Your Supplier Relationship Is a Dangerous Fantasy
The hum in the phone line was louder than it should be. Or maybe the silence on the other end was just that profound. He could feel the cheap plastic of the receiver getting slick in his palm, the heat rising in his neck, a prickly, embarrassing flush.
‘But Zhang,’ he said, and the name came out sounding desperate, thin. ‘We’ve worked together for 7 years. Seven. I’ve sent you photos of my kids.’
More silence. Not a contemplative silence. It was the flat, dead-air silence of a decision already made, a door already closed and locked from the other side. The question still hung in the air between Shenzhen and Cleveland: why did my biggest competitor, the one who just opened up down the street, get a 27% discount on the exact same component? The silence was the answer.
Competitor’s
(-27% Discount)
We tell ourselves a story. It’s a comforting one. The story is that business, especially in a globalized world, is built on relationships. We use words like partnership, loyalty, trust. We have supplier dinners. We send gift baskets. We mistake a transactional history for a shared future. We believe that the accumulated goodwill of 47 timely payments acts as some kind of shield against the brutal gravity of pure economics.
The Dangerous Fantasy Unmasked
It’s a fantasy. A dangerous one. Your supplier is not your partner. They are not your