Running a business in Ghana has always been challenging but in recent years thanks to ridiculous levels of inflation in my country things have gotten much much harder. My fashion business, Zedi, that makes affordable high-quality afrocentric clothing has taken a severe hit. As the Ghana Cedi weakens against the tide of inflation every aspect of my business feels the strain; from buying beautiful African print fabric which we use to make our clothes to the threads that hold the pieces together, everything is rising in price at an alarming rate! This makes it very difficult when it comes to buying materials, paying the skilled artisans who rightly deserve a high remuneration for their expertise and also delivering products to our customers. Managing daily operations all of a sudden becomes an extreme sport. This is how I’m managing my dying business.
These days, right after I look at our cash flow statement I follow it up with creating cost-cutting adjustments in hopes of doing better the next month. Our margins are constantly getting slimmer every month. We did increase our prices within the year, but that barely scratched the surface. When times are hard a price increase is the perfect reason for a customer to choose NOT to buy. As more people are tightening their budgets it’s only natural for this to happen.
We are not giving up even though we are constantly tempted to. We still feel like there’s enough light at the end of the tunnel to encourage us to keep pushing through. I have always dreamt of having a business that my children would own in the future so I have to keep trying, right? The other day a friend of mine was telling me a similar story about her business. You see I am not the only one going through this. In fact I may even have an advantage because my business is e-commerce and mostly runs online. I can get away with some other massive expenses. So but if it’s tough for me, meyn, you can imagine what other people are going through.
My friend and I, after ranting about the problems we were facing because of inflation in Ghana, decided that we will list a number of things that can grow our business that we have never tried before and go through them head on. We are leaving no stone unturned so that if we ever throw in the towel, we will know that we indeed tried our very best. I believe we should all do this to save our dying business. Today I want to encourage anyone who is going through a rough patch no matter what it is to make a list of things to try. And execute them one by one. I am positive that my dying business will have a breakthrough at one step on that list. My list is currently 22 items long so it’s going to be a very long journey. Wish me luck and good luck to you too!
