A Month to Break the Year
Dmitri sat rigid in front of the television, nerves drawn tight across his face. Today was the European Cup final. President Park Jihoon had said the commercial would air in the very heart of prime time, and that meant one thing: by the end of the night, most of Europe would know the name Mad Bull.
I'm shaking. God, I'm shaking.
The broadcast preview rolled on, and the advertisements began to come, one and then another. Jeans that stood for America. A hamburger empire. A sports drink. After them, one of Europe's great automobile houses, and a famous coffee besides. Wedged in among companies like those—was Mad Bull really allowed?
Then it came. A picture so rich the color itself seemed to glow.
There it is. Out it comes...
Men in their prime tore after the ball as if the running might kill them, and perhaps because their faces were so bright, simply watching lifted the spirits. Ralph, in the middle of it, was wonderful at the face-acting. President Park Jihoon's shot, climbing from chest to face, needed no praise at all. And last of all—glug, glug—Tennessee, throwing back a cola the way a man throws back a Mad Bull.
"Kyah—ahh."
Whoever had made that advertisement, it was perfect. It was perfect. For a while Dmitri lolled there, soft in the head, like a man already drunk. He was fairly sure the spot would run again at the half. Let the match be a good one. Let the ratings climb and climb.
Ah. If there was one regret, it was the pairing in the final. It would have been better if Real Madrid had come through.
Hm. There was a manager called Hiddink? The name was unfamiliar. And yet—
Something in that name smells like a great commander.
Hard to say why. Perhaps it was only that strange feeling.
"All right. PSV, you win."
Dmitri, who had no tie to the place whatsoever, decided he would cheer for the Dutch side.
The morning Super Family went on sale, not a restaurant was open at that hour, and the people waiting seemed to be making breakfast of bread. Shared hobbies will do that to strangers.
"Excuse me."
They had never met, and still they approached one another with care.
"Which one did you pull?"
"Hornchub."
"Ah, I got a duplicate. If you wouldn't mind, might a trade be possible..."
There was time to spare in any case. Waiting was dull, so each of them bent over the trades with a fervor. Only after the stickers had been safely gathered did they begin, one by one, to eat. Care had gone into the baking; what came out was cheap and genuinely good. Even so, bread is bread. However well you make it, it will catch in the throat. That was when the tabs cracked. They drank Mad Bull. A discount came with the set, so the people who had chosen Capsulemon Bread had, for the most part, bought the drink as well.
At the end of that long, patient wait, the moment they had dreamed of finally arrived.
"Please enter in the order of your tickets."
"Super Family, Super Orlando, and Capsulemon, please."
"The second D-Que and Capsulemon collaboration is out too, isn't it?"
Some three hours later, a notice went up enormous across the front of the store.
The next morning, Italy. For several days Park Yonghak had been going through the country's motor houses with a fine-tooth patience. Fiat, the people's car. Maserati and Alfa Romeo, old bones of the racing world. Lamborghini, a latecomer that had nonetheless carved out a country of its own. And Ferrari—the very word for a sports car, the root of roots.
Perhaps it was standing in the homeland of the automobile. The refusal to ever surrender Hyeon-gang cars welled up in him, stubborn and unstoppable.
That was when Jo Sudeok sidled over, hoping to let the air out of Chairman Park's sudden fever.
"Chairman, the materials you asked for are ready."
"Out already?"
The papers had been prepared by the Future Strategy Office in any case. Jo Sudeok had only carried them.
"The projected earnings for Capsulemon and Mad Bull, sir. I heard the explanation myself, but..."
Looking through the documents, Chairman Park let a smile rise.
"Fair bit of money."
"Pardon?"
"Months getting ready, a whole year in the field. Ought to sell about this much."
"Ch-Chairman."
"What."
"That isn't... a year's harvest..."
The chairman only stared.
"It's a month's sales, sir."
"You say what?"
"Just as I told you. Not a year. A month..."
"They made this much money in a month?"
The look that came over him was a man struck suddenly sober. And no wonder.
"Sell drinks and make this, who's gonna break his back building cars?"
"Th-that's right, Chairman. The development costs are worlds apart, and the margin on this side is far better, so..."
He was laying the ground, meaning to suggest that they might, while they were at it, fold the automobile business or at least shrink it. And then—
"No."
Park Yonghak wrenched the wheel and threw the whole thought into a U-turn.
"You buy some no-account drink outfit and haul in money like this?"
Jo Sudeok had no answer.
"Now picture a boy like that with a car company set square in his hands. How much you reckon he'd bring home?"
The Chairman's mind is built on an entirely different frame from mine.
President... I'm sorry!
And so Jo Sudeok's plan, today as ever, came to nothing.
While Capsulemon and Mad Bull were doing their part, fashion was quietly producing results of its own. The brightest of them was, without question, Guccio.
When I sent Jo Sudeok to America, I had told him to pick out capable people from Parsons School of Design. In truth I had exactly two names in mind, and he brought in both without missing one. One of them was Guccio's legend, Tom Hood.
