The Smell of Glue and Old Paper
advancedbusiness323 words
With an investor arriving on Friday, the owner of a struggling bookbinding workshop pays to have everything fixed, polished and repainted. But the visitor is looking for something very different.
Four days before the investor arrived, Margaret Osei had the front window replaced.
It was the first of many decisions she would later describe as panic dressed up as strategy. By Tuesday she had had the floors sanded and the faded sign above the door repainted in a confident navy blue. On Wednesday she got the ancient binding press serviced by a man who charged her more than the press was worth and told her, cheerfully, that it would outlive them both.
Her accountant, Daniel, watched the receipts pile up with the expression of a man reading very bad news. 'You're spending a loan you haven't received yet,' he said. 'What exactly do you think this woman is buying?'
'A business that looks like it will survive,' Margaret replied, which was not quite the truth. The truth was that the workshop had been losing money for three years, and she could no longer tell whether the problem was the market or her.
On Thursday night she had the shelves emptied. The leather offcuts, the jars of glue, the hand-lettered price cards were all boxed up and carried down to the basement. The room looked like a showroom. It also looked like it belonged to somebody else.
The investor, Priya Lal, arrived on Friday at nine, walked once around the gleaming room, and stopped in front of the new sign. She did not sit down.
'When I was eleven,' she said, 'I tore my grandfather's old notebook in half on a bus. I came in here crying, and an older woman got it stitched back together while I waited. She wouldn't take my money.' She looked around, puzzled. 'There was a smell of glue and old paper. I've been chasing that smell for twenty years. Where did it go?'
Margaret thought of the basement, of the boxes stacked in the dark.
'Give me ten minutes,' she said, and went to get her shop back.