Tony Blevins

"Apple took extraordinary control over its suppliers to ensure it was getting the appropriate prices. It demanded access to every detail about the supplier’s operating costs, from the wages of its workers and the cost of its dormitories to the bill of materials and expense of the machinery. In fact, Apple often had a better sense of the suppliers’ operational costs than the supplier itself. Because rather than have the supplier purchase the raw materials needed for whatever component it was manufacturing, Apple procured these components on their behalf—a power move that obfuscated from the supplier what the prices were. The tactic had emerged around 2010, when Foxconn was trying to earn extra money by purchasing components at one set of prices, then billing Apple a higher cost. Apple responded by “disintermediating” Foxconn. Another motivation was simply that, when annual iPhone shipments ran into the tens of millions per year, and then into the hundreds of millions, Apple realized it wasn’t good enough to assume its suppliers would secure enough raw materials—the only way to ensure this was to be involved in negotiations directly. The power this team wielded was enormous: up to 1,300 people all reporting to Tony Blevins."

"How Wang won that order has become part of Apple lore. The story is that procurement head Tony Blevins struck a deal for Luxshare to assemble the earbuds at cost—no margin at all. But unlike so many similar stories, this was less about Blevins’s ruthlessness and more about Grace Wang’s craftiness. She agreed to do the work for free on one condition: that Tim Cook visit her factory and be photographed on the assembly line. It’s difficult to confirm the margins really were zero, but on that day in December when Cook visited Luxshare’s factory northwest of Shanghai, he offered toothy grins and praised all that he saw. “This is an extraordinary example of a Chinese dream being realized,” Cook said. He even took to Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, to proclaim that Luxshare was making AirPods with “phenomenal precision and care,” and that “Chairman Grace Wang has built a culture of excellence that starts with people. We are thrilled to work with them!”"

"Colleagues called Tony “the Blevinator” for being ruthless and stopping at nothing to get a good deal. He deployed tactics so detailed, aggressive, and consequential that a supplier ostensibly winning an Apple order might later regret it given the scale of investment required, the demands Apple would place on them, and the fact that the company could turn on a dime to another supplier if needed. “Apple has a trail of dead bodies miles long,” says a high-ranking executive at a contract manufacturer that worked with the company for decades. “When business is great, everybody wins. And when it’s not, they go under.” Blevins had a particular ability to read other people. One says it was “a mind-blowing thrill” just to watch him negotiate. “You could see where he was going, and you knew that he was going to get what he wanted, because he was so much smarter than the person he was talking to,” the colleague says. “He just steered the conversation to the ultimate ending of what he wanted. It was absolutely brilliant.” Another recounts how, the night before a negotiation, Blevins talked through his reasoning and foretold where his opponent would end up. The following day, after hours of psychological warfare and tit for tat over the smallest details, the opponent proposed the very thing that Blevins had predicted. Then Blevins acted like it wasn’t necessarily in Apple’s best interests to agree and signed the deal. The Apple team walked out, awed by what had transpired as Blevins chuckled about it."

"There’s a parallel here to Apple’s own negotiating tactics. People familiar with Tony Blevins say he was averse to drawing red lines or asking for specific prices; rather, his feedback, until a contract was signed, would consistently involve uncertainty. He created the conditions where suppliers would pitch selling components well below the price he’d hoped for. But now the tables had turned, and these tactics were used by a nation-state against Apple."