sound like Bob.” “Who knows, if you start dressing like him maybe the women will start sucking up to you too.” “Honey, be serious,” said Michael. “We’re not exactly talking Andy Garcia.” * THE ELEVATOR OPENED into Bob’s lobby which had been transformed into a British version of the Moroccan Souks with racks of custom clothing, bolts of the finest cloths and sample fabric books were neatly arranged on tables, chairs and make shift counters. A natty, and obviously diminutive homosexual, flittered over to shake hands. Michael thought Sexton’s handshake felt like a limp dick while Sexton practically had an orgasm over Michael’s firm grasp. “Ahhh, Mr. Martini, so nice to meet you. I’m Edmund. Mr. Goldstrom said you need absolutely everything. My goodness, we do look scruffy don’t we?” said the shrill, condescending voice. “Let’s start with a proper fitting. Certainly there is a first time for everything, right Mr. Martini?” For the next twenty minutes Sexton took every possible measurement and inserted them into an Excel spreadsheet on his laptop. “Maintaining copious details permits my clients to email orders between trips.” Sexton looked at Michael’s paunchy stomach and began to rub it. “Assuming we don’t gain any weight, right Mr. Martini?” Sexton then created a cloth pattern by painstakingly pinning, tucking and marking with blue caulk. Occasionally he stepped back to view the fitting from various perspectives, visualizing himself as ‘Picasso with Pins.’ About two hours later, Michael had ordered four worsted wool suits with pointed lapels, six shirts and a cashmere topcoat—also with pointed lapels. Sexton entered some numbers into his computer, printed an invoice and handed it to Michael. “As a friend of Mr. Goldstrom, I’ve included a twenty percent courtesy discount. I accept either personal checks or American Express.” The invoice read $21,485. $21,485 fucking dollars! Michael figured Sandra would have a heart attack! “I’ll use American Express, my wife loves the air miles.” Michael figured that would give him thirty days to explain. ########## Chapter 22. Hail, Hail, the Gangs All Here THE FIRST-EVER OPERATING COMMITTEE meeting could have been a skit on the TV show Saturday Night Live. The mood was relaxed, the attitude informal, the structure non-existent. Bob, nattily dressed in his signature custom English single label pin striped blues, was a stark contrast to Michael in his baggy, but proper Brooks Brothers dark grays, who was a stark contrast to the totally casual attire of the four wealthy entrepreneurs across the table. “Fellas, thanks for coming to our initial meeting,” began Michael, attempting to sound in control. “We have only two… “Freddie, remember that chink Willie Wong? interrupted Nachman. “Screaming ‘Sammy no fair, you cheat me two thousand digital cameras!’” Tothson did his chink impersonation, pulling the corner of his eyes until they were two tiny slits. “While you talk to father, stupid son is on my phone, ‘Freddie got good deal, two thousand cameras. Your friend real cheap.’” “Nice kid though,” smiled Sam. “Too bad he broke both his legs in that accident!” The place broke up. The boys were on a roll. Scarborough was appalled and amused. “Anybody know Lou Franklin, the greedy little slime ball at Mattel Toys?” chimed Foreman. “You mean ‘piss-in-my-pocket Lou?” said Nachman. “’Jerry,’ he says, ‘have I got a deal for you.’ So we thank him in advance. You know, just to be sure. Two nights of wining and dining. I even get the bastard shacked up. So what happens? Two days later, the deal goes to Associated Stores. I call the son-of-a-bitch. He moans, ‘Jerry, what can I do? My boss took the deal out from under me.’” “Tres disappointment, integrity and loyalty are no more,” said Peppard in fake French. Foreman rolled his eyes as if to say, “please,” while Kugle cracked up. “The way we would have dealt with the matter in London …” began Peppard. Nachman interrupted. “Al, give me a fucking break with that European shit! You’re from Queens. Your father drives a fucking school bus. Remember?” Michael laughed so hard his chair tilted over, depositing him on the floor headfirst. Again, the roar of laughter. “So boss, why did you drag us busy, high-priced executives here?” “Sam, speak for yourself, I only draw ninety g’s” said Tothman. “And my mother only had three daughters,” teased Foreman. Peppard started to pound his coffee cup on the table “We want a meeting, we want a meeting,” mimicking the classic Alka Seltzer prison commercial with George Raft. Everybody