On Patterns of Recurrence, Opportunities, and Plastic Bags Stuffed with Cash

There is a nostalgic Polish song that dominated the charts in the 1980s that is considered by some to be credo, if not the manifesto, of the generation – and the arguments they use to support this claim are quite logical. Without considering the hit in such momentous terms, I admit that part of the chorus, referring to being “granted an eclipse of the sun / While it’d take a century for the next to come”, planted itself solidly in my memory, and would later come to life with renewed force. For it is a profound truth that certain events and phenomena tend to return at specific times, even if those times, as a rule, are fairly long. Events that only happen once are a distinctive and exceptional category. They certainly exclude farewell concert tours by various stars stepping down from the stage, as that is a fairly common phenomenon that draws its renewable energy from such sensitive sources as examination of their bank account statements.

I approached the years up to the watershed year of 1989, when communism ended in Poland, from a perspective infused with hope and enthusiasm, a well-known characteristic of young people. I did not see the coming change as an eclipse of the sun, but on the contrary: the explosion of a supernova that would open paths, blaze trails, and, who knows, perhaps even give rise to an entirely new planet. It goes without saying that time and experience put certain beliefs to the test, while the knowledge you gain strips you of enthusiasm, forcing a more critical approach. Nevertheless, the belief in a breakthrough and an opportunity that only comes once in two or three generations has remained. That time of change was ably described in the ballads of the charismatic Polish guitar-playing bard Jacek Kaczmarski. Let me leave the rest to historians, only reserving for myself the space for notes jotted in this personal diary.

As I gave my farewell hugs to Horst, the Black Forest timber industry tycoon (see: “Colours of a Summer”), I already had an idea budding in my mind. Perhaps not as much an idea as a fundamental conviction that a change in system is, all things considered, a change in people’s needs. What the people of the West considered everyday fare was to us the epitome of luxury. That was about to change. Desires and urges to catch up with normality in the shortest possible time had been kindled. We now wanted the Audi and the Volkswagen, and no longer the Polonez driven by Poland’s wannabe Bond from the 07 zgłoś się! / 07, Roger! Series, with its heavy allusions to 007. Not to say that we’d rather wear real and not Polish-made texasy jeans. That demand needed no creating, which is so often the case today; it was absolutely natural, as it came from the bottom of a soul that had spent decades in fetters.

The country – or at least part of it – had money and a great appetite for spending it legally. Its owners had rummaged through the safes in their homes and the 7 and poured their contents out into the market. All that remained was to deliver the desired goods. The list was impressive indeed. If you were active in trade, you had to choose your shelf. Coffee from the warehouses of Hamburg? Cosmetics from Dortmund? French haute couture? Everything was within arm’s reach. Retail wasn’t for me, though, which is why I crossed those shelves out one by one. Quite rightly, as the future was to prove. Was it a prompt from some commercial sixth sense of mine? Perhaps I prefer the thought that it was the pursuit of individuality rooted deep in my heart, not to be combated in any way. Nearly everyone could rush for coffee and tracksuits, but I wanted to follow my own path, along the trail of my own ideas.

Good, if not the best, business starts when few have access to the goods they introduce to the market. What were these goods at the time? Cars. And before that – electronics.

With determination, the contacts I established, and the trust I built up, and also – to a certain extent – to sheer luck, I obtained the necessary bank loans, signed deferred payment agreements, and became the vendor of, I believe, five motoring brands.

Years later, I talked to one of my German business partners. At the time the only bond we still shared was a certain friendliness, and memories of bygone business done together, which is why the conversation was a relaxed one, free from business tensions and ties. He revealed to me that he had retired and passed the business on to his son. However, before joining the ranks of moneyed German senior citizens, he had browsed through the company’s ledgers. Even today I can still hear his amused voice chuckling on the phone. “You know, poring over the books, profits and losses from the past, I alternated between laughing out loud and seriously reflecting on how you managed to persuade us to do business together.”

Just like him, I didn’t know the answer to this question. Which is why I commented conversationally, “But we all made good profits on that, didn’t we?” He confirmed, laughed, and coughed, only to return to packing the suitcases, as he was about to leave for Mallorca.

My foreign partners were interested in doing business in Poland, because they sensed you can make good money here. However, they did not know our market, which is why they needed someone who knew his way around Polish reality. To have and to be: they HAD, but it was me who WAS. And that meant doing business together. I have my private definition of successful business: it only exists when both parties are satisfied. And this was precisely the case.

The times I am referring to here lacked the banking mechanisms that are taken for granted today. Transactions with individual customers were based on cash delivered in shopping bags, which you obviously had to count laboriously and meticulously. Yet far be it from me to grumble, as that had an additional advantage to the obvious financial one: you easily developed that dexterity of the fingers that musicians find especially useful.

It’s nothing new that practice makes perfect, and the banknotes issued by the national banks love to be touched. How did that song by the aforementioned Kaczmarski go? Oh yes: “Count the money, it will serve you longer.”