Timing is Everything
August 13, 2010, 9:00 AM IST; Chennai, India.
It is "my turn in line" again. I noticed my vocabulary shifted from "queue" to "line," probably after living in the US for five years. Every time I stand in this line near the big wall, I manage to find something to keep my 390G busy. So, let’s begin...
I have heard this cliché from so many people: "Slow and steady wins the race."
What a lame statement! Are you serious? Are you speaking from real experience, or just repeating what you were told? Whatever the case, I cannot accept it. I have always held a contradictory opinion. My philosophy is this:
"Slow and steady can finish the race, but it cannot win it. Only strategy, speed, and calculative risk can win the race."
But let me stop playing the philosopher; I'm not particularly good at it anyway. My point is simple: you have to get your fucking timing right to get anything in life—grades, a job, money, a girlfriend, you name it!
Take this morning, for instance. I woke up at 5:30 AM to get my timing right for a 9:30 AM interview. It was pouring outside. A rainy day in Chennai, and my plan was to wear a lounge suit. I told myself, Oops, good luck with that.
Fortunately, the cab arrived on time. The driver managed to tackle and swerve through the morning traffic, dropping me off at the consulate well before I needed to join the line. It was one hell of a ride from Velachery to the Anna Flyover. Handling Chennai roads on a rainy day requires a very special set of skills.
I stepped out of the car to join the line by 9:00 AM. Rain or shine, women are incredibly good at planning for travel; they always come well-equipped. Even though I had noticed the rain earlier, it never crossed my mind to grab an umbrella before walking out the door. My mom was my savior. She handed me one just as I was stepping out of the car.
Once I joined the line, my luck wasn't completely terrible. I ended up behind a beautiful young girl. Her objective, however, was strictly transactional. She struck up a conversation with me just to figure out how the consulate process worked—what time they let you inside the building, blah, blah, blah. She was there applying for a student visa to pursue her MBA.
Since my conversation with her wasn't particularly thrilling, I turned to "people watching." Believe me, it is an excellent pastime. I saw every type of person in that line: the tense faces, the people praying to God every two seconds, the hyper-focused ones refusing to speak to anyone, and those lost deep in thought.
As my eyes wandered, I noticed that out of more than 50 people in line, only six or seven of us—including me—were holding an umbrella. Most of the others were already half-drenched from the drizzle. My mind immediately went to a cynical place: Come on, guys, it would cost maybe ₹15,000 ($350) for the consulate to install a retractable awning over this walkway. Yet here we are, treated like techno-prostitutes with zero respect.
While I was brooding over this, I saw a blue cart being pulled by two men. The items inside were covered tightly with a tarp, leaving no hint as to what was underneath. They parked the cart a short distance from the line. One man walked up to the crowd and started shouting, selling umbrellas, while the other unwrapped the sheet.
When I realized what they were doing, I thought, Seriously? Do you really need to wrap a pile of umbrellas in a water-resistant sheet (tarp)? Idiots.
But within a single minute, my opinion completely flipped.
These guys were smart, and they got their timing perfect. They were selling the umbrellas for ₹100 each. Within ten minutes of shouting, they sold more than twenty of them. The buying frenzy didn't stop; everyone scrambled to get one. The sellers demanded their price and refused to bargain even a single penny. They capitalized perfectly on the moment.
Think about it:
- Nobody in that line wanted to walk into a visa interview looking like a drowned rat.
- Nobody wanted their original certificates to get ruined by the rain.
So, everyone gladly paid the demanded price. I was completely struck by their business acumen and opportunistic smarts.
I did a little math in my head. On a normal day, they would probably sell those umbrellas for ₹60. If you are a good bargainer (a mandatory survival skill in India), you could probably get one for ₹50. Assuming a standard 20% profit margin, they would usually make about ₹10 per umbrella. But today? They were making a ₹60 profit per umbrella—a staggering 60% profit margin.
Now that is business!
They took perfect advantage of high demand. They were at the right place, at the right time, with the right product. In simple terms, they got their timing right.
In this gloomy weather, people usually crave masala tea and mirchi bajji, or maybe whiskey and rasam vada. But nobody in that line would buy masala tea while actively getting drenched in the rain. Even if someone did, a tea vendor couldn't pull off a 60% profit margin.
What those two men did today was a classic masterclass in entrepreneurship. Some might call it outrageous price-gouging, but the ultimate goal of business is maximizing profit.
This is exactly the kind of real-world lesson they should be teaching in B-schools. I almost wanted to tap the shoulder of the lady in front of me—the one waiting in line to go study business—and tell her to look at this practical lesson in making money instead of wasting her time standing there.
Then I realized that if I actually said that out loud, she would probably tell me to go repeat that speech to myself in a mirror. Ah, well.