followed suit. Michael was now vertical. “Okay, okay. Break the young guy’s balls.” “You aren’t that young,” said Nachman. “Remember, I saw you play tennis.” “And who knows if he’s got balls,” chimed Tothson. “Gentlemen, please…give Michael the floor,” said an increasingly business-like Scarborough. “Phil,” said Tothson, “is that you Phil? Sam do we still have to be nice to Phil? We’ve got the money?” “I don’t think so,” shot back Nachman. “But let me double check with Marty!” “Okay, okay enough. Like I was saying we’ve got two agenda items. First, we need to discuss expanding our corporate awareness while we maintain individual brand equities,” said Michael. You could hear a pin drop. “Michael, would you translate that Madison Avenue double-talk into English,” smiled Foreman. “We’re simple folk here.” The natives again stirred the pot. “Yeah.” “Tell ‘em.” “Absolutely.” Michael got the message. “How about we build a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It’s the biggest goddamn trade show of the year.” “A booth. Why not just walk the floor, its cheaper?” said Tothson. “Aren’t you guys getting a little ‘long in the tooth’ to scratch and claw for every deal?” challenged Michael. Michael then made like Billy Graham waving his arms on a pulpit. “Guys, you’re now a legitimate public company. Like in NASDAQ. Given the proper stroking, prospects will come to us. We provide reliability, credibility and accountability. ” “Sounds good to me. I’m in,” said Nachman. “Anybody disagree?” No one dared. “Good.” said Michael. “Give me about a week to whip up a CES marketing plan. How does everybody’s calendar look for a review meeting the weekend of December twelfth?” The date worked for everybody. The venue didn’t. “Jesus,” said Foreman, “Michael, it’s fucking cold in New York in December. Sam, you’re always bragging about sunny, glorious Southern California.” “Done. The next meeting is at my Bel Air place. And forget the hotels, we’ve got a dozen suites at the house.” “What about room service?” joked Foreman. “Moving on,” said Michael, “Next topic—deal flow. If you look at this chart you’ll notice the group executed twenty-nine deals at an average gross of three million dollars during the twelve months prior to acquisition. Our goal this year is close thirty-five deals at an average gross of five million. That would give us consolidated revenues in excess of one hundred and sixty million for our first full year of operation. If we earn ten percent pre-tax, we’ll have pretty hefty market capitalization even with a conservative multiple, which in turn should help our acquisition program.” Scarborough liked what he heard. Michael owned the room. “To pull this off, we need to know where the hell we are at all times so we’ve created this simple reporting template. Just put somebody in charge of filling the thing out and emailing to us each week. Anytime you want to see what everybody else is doing just put your user name and password into your computer and presto you get a consolidated report like this.” “Holy cow, are we getting high tech!” said Tothson. “Listen, I’ll do anything to help you guys meet or exceed our goals. That will make the stock run, as you guys take bags of cash to the bank!” “That’s just what Freddie needs,” kidded Nachman. “Sam, that’s not the point. Money is just a nice way to keep score.” They all started laughing. Bob noticed Michael had absolute control of the meeting. Perhaps too much control. He needed a lesson in humility. * AROUND 11A.M. THE NEXT MORNING Bob casually wandered into Michael’s office. “How about a little workout at the Vertical Club before we head to L.A.? It’ll clear the cobwebs.” Bob expected the usual cascade of excuses followed by generous amounts of arm-twisting. “You’re on,” responded Michael. This surprise was followed by another surprise. The receptionist and the trainers at the Club knew Michael by his first name. As they stood on the running track stretching their hamstrings, Bob reacquainted Michael with the ground rules. “We’ll do three warm up laps, then pick up the pace on the second four and, if you’re still with me, we’ll sprint the final three.” They jogged side by side for the first three laps without Bob generating a bead of sweat. He smiled as the perspiration formed on Michael’s brow. “We’ve got to put a full court press on these bastards to produce,” said Bob as he quickened the pace at lap four. “I think we’ll be okay,” said Michael, who stayed stride for stride. Bob turned the pace up another notch at lap five. As they circled the track, the neon lights blinked overhead and Rod Stewart’s “Maggie Mae” blared over the loudspeakers. Bob and Michael overtook the other joggers who moved to the slower inside lanes. