Strategic Positioning

I got a reply from Mr Cork to my latest e-mail. It was even shorter than his first reply, but with an invitation to meet after summer, and with a link to a manual on sustainable forestry in PDF format. He also asked for more information about my fund, which confused me somewhat, since there's not that much more for me to add to what I already told him. However, I read into this that he might want to see something a little more substantial than what I can come up with. I'm a small fish, and it's a bit of a miracle that he's spending any time on me at all.

I need to come up with things that may be of value to Mr Cork beyond my limited means. Ideally, I should give him some leads into Norway, and luckily for me, I know of two people in Norway who are of the same calibre as Mr Cork. These people may not be directly interested in business in Portugal, but they are well connected and talkative. If sufficiently impressed, they will talk warmly about Mr Cork to their friends in Norway.

I first found it odd that Mr Cork sent me a manual on sustainable forestry. I had signalled an interest in passive ownership of land, and the manual is not aimed at that at all. It promotes active ownership, bio-diversity, and eco-tourism as healthy alternatives to the corporate plantation model. But this too is a message. I got a feeling that Mr Cork wants people to come in and buy land, and develop it with eco-tourism in mind. He can then sell his less productive land and focus more on harvesting and maintenance services. If done correctly, there should be a win-win situation. Foreign owners reap the profits from tourism while Mr Cork retains the cash flow from the cork with less hassle and expenses related to the upkeep of land.

Done correctly, a well kept forest will produce wildlife suitable for safaris and private hunting. Families can come to Portugal to get an experience similar to Africa. The wildlife is different, but the landscape is much the same. Furthermore, Portugal has a rich history and heritage. There's always a castle or town in the area worth a visit.

It's easy to see the potential in this. A person like me can buy a relatively small farm with a herb garden, fruit trees, and a few hectares of land nestled inside a larger forest owned by Mr Cork. The farm acts as a hub for eco-tourism. Some agreement is made between the farmer and Mr Cork, in which his land is used for safaris and hunts against a fee. Mr Cork can also step in with cash to buy jeeps and the like for the safari part of the business.

My guess is that Mr Cork has this and several other possibilities in mind. The trick is then for me to come up with sensible and realistic possibilities to match whatever he comes up with. I need to work on my contacts in Norway without being pushy or intrusive, and I've started this process by adding some relevant people to my Facebook friends list. I've also sent a message to one of my contacts, asking him if he's still interested in a trip to Portugal, once the plague is behind us.

The idea is to alert people to my existence so that they don't get too surprised if I message them about something related to Portugal this fall. The intensity of this depends on how remote they are from me. Relevant friends living here in Porto, will be invited over for dinner to talk cork and tourism. Relevant immediate family, like my son who's a chef at a restaurant in Norway, will get a phone call or two from me. More peripheral people will get a friend request, friendly message, or whatever makes sense.

Cork oak forest

By Berrocal1950 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link