In 2019 I closed my physical clothing store in a prime location in Accra, Ghana. I’m not going to lie, at the time I felt like my business was failing. This was because I had mentally made myself believe that having a physical shop was the epitome of success. Today when I look back I just laugh. To let you fully understand how I got here let me take you back.
A few decades ago, in Ghana, shopping was very straightforward. If you wanted a product, you went to a place where it was sold and bought it. A good relationship with the owner of a store could get your bulk order brought to you by the company van. That was practically it! Today, with the help of technology and domestic delivery, online shopping is common in most big cities. You can buy a single loaf of bread and have it delivered to you without needing to talk to anyone.
I jumped on this new trend immediately for my clothing business, Zedi, when we first started, but this was entirely not by choice. When I started my fashion brand with a partner, we were young and had little money. We couldn’t afford a shop, so we put our products on Facebook and did “meet-ups” for delivery. What this meant was that when a person ordered an outfit from us on Facebook, we arranged to meet them up at vantage points like Accra Mall to deliver the clothes. Back then, we often did batch deliveries to save money.
Slowly, our business grew, and with a flexible loan from a mutual friend, we could afford a shop! I remember how excited I was to finally own a location where people could come and buy our products. Little did I know that new expansions always came with new problems. My first blow was the cost of maintaining the shop. Plumbing, electrical, minor structural, and equipment bills felt a bit overwhelming at first, but we soon figured out a system for these expenses and, as you can imagine, adjusted the prices of our products accordingly.
Customer experience means a lot to me because of my Tourism background. I always put in efforts to give anyone who walked into our shop a pleasant experience. The one thing I loved about having our store the most was watching how potential customers reacted and interacted with our clothes. Meeting a loyal customer in person is something else. That being said, getting foot traffic to my store was not the easiest thing at all. Our customer avatar is a young professional and time is something this group doesn’t have a lot of.
When courier companies became popular in Accra, I was ecstatic! Up until then, we had been delivering packages via public transport. This limited the number of deliveries we could actually do in a day. Our costs were also higher because in Ghana some places cannot be reached with a public trotro (bus). With courier riders, we could deliver a lot of packages in a day at an almost flat fee. This streamlined our pricing for deliveries as well.
In 2019, we did something very drastic! We decided to be a full e-commerce company. The reason I made this decision was for 3 reasons: we made more money from deliveries than from the store, our overhead costs were pretty high, and my presence at the shop was reducing because I now had a baby. We closed our store and proceeded to work out of 2 rooms in my home as an e-commerce brand. This felt like the best decision I ever made, not just because months later, COVID-19 hit the world, but also because I could feel the business getting stronger. Our numbers started looking better and better with a spike in international sales as well. I had more time to plan a growth plan because I had eliminated several headaches related to my physical store front.
Pivoting can sometimes be what takes your business to the next level. One thing you should never ignore is what your business data is telling you.