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael noticed a scowl on Bob’s face; he was not pleased with Michael’s newfound endurance. As they hit the seventh lap, Bob began an all-out sprint, his size fourteen sneakers in high step and his knees churning. Michael did likewise, except more gracefully, more effortlessly. By the eighth lap Michael was twenty yards in front of a panting, perspiring Bob. Michael looked back and waved as if to say, ‘come on.’ Michael finished the tenth lap almost a 100 yards ahead of Bob. To punctuate his conquest, Michael waited at the finish line casually leaning against the railing. A gasping Bob crossed the finish line, incredulous at what he had just witnessed. Lunch also had its share of surprises. Bob ordered a healthy, low-fat pasta salad and iced tea while the staff prepared Michael’s personal formulation of carrot juice, beets, celery, apples and papaya. He also wolfed down a bunch of supplements with exotic names like Magnesium Glycinate, Coenzyme-10 and Bromelain. So much for Goldstrom’s ‘lesson in humility.’ * “MICHAEL, I’M REALLY SORRY I CAN’T COME. Say hello to everyone for me” All’s well that end’s well thought Michael who had been trying to figure out how to uninvite Sandra to his Consumer Electronics Show tutorial with the boys in LA. He found at after the fact that nobody ever brought their wife to money meetings. Not because there was some while party. It was just that wives didn’t mix with business. In the world of back room deal making, they spent money, they didn’t make money. Sandra had yet to pick up that signal, and Michael hadn’t yet developed the brass ones to tell her the way it was. “Baby, no big deal. There probably wasn’t going to be that much free time anyway. It’s only two nights, three days then off to the electronics show in Chicago.” Sandra actually thought Michael was trying not to bruise her feelings. “Tell you what, after we make a ton of deals at the electronics show, daddy will take you out for a nice romantic Friday night dinner and whatever at that little inn you adore, Le Cremelliere. Call Martain and make dinner and overnight reservations.” “You’re such an incurable romantic,” said Sandra. “Takes one to know one.” * MICHAEL’S MARKETING COURSE IN CES 101 was about to begin. His classroom: the treś chic whitewashed living room of Nachman’s Bel Air mansion, perched high above the ubiquitous brown L.A. haze. His students: the ITI multi-millionaires plus Goldstrom. Attendance: one hundred per cent. Goldstrom’s mind wandered. The stark white décor triggered a flashback to his drug-infested playground in Malibu. Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Woman” again punctured his eardrums. The living room swirled, two women were snorting coke in Goldstrom’s bedroom as he braced himself against a huge armoire. The grunts and groans of copulation and the thunderous crashing of waves flooded the loudspeakers of his mind. The confident resonance of Michael’s voice jolted Bob back to the present. “You guys know the game plan. More qualified leads mean more at-bats.” “You talking literally or figuratively,” joked a surprisingly articulate Nachman. “Come on. Listen up for a couple of minutes,” said Michael short circuiting potential chaos. “We’ve developed a multi-tier program to generate qualified leads.” “What’s a multi-tier?” said Foreman. “Sorry,” responded Michael. “A no-bullshit program to get names.” “Ahhh.” “ About ten days before CES opens,” Michael continued, “prospects will get a ‘tease’ letter and a shoe box containing one shoe, ‘if you have an inventory problem that’s needs repair, come to booth 263, we’ll fit you with the right pair of shoes and solve your inventory problem, too.’ Each box contains a copy of these ads, which will run on page three of the Chicago Tribune every morning during the show.” Michael proudly passed around four ads—one for each company—that cleverly repackaged Nachman, Tothson, Foreman, and Peppard as ‘super-heroes,’ able to discretely dispose of massive quantities of unwanted inventories. The boys were no longer nasty liquidators; they had been transformed into ‘mainstream-solutions-providers’ with long and successful operating histories. “Gee,” said Nachman staring at his ad, “I don’t recognize me…but, hell, I like it.” “Now I can show my kids what Daddy does! said Tothson half joking. “You guys ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Michael as he pushed a twenty-two inch computer monitor to the front of the class. “When prospects visit our booth or set an appointment to meet in our suite, they get our entire pitch at our new website, iti.com.” “Hey Jerry… Dave,” teased Peppard. