One trader at a time

In the cloth market in Zagazig, the sellers long agreed among themselves that writing a price on anything would ruin them. A fixed number ends the conversation, they said, and the conversation is the trade. Buyers would walk away.

A few of the younger stalls did it anyway. Their buyers did not walk away. The shoppers who dreaded haggling, and there were always more of them than the market believed, began going to those stalls first.

Has the market as a whole ever said it was mistaken? Of course not. Nobody stands in the middle of the aisle and announces it. Groups almost never do. A shared position becomes part of what it means to belong, and taking it back feels like leaving.

So anyone waiting for the group to concede will wait for a very long time, and spend their energy on an apology that is not coming.

The useful move is much smaller. One seller, at one stall, looking at what happened two doors down, can say: I have seen something I had not seen before, and I am changing what I do. For a person, that sentence is cheap. For a group, it is almost impossible.

Which means the work is not winning the argument with the market. It is sitting with one trader, showing what the stall next door has learned, and leaving the choice with them.

Then sitting with the next one.