The shop that bet on one season

Two shops sit side by side on a street of small traders in Manama, and for one long season it looked obvious which owner was clever.

The first put everything into a single fashionable line. He cleared his shelves of the slow stock, borrowed against the next year, and filled the shop with the thing everyone was asking for. For months the queue reached the pavement. People walking past said he had read the market perfectly.

The second kept doing the dull things. A spread of goods, some of which barely moved. A little cash held back that could have been more stock. Two suppliers where one would have been cheaper. His shop looked sleepy next to the queue.

When everyone is buying the same thing, the person who bet the most on it looks like a genius. A rising tide makes concentration look like insight. Someone always wins that kind of bet, which is exactly why it keeps tempting people.

Then the fashion turned, as fashions do. The first shop was holding a room full of yesterday and a loan written for a better year. The shutters came down before the summer.

The second shop is still open. It never had the queue. It also never had a single point where one bad month could end it.

Resilience is not free. It costs the spare cash that sits idle, the second supplier, the product that sells slowly but steadily, the growth you decline because it would leave you exposed. In a good year all of that looks like timidity.

It is the price of still being on the street when the year is not good. Most of the time, it is worth paying.