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.” “ Michael, what do you expect me to do with that? I don’t understand computers.” “Jerry, have you ever drawn cash at an ATM?” “Jesus, what do I look like? A dinosaur!” “Then you can run the electronic pitch. Everything is state-of-the-art, self-navigating touch screens.” “Michael, easy on the double talk!” “There’s absolutely nothing to learn,” said Michael casually. “ The prospect slides his business card here. The screen automatically brings up the questions and gives him multiple-choice answers just like an ATM machine. In less than five minutes, we capture all the key information, inventory type, size, value, timing, decisions-makers, everything. At the end of the show, we’ll gather all the leads, create a database and schedule all the follow-up appointments, coordinating your schedules of course. Every prospect automatically receives a thank you letter under your signature. The rest is up to you.” “Hell of a job. Hats off to Madison Avenue Michael. We’ll knock ‘em dead,” complemented Nachman followed by a spontaneous round of clapping, cheering and foot stomping. “Sam,” joked Michael. “Just for the record, are you talking literally or figuratively, about knocking them dead?” Rarely had anyone capped on Nachman. The room became hysterical. Michael then reviewed marketing expense allocations by company. “We’ve taken the proforma income of each company, and applied CES expenses on a pro rata basis. For example, Fred is projected to represent thirty-three percent of this year’s income, so his share of expenses is thirty-three percent.” “How much is that in dollars?” asked Tothson. “The total CES budget is four-hundred thousand dollars, so your share is one hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars.” “What about Sam?” said Tothson. “His income is projected to be about twenty-five percent of the total. So…” Predictably, Tothson began to negotiate. “Wait a minute. Sam got a lot more cash than me. How can he have a smaller percentage of the projected revenues?” “Freddie, Freddie,” said Sam, “What the hell are you complaining about? Jesus, what did you make on the deal…thirty-five million? Don’t be so such a piker! The way you hoard, you’re never going to spend what you’ve already got.” Foreman and Peppard watched the two heavyweights clobber each other with logic. “Fellas, fellas,” said Michael acting as referee. “It’s goddamn fair. Let’s move on!” There was stunned silence. “To get the direct mail effort going, we need a prospect list from each company,” continued Michael. “We’ll merge and purge duplicates. Everybody will have access to the total list.” “What does merge and purge mean?” asked Foreman. “It means we’ll eliminate duplicates so only one company sends a letter to each prospect.” Now it was Foreman’s turn to disagree. “Wait a minute, my prospects are my prospects. Why should a letter from Sam go to one of my customers?” “Give me an example of one of ‘your prospects,’” said Nachman. “Eric Bobbtas at Toys ‘r Us.” “Have you ever done business with him?” said Nachman. “No, but we’ve been cultivating him for the last three…” “Cultivate, smultivate,” said Nachman. “I’ve already done two deals while you’ve been cultivating. So how is he your prospect?”” “Sam, you know I don’t do business that way.” “But Eric does.” Michael tried to control what was turning into a real donnybrook without much success. He started banging on the table. “Goddamn it. Stop. Working together is what this goddamn company is all about. I know you guys are all richer than me, but screw you. Stop. We’re going to CES as one company. Enough of this Cowboy shit! If anybody has a problem with that they can get the hell out, now.” The room was dead silent. Thirty seconds passed. It seemed like thirty minutes. Bob was petrified. Would his dream dissipate so quickly? “Easy Michael, don’t blow a blood vessel,” said Tothson. “What you’re proposing sounds fair. Right fellas?” Everybody nodded. Bob took a deep breath. “But how am I richer than you? With 20 million shares on a …” “Is the meeting finished?” interrupted Nachman. “Yes.” said Michael.
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Copyright © 2004 Matt Crisci |