Goodbye Nasir bhai, you never got to tell me about the Japanese market

Nasir bhai and I were dining at the Peninsula Hotel in Chittagong. It was 2011, if I am right. He was a person of fine choice and his orders were grand too. Outsized lobsters, so humongous that I had never seen before.

In the din of the restaurant, his voice sounded soft, as always. His trademark smile on his face. Sparkling, kind eyes. That is the image of Nasir bhai I will always cherish in my heart everytime I feel the pang of loss. Loss of a true friend, a man with immense zest for life and vision. A man who knew how to make a wish and then work to make that come true.

"How did you make your jeans miracle?" I put my question to Nasir bhai that night.

"It all happened in Colombo 27 years ago," he said. "You know Inam bhai, I was born into a business family. My father and grandfather were Khatunganj traders. So business ran down my blood."

So on that summer night, he was on a business trip to Colombo, mainly for ship-breaking affairs and dining at a swanky restaurant with his local business partner. The Sri Lankan man then introduced him to a business magnate who was into readymade garments.

"Do you know, Bangladesh might be a good place to start readymade garment industries. Low labour cost is the main catch," the apparel entrepreneur said.

Nasir bhai's business instincts rang loud inside his head. He started probing the apparel factory owner about how the garment business takes place, who are the buyers and who the suppliers are.

That night back in the hotel, he immediately rang up his business link in Japan and asked him to prepare a feasibility report on the RMG industry in Bangladesh.

"A month later, the report came and the Colombo man was right. Bangladesh has all the right reasons to be a  garment hub," Nasir Bhai rasped. "I immediately started planning where to set up my factory. I flew to Hong Kong and Sri Lanka, then both garment hubs, in search of the right people.

I roped in two factory managers, ordered machinery from Japan and recruited 600 workers. They knew nothing about sewing machines. So they were given training."

Finally, in 1984, his factory was ready to produce. He also got a buyer from Minnesota who ordered 24,000 pieces of basic shirts.

"We all were so excited. We worked day and night. Order price was quite good and so we booked air cargo and sent 15,000 pieces of the order," Nasir Bhai stopped.

"Wow, that was a great beginning. Such a cakewalk," I remember telling him.

"You think so Inam bhai. It was not. That order almost broke me. That order put me in so much distress and despair."

As it happened, the order was successfully carried out but the payment never came. After writing dozens of mails and making frantic phone calls, it transpired that the US company had gone bust. So the total shipment was a lost case.

"My apparel dream became a nightmare," Nasir Bhai recalled. "It was a tough struggle for us as we had to pay salaries to 600 workers every month. The first year was fruitless. I was not to give up."

His mentor in Colombo and Japanese advisers told him to go around global trade fairs and look for good buyers.

Nasir bhai spent the next three years visiting the major apparel fairs - from Cologne's Interjeans Fair to Las Vegas' Magic Show.

But that bore little fruit too because Bangladesh was not known as an apparel source. In garments, timely and quality shipment is all that matters.

But luck finally shined on him and he got an order from Jordache, a now-defunct brand but then a big name.

From then on Nasir bhai had no turn-back. His factory rolled again and workers got busy.

"But I was mainly doing low-end orders," said Nasir bhai. "But I had high ambition. It was a time when the apparel business was shifting from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore.

So there were a lot of foreigners looking for jobs. I started expanding, recruiting people and shifted my factory to the Chittagong EPZ. That was 1994."

Six years down the line Nasir bhai was strolling down Fifth Avenue in New York with his son Tanvir.

"I stopped in front of a GAP store and went inside and looked up the trousers on the front rack - all marked made in the US and Mexico. I told my son: One day soon, my products will be on these racks. I tell you."

It took him only one and a half years to make the wish happen.

"Now you will find my products on the front racks in New York Gap stores," he said.

A few years after that first meeting with Nasir bhai, I again sat with him at a banker's drawing-room in Gulshan.

"Nasir bhai, what are you up to?"

"Inam bhai, I am working on the Japan market. It is a tough place where you have to maintain extremely high quality. They want perfection. Just a little odd cut, which you would not even notice, and your whole order is cancelled."

"If it is that hard, why waste your time there?" I asked.

Nasir Bhai's eyes sparkled. "That is my challenge. I tell you, I will make it happen."

After that I often called him, asking him about his Japan venture, especially whenever I wanted to write about the Japanese market. It would often happen that he would pick the call sitting in a Japanese hotel. But he would not give much detail about the market.

One day he said: "Let me come back this time and I will have a long session with you on the Japan market. I can't make you understand it just by talking over the phone."

Then he called me one day. "Where are you?"

Incidentally, I was in Chittagong going to Thanchi.

"I am in your town but I have to leave for Thanchi, Nasir bhai," I said.

"How are you going?"

"Probably by bus. Not sure."

"Where are you now?"

"At the bus terminal."

"Wait. Don't go. I am sending you a car."

In half an hour, a microbus came and off I went. When I returned, Nasir bhai was off on a foreign tour. So we did not meet.

After that, we had not met again. And last night, to my disbelief I saw news of his death flashing on my mobile screen. I was dumbfounded.

I never got to know the secret of the Japanese market, Nasir bhai. I will hear it someday.

Inam Ahmed. Illustration: TBS