Andy Richardson: Even enterprising businessmen can’t win the battles with dad

I learned the power of dads in unlikely surrounds. As a kid, I had a nose for making a few bob. Although I’ve always been more Branston Pickle than Richard Branson, I sniffed out opportunities to supplement my weekly pocket money with one simple trick – hard work.

So one paper round soon became two. Two paper rounds soon found a way to accommodate an additional monthly magazine run. And then I decided to open my own tuck shop at school. As you do. It’s easy enough to get started when you’ve got a huge brown Adidas bag in which to secrete cans of fizzy pop and packets of salt and vinegar crisps.

Back then, there were no iZettles and iPads, waiting to process card transactions. Contactless was a concept embodied in games of touch rugby, rather than a way to pay for goods and services.

My parents ran a youth club, a clever way of providing somewhere decent for their kids to hang out in their teen years. The youth club had a discount card at the local cash and carry so here’s what I thought: Young Mr Branston (And Pickle) could use his old man’s youth club card to procure snacks before selling them at a decent margin to his mates. Nice.

And so each day, I’d stuff a selection of cheese and onion, roast beef, ready salted and smoky bacon next to text books for geography, history and maths. When the lunchtime bell rang, I was the most popular kid in the playground.

Kids who wouldn’t otherwise have said a word to me congregated like bees round honey as they sought to sate their hunger. My pockets would swell with my own bodyweight in loose change as I dispensed cans of Fanta and cola. All went swimmingly. And at weekends, I’d take myself on a tour of Dudley’s clothes and record shops to spend my hard-earned gains.

Until my dad found out.

Dad reckoned schools were not the place to go into business. I disagreed. Schools were the place to learn lessons that would help me through adulthood; including those in commerce, entrepreneurialism and business.

My dad looked at me with a ‘everyone-hates-a-smart-alec’ look and told me I needed a street traders’ licence if I was going to flog pop and crisps. The local council would be unlikely to dispense one to a kid who wanted to open a business in between classes in Philip Larkin and Pi.

He may have been onto something. I blustered. Oh no you don’t. Oh yes you do. So the pantomime continued.

I eeked out the last of my stock in pop and crisps, blowing the earnings on David Bowie singles and white drainpipe trousers before posting my entry to the Sandwell Young Businessman of the Year Awards. They didn’t reply.

Then my dad made what the Americans call ‘an intervention’. Playground trading was a short-lived battle between father and son. He was America and I was El Salvador. There was only ever going to be one winner.

The next time my dad visited the cash and carry, I asked for my usual order and gave him a few crisp 10 pound notes. My burgeoning business was reinvesting most of its earnings, not withstanding the occasional flutter on Bowie records. So I asked for three boxes of crisps and five trays of pop. Oh, and a case of Mars Bars. Business was good. It was time to expand.

My dad did what dads do best. He ignored me. And, worse, he cut the supply lines. When he returned from the cash and carry, he handed me back my money and told me I’d have to find a new supplier; he wasn’t going to be a mule for my business. Damn.

I like to think I learned a few lessons from those excursions onto the playground, like the importance of margins, the benefits and risks of credit, the importance of a decent supply line and the value in supplying the products customers like. I learned the value of retained profits and a whole load of other stuff that Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden would have marvelled at.

Trading in the playground was like Business Studies for Dummies. I made a few mistakes – giving credit to Bippin Patel, being chief among them – though not too many. And I even got to enjoy the fruits of my labours as an impressive stack of singles amassed in my bedroom – not to mention an almost limitless supply of smoky bacon crisps if I got hungry after school.

But the most important lesson I learned was this: Never mess with your dad – you just can’t win.