The Little Entrepreneurs of Brăila
From Chewing Gum to Cigarettes — and an Unexpected Lesson in Friendship
By Ovi Catanescu, with additional memories from Adi
Growing up in Brăila, a port city on the Danube, my brother Adi and I discovered the world of business long before either of us had studied economics. Our first suppliers were foreign sailors whose ships docked in the port. They brought merchandise that was difficult to find in communist Romania, particularly chewing gum and American cigarettes.
These sailors knew there was a market for their products in Romanian ports. By selling them to us, they received Romanian lei, which they could spend locally without having to exchange foreign currency or deal with additional paperwork. For them, it was convenient. For us, it was a business opportunity.
Our First Business: Chewing Gum
We started by buying chewing gum from the sailors and reselling it to children in our neighborhood. Chewing gum was difficult to find in Romania, so we had plenty of customers. Naturally, our young customers wanted to know where we were getting it. We told them we bought it at the Alimentară, the local state-run grocery store. The children repeated our story to their parents, who went looking for chewing gum at the Alimentară. Of course, they couldn't find any! Eventually, some of the mothers came to our mother to complain that her children were exploiting theirs.
Our poor mother had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. She defended us, insisting that her children didn't have any chewing gum! We certainly hadn't expected our little business to result in a delegation of angry mothers showing up at our doorstep.
When we found out what had happened, Adi and I made a sensible business decision: we stopped selling chewing gum to children in our immediate neighborhood. After all, we knew that the communist government wasn't particularly enthusiastic about private entrepreneurship, and we had no desire to attract unnecessary attention. We simply found customers farther away from home.
Moving Up in the World: Cigarettes
After a while, our chewing-gum business had generated enough money for us to consider expanding into a different market. Cigarettes! Our suppliers remained the same foreign sailors, but our merchandise became considerably more sophisticated: Kent, Marlboro, Lucky Strike, Benson & Hedges and Salem. We had also identified an entirely different clientele.
Our new customers were older kids and their parents. In communist Romania, foreign cigarettes weren't necessarily purchased for personal consumption. They were also valuable gifts. A carton of American cigarettes could be offered to a doctor, a teacher or practically anyone whose help you needed. Imported cigarettes were difficult to obtain, and a gift like that was something few people would refuse. We had discovered that cigarettes were more than just tobacco. They were a kind of informal currency.
Building Our Distribution Network
As our business expanded, we developed a network of other children who bought merchandise from us and resold it to their own customers. We no longer needed to handle every transaction ourselves. We had become suppliers to other young entrepreneurs! Despite operating in a country where this kind of private business could attract unwanted attention, we never got caught by the authorities.
Eventually, Adi was admitted to high school and more or less retired from our little enterprise. I, however, continued running the business. By then, I had a network of distributors and enough experience to keep things going on my own. Or at least, I thought my distributors were reliable.
My Last Business Deal
One of my distributors was Liviu Ștefănescu, my neighbor and someone I considered a good friend. I had known Liviu since I was four or five years old. We had practically grown up together, and I had every reason to trust him. When I was 14, our family moved from Brăila to Bucharest. Before leaving, I gave Liviu a carton of Benson & Hedges cigarettes to sell. We agreed that when I returned to Brăila, he would give me the money, approximately 150 lei. After moving to Bucharest, I made a trip back to Brăila specifically to collect my money. But Liviu was suddenly very busy.
He couldn't meet me during my visit, but he promised to come to the train station before my departure and give me the money there. I waited. Liviu never showed up. It was then that I understood how much my move to Bucharest had changed the dynamics of our business relationship. I was no longer his neighbor, living just around the corner. The distance between us had apparently changed his sense of obligation. I never received my 150 lei. And after almost ten years of friendship, that was perhaps more disappointing than losing the money itself.
An Unexpected Business Education
Looking back, Adi and I had learned quite a few business lessons before we were old enough to understand what entrepreneurship really meant. We had discovered supply and demand, found foreign suppliers, accumulated capital, diversified our merchandise, identified new markets and eventually established our own distribution network. We had even learned how to deal with dissatisfied customers— or, more precisely, their mothers!
All of this in communist Romania, where private entrepreneurship was hardly encouraged. Adi retired from the business when he entered high school. I continued until our family moved to Bucharest. And my final lesson came from someone I had considered a good friend for almost ten years. It cost me 150 lei. Not a bad education in business, although I would have preferred to get my tuition money back!
Epilogue: Whatever Happened to Liviu?
Years later, when my brother Adi returned to Brăila around the time of his job assignment in Râmnicelu, he encountered our old neighbor Liviu Ștefănescu. According to Adi, Liviu had changed considerably. He was wearing a long leather coat that reached almost to the ground, and underneath it, he carried several concealed knives. Not just one, but several. Adi later heard that Liviu had ended up in prison, although I don't know whether that story was true.
It was certainly a far cry from the boy I had known since I was four or five years old—the childhood friend to whom I had entrusted my last carton of Benson & Hedges before moving to Bucharest. I never did get my 150 lei.
And apparently, by the time Adi returned to Brăila, collecting that old debt might have been a rather risky business!
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