Tom Hood—the legendary designer who would blow a modern sensibility through a brand on the verge of death. In the ordinary course of things he would not even join as a junior for another five years or so. Knowing what he could do, I made him an offer outrageous enough to startle the room.
"Please take the post of creative director at Guccio."
A seat that was, in practice, little different from chief executive.
"It's all right if you fail. I'll bear every bit of the blame. All I ask is that you finish the most Italian, the most elegant fashion there is."
He was barely into his twenties, and packed solid with invention. I gave a young man like that the whole of the power, and exempted him from the responsibility. Perhaps that was why. Tom Hood all but flew. Even Faber, who sat at the top of the industry, could only shake his head: ten designs a day, easy, each of them enough to still the tongue. What astonished me was that the gift was not confined to menswear. Womenswear, too, he handled with a frightening talent. In a word—
A jackpot. An absolute jackpot.
The moment Tom Hood's first collection went on sale, Guccio's share price leapt by more than fifty percent. The shareholders, of course, had no choice but to treat it as a festival. Perhaps because I had turned up Faber and Tom Hood one after the other, my name seemed to be passing rather freely around the fashion world.
"Park Jihoon again?"
"What does that man trust, handing the work to green kids like that?"
I dislike stepping to the front. Even so, I had raised the price of my name for exactly one reason. I was preparing to take Luy Vuitton.
When Tennessee heard the plan, his face flushed.
"An acquisition... don't tell me I have to open somebody's heart again."
The Mad Bull affair must have bruised him. He looked thoroughly unwilling.
"Don't worry. This time we can settle it with money."
"Yeah?"
"Fortunately—if you can call it that—Luy Vuitton is in a share war right now."
You know the kind. The fight over equity that gets fought to protect control. If history ran as it had before, the chairman of Luy Vuitton would ask Christian Dion for help against an enemy inside his own house. Dion would take that hand. And somewhere in the taking, Dion's chief would swallow Luy Vuitton whole. The white knight who arrived offering help would devour the castle. A catastrophe, if you liked. So—
Taking my hand would be better for you in every way, wouldn't it?
I was turning that over when Tennessee asked, suddenly serious.
"They're fighting over shares. So we just walk in with sacks of money, don't we?"
"If we were stopping at Luy Vuitton, yes."
"But since we're also thinking about taking the Harris Group, we have to save every bit we can?"
I nodded.
"So what's the scheme this time?"
At that, I only gave him a small smile.
That evening. Paris. Luy Vuitton Headquarters.
It was a family trade come down four generations from the founder, and perhaps for that reason a pride sat in Chairman Henri Vuitton's face. I had heard the situation was urgent, and still he did not readily speak of money. He did not need to. The desperation could be read, well enough, in the tremor of his eyes.
"I have been watching President Park Jihoon's moves with great interest."
"I'm honored."
"I also read the interview in the London Times. It moved me."
The interview had drawn a fair amount of notice. The clothes I had worn that day drew more.
"People seem very taken with the ring and the bracelet the president was wearing."
Henri Vuitton's gaze traveled to my arm.
"Is what you have on now...?"
"Yes. It is."
"A brand you run?"
"No. Only a small concern in which I hold a stake."
"Whatever President Park touches really does run hot."
That was enough ice broken. Time for the point. Henri Vuitton offered a light smile, and then he asked.
"Well, then. Why did you ask to see me?"
"I came to pull Luy Vuitton out of the mire."
"Most people wrap it up, don't they? We've come to help, and so on."
"Wrapping is bound to come off eventually."
I left a beat, and went on.
"You're defending control, aren't you?"
He said nothing.
"Buying up shares is a pit with no floor and no end."
This was a kind of vote. To buy shares was to buy voting rights, and of course the cost would be enormous. There was, however, a way to beat the other side without spending a cent: prove that I was the capable candidate, and draw the shareholders' overwhelming support. He knew that in his head. Knowing and doing were different things.
"That is... hardly easy. If it were easy, I would already have—"
He got that far, and no farther. Henri Vuitton's eyes flew wide.
"Surely you don't mean that President Park intends to help with that?"
"Not help. A transaction."
"A transaction?"
"I will recommend a designer. Please produce the bags he designs, day and night. Acquire as many factories as you like. You do not stop. You keep producing."
A swallow. The Adam's apple jumped, large in the throat.
"And what does President Park gain by that?"
"The enormous trust of the shareholders."
His eyes went wide again.
"My aim is a Luy Vuitton that cannot do without Park Jihoon."
"In the end, that sounds no different from the wolves running in after control."
"Did those wolves ever sit and speak with you like this? Did they offer any wisdom about winning the shareholders' hearts?"
Of course they hadn't. They only hid in the back and worked their schemes.
"I have laid my desire out in the open. Take my hand and bring them down, or bleed through the fight and meet some fresh danger. The choice is entirely yours, Chairman."
Henri Vuitton's eyes wavered for a moment. Then, as if the decision had settled, he asked heavily.
"So you want me to hand over my shares."
"Hardly."
He only looked at me.
"Issue new shares."
"Then the shareholders' complaints..."