Fifteen Years in America Chapter Two – The Professor of Duke’s Lane (Part 3)

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story as told by my dad. If you have missed the previous posts they are all in this category here:

Fifteen Years in America

Enjoy!

The next day, I arrived at Peter’s shop before 4pm. Peter introduced me to Meilan. Meilan is a Vietnamese born Chinese woman around 30 years old. She spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. She arrived in Hawaii in the mid 1970s with her parents as a refugee and worked with Peter for more than three years.

Peter told Meilan, “Please teach this man how to sell things here, and especially teach him how to price things and do solid business. Additionally you should teach him how to lock down the store at night. I have to go now. A few friends are waiting for me at a game of Mahjong.”

After Peter left, I learned a bit more about the marketplace from Meilan, and especially the skills involved in selling trinkets. Meilan told me that in these Waikiki stores generally the face price is ten times that of the wholesale price. If the item is a luxury item such as fine silver or gold jewelry then the markup is even higher. So even if a customer haggles, we could still sell it. However, we can’t sell our wares for too low of a price because our competitors sell similar things. People generally buy what is easy to sell, and if one store cuts the profit margin too low then the other stores would be quite angry. Additionally, Meilan told me a little bit about Peter. He was an international student from Taiwan. When he just arrived he worked at restaurants and went to school at the same time. After he got his degree, he bought this little shop in the international market place and became an entrepreneur. He and his wife also has an import and export company. In the few years prior to the recession their business was doing extremely well and they earned quite a good sum of money. Now business was not as profitable in Hawaii as years past, and Peter’s wife went back to Taiwan to find new opportunities. As a result Peter didn’t care about his little shop any longer, and he was glad to find me as a helper so he could go play Mahjong.

In the past I was just a professor of economics and only knew theoretic things about commerce. I didn’t know that in real life competition would be so fierce in a marketplace like this, and it really takes a good amount of work to be a good salesman.

To tell the truth, I manned the shop by myself on that first day, but after twelve hours of standing and hollering I did not even sell $100 worth of goods. After you take away my wage and rental fees from this bit of money, my boss Peter actually lost money. When he came to help me lock down the shop he checked out how much I sold. When he saw that I earned very little money he didn’t seem to disapprove. He said to me, “You just started! I really believe in you.”

That night, I felt a little depressed when I went home. If I couldn’t make a profit for Peter, how could I take his money? I had my heart set on being the best salesman in the entire marketplace.

When I set my heart on something, I always try to do my best. Thus I started studying other salespeople before and after my shifts. After a period of observations and experimentation, I discovered my own rules for being a good salesman. The following are some of my discoveries.

You must be direct and cordial, and call out to the customers first. The following is something I say often in Japanese, “Please take a look! We are having an 80 percent off sale right now!”

When two young Japanese ladies heard that there is an 80% off sale, they stopped in front of my shop. I really didn’t think that the little bit of Japanese I learned a long time ago could be so useful. However, if you want me to speak a lot of Japanese I would fail miserably. When the ladies came over I started to show them a selection of silver jewelry and other Hawaiian themed products.

“It is real silver, please try it on.” I picked out a silver dolphin ring and put it on one of the lady’s hands. Then I pointed to the dolphin and asked, “What do you call this in Japanese?”

The young lady looked at my sincere face and said, “Kore wa, nihongo de, iruka desu.” (This in Japanese is “iruka”) As she said this she lifted up her hand and admired the ring in the distance.

I stood behind her and started praising her, “Kawaii ne, anata wa hontoni kawaii.” (Very cute, you are really cute.)

Then I repeated what she taught me, “iruka, iruka”, and said “You are my Japanese teacher, and I am your student!”

The girl started to chuckle and said, “korewa, ikuradesuka?” (How much is this?)

Now I took the ring off her finger and checked the pricetag. It said $30, but I knew that the wholesale price was $2. So I plugged the price into my calculator and showed the lady that I took $24 dollars off, and sold it to her for $6. She was extremely excited that she got such a great deal, but actually the store still made a 200% profit. What is more important is that besides the small item she bought, she and her friend also bought some perfumes totaling over $150. My performance really surprised the Korean salesgirl across the way.

To be continued… More of my dad’s sales techniques in the next section! Stay tuned and subscribe to The Baglady if you don’t want to miss a thing.

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