Our First Agent in Dar es Salaam — Over in Eight Months

In May 2015, in Dar es Salaam, I signed our first local agent. Surname Kigama, in the auto-parts business, with a storefront off the ring road.

In January 2016 we ended the partnership. Eight months, 110,000 yuan lost. This article is about that tuition.

Why we picked him

Machines shipped to Tanzania, and customers kept asking about after-sales. I was in Guangzhou; one flight over is twenty hours with two connections.

Kigama came recommended by a friend of a friend. The day we met he showed me his warehouse — room for ten machines, four workers under him, wrenches on the wall, a lift on the floor.

His offer: handle receiving, customs clearance, storage, and customer viewings for us; 3 percent commission on closed deals, after-sales labor billed separately. Over the roast-lamb lunch he treated us to, he said Tanzania's construction would only grow.

The terms looked reasonable. We ran no background check, never asked whether he handled other Chinese suppliers. That was mistake number one.

Later I understood: looking at the warehouse first was my mistake. Anyone can rent a warehouse. You can't rent a person.

The first three months really were smooth

From May to August, four machines went out through him — two excavators, a roller, a wheel loader. Commissions were paid as agreed: $26,000, not a cent short.

He also handled two after-sales calls — one hydraulic hose replacement, one track adjustment. Both times he sent photos; the work orders were in duplicate. The customers were happy, I was happy. I remember thinking: this man is a professional.

In August I went back to Guangzhou and told the boss we'd found the right agent. He said: find two more like him and Africa is secure.

Customers started going silent

In September things turned. Several customers who'd been close to closing stopped answering emails and calls. One had been asking about sailings last week; this week he'd vanished.

I blamed the market. At the end of September I emailed Kigama asking about follow-ups. He replied: rainy season, the sites are all stopped, it'll pick up in October. I believed him.

In November I flew to Dar es Salaam without telling Kigama and knocked on customers' doors myself.

One customer pulled a quote from his drawer to show me: Kigama was pushing another Chinese supplier's machine, eight thousand dollars cheaper than ours. He'd told the customer that supplier delivered in two weeks — we'd need two months.

Another customer said he'd never received the quote we sent in September. That email had gone to Kigama for forwarding. He never forwarded it.

That afternoon I visited two more customers. Same story. On the way back to the hotel I sat in the car for half an hour.

He was representing three suppliers at once

That evening I took Kigama to dinner — the same roast-lamb place. I asked him directly. He didn't deny it.

He said he represented three Chinese suppliers and pushed whichever machines sold best. This is business, he said.

I said it's business — but withholding customer information isn't. The contract says customer information is shared by both sides.

He said: a contract is a contract. This is Dar es Salaam.

Then he added a sentence I've remembered ever since: you Chinese always think signing an agent settles everything. That's not how things are done here.

Dinner was sixty dollars; I paid. Back at the hotel I wrote a termination letter — handwritten English, run past a translation company — and sent it the next day. He replied with one word: Noted.

Where the 110,000 went

The accounting: six months of warehouse fees prepaid — $12,000, unrecoverable; the contract had no termination clause.

Four machines still in the yard had to be re-received and moved to a new warehouse — $3,000, plus two extra weeks tied up.

Two poached customers — over 40,000 RMB of lost gross margin.

One more item not in the books: I stayed ten extra days in Dar es Salaam cleaning up — rebooked flights and hotels, 8,000.

All told, around 110,000 yuan — a sixth of the company's net profit that year.

In those eight months I flew to Dar es Salaam four times, twenty hours a trip. The last trip was to bring the remaining machines home.

The root cause was me: before signing I looked only at the warehouse, never asked who else he worked for, and the contract carried no exclusivity clause and no information clause. The due-diligence money I saved, I repaid tenfold.

How we find agents now

Three rules today.

One, close three deals together before talking exclusivity. No exclusive — project-based, one authorization per deal.

Two, customer information goes straight into our own records. The agent may see it, but it never reaches us through his hands.

Three, the contract spells out termination and exit terms — who translated it, which version, what day it changed — all on file.

Our second agent came through Joseph's introduction; we did three deals together before signing a long-term agreement, and we're still working together today.

Kigama is still in auto parts; I hear he's switched Chinese suppliers twice more. I don't hate him. What I hate is the me who skipped the homework.

The 110,000 couldn't be expensed; it went into that year's losses. The boss didn't chew me out. He said the mistake was partly his — he'd signed the contract too. A scan of that termination letter still sits in the company folder. The filename is: lesson.

These three rules cost 110,000. Written down here, so you don't have to buy them again.