28th July 2005 - Olde England and Mrs. President

Posted on 2005/07/28 22:26:35 (July 2005).

Today I went back to England after wuite some time, the last was in April if I recollect correctly. The plane was delayed 2 hours for weather problems at Heatrow, which brought back many memories about the weather in Reading. Eventually we maganed to arrive. Yes this time is a "we" as I was flying together with Mrs.Donatella Ratti, the president of the company where I work. Doni is a nice woman, a bit strange maybe but nice. Apparently she wanted to go with me (so my boss said) and I have to cance 1 week holidays because of this trip. We were going to see Burberry with a selection of fabrics that are going to be featured in the upcoming collection. The business meeting I guess went well, as usual they were interested in many things, but my experince with this client says that we never manage to clinch any deal in the end, mostly because they think that we are too expensive, and because they have some historical suppliers that they do not want to change. No matter how much I have explained this to my superiors (including Doni), we HAD to go. So now I am stuck with a bunch of requests that it's going to be impossible to meet, mostly because Braghenti will be closed for 2 weeks during the summer, and we will not have enough time to develop what we need for the beginning of September. Oh well, we'll see what it can be done, I'll make up so mumble-jumble excuses/stories and I'll try anyways, since the president was there I cannot let it go without giving it a go. The trip served to know her better, to know what Ratti group is doing, to know that we are going to be moved soon to the headquarters (only the commercial+design staff, the rest will stay where it is). This last bit will be rather hard to actually swallow, as separating the production from the sales/design is going to creat a lot of practical problems that are going to further cripple a structure that is already suffering madly. I hope that they mange it in a good way, so that the shock will be minimized as much as possible (to that endavour I reccommended many times not to rush into decisions and good planning to the president). All in all it was good to see London again, it's a shame that I couldn't stop longer to meet someone there, but that's the life of the jet set salesman, as someone calls me...

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