4. Suppliers

After spending more than 20 years in the procurement consulting space, which basically means trying to find and negotiate favourable contracts for our clients, I was expecting to use all of my experience for my business partner to follow. I have worked for companies across most parts of the world but never in South America and I can’t speak to the rest of South America but Argentina is very different. Here, the suppliers hold the power in the relationship and feel they are doing you a favour although you are paying them, in most cases, a shit load of money to do the work. I expected finding quality suppliers would be somewhat challenging but we managed to get a decent group but the pure numbers of trades involved is mind-numbing. The project would require 2 architects, 3 interior designers, 18 builders, 4 plumbers, 3 electricians, 3 painters, 5 ceiling specialists, 5 different machine suppliers, 6 labourers, 3 internet installers, 5, carpenters, 5 steel makers, 4 fencing specialists, 20 material suppliers and 1 translator (more on that later).

Negotiating with suppliers is somewhat pointless here, they tend to give you a price which will no doubt become irrelevant later as hyper-inflation confuses everything. However, after getting all of the trade contracts agreed, I though that everything would be relatively plain sailing but because I was, at this point, not in Argentina very much, so little did I know that there were huge hurricanes forming in the plains of central argentina. there were many aspects that really slowed us down that I did not know about as the time.

One good example of this is our driveways. We have two entrances to the properly, the service road was first to be built which led off a very small unmaintained dirt road. Keep in mind that with any hint of train this “road” becomes unusable and for some reason all of our contractors only have 2 WD. The road leading to the guest entrance is much bigger and can handle the rain much better. There was only one catch, we had to build a 1.5 kilometre driveway out of forest and farmland, much of it owned by someone else. Long story short, without this driveway, the trades could not come to the lodge if it even looked like raining, but when it does in Santa Fe, you will know about it. Looking back I think this costed us 3 months of delays, purely by not prioritising the main driveway – go figure!