Africa Imports African Business Blog

I get emails like the one below about once every other month.
Hi Wayne, I’m very dissapointed by you buying India inferior clothing, the dashiki shirts and animal print dress, had to given away. I don’t sell such low class clothing in my store. It is a shame that you are mixing the full of value African items with things from China and India all just for money sake.

Here’s my response to this email.
I am sorry for any disappointments with the clothing. We try very hard to have as much made in Africa clothing as possible. The reason that we sell items that are not made in Africa are partially because we have a lot of customers who like these; and partially because offering these items helps us to sell more African made products. There is a page on our website where I have some more details on this at the link below
http://www.africaimports.com/itemsmadenotinafrica.asp

I understand how you feel; and I originally felt the same way. It seemed to do more good for the people of Africa this way to me however. It is not motivated by a desire for more money. Whether you agree with my assessment or not, I hope that you can accept that it is a true statement of the motivation behind what we sell.

If there is anything that we do at Africa Imports that causes you a problem, I hope you will take the extra minute to let me know as this person did. Even though we will continue offering clothing made outside of Africa, we have changed a lot of what we do and what we offer from customer comments like this one.

When you comment on a blog post, it is a big help to us in figuring out the best things to do. A couple of weeks ago, a blog post asked if we should sell Obamma for president t-shirts. .

Here’s what one customer said in their comment.

While I am the biggest Obama groupie there is…No, I don’t think Africa Imports should have Obama things. While there are others out there that have Obama items for sale, I typically buy them directly from “his” website. Some are, I think, a little overpriced, but I rationalize it by knowing that the monies go directly to his campaign. OMAMA ‘08 and ‘12!!!

Here’s what we’re doing because she wrote

We originally didn’t plan on selling Obamma t-shirts; but some of our customers were asking for them. I had already checked on having these made when this comment was posted. We don’t want to take anything away from the Obamma campaign by selling competing merchandise (at possibly lower prices); but this isn’t something that we had even thought about. When it was mentioned, it made a lot of sense, and it made the decision a lot easier. So we will need to work on getting other new products, and we will not be offering Obamma t-shirts because of the idea in this post.

In case you forgot, today is Independence Day in Congo. This Sunday is Independence day in Gabon.

And if you ever get concerned about missing some other important African holidays, you can always check our African Holidays Calendar. There are 54 countries in Africa with 54 different sets of African holidays. Your birthday could be on one of these holidays.

If you need a reason to celebrate; or educate; or just have a sale at your store, you can choose the most popular holiday of the month for you in almost any month. You can find birthdays of famous African people; and find out more about the heritage and what is important in many different African cultures and communities.

You can see this full yearly calander for 2008 with over 200 African holidays filled in here, or you can paste the following link into your website browser

http://www.africaimports.com/august.asp

A company that printed our Africa Imports catalog once sent our office a whole bunch of pistachio nuts as a gift. It was kind of nice for us, but it was also smart advertising for this printer.

You can also replace your thank-you notes with something people will talk about. Give people something that will make them tell someone else “You won’t believe what they sent us!”

If you give a coupon, give several. Your customer then has something to give to a friend.

This new 64 page retail catalog of Black soaps, African oils, and natural black skin care products just arrived from our printer. The printed catalog shows the higher retail prices for your customers. As a wholesale customer, your cost is half of this. You can order printed retail catalogs for $0.59 each.

If you want this catalog with no prices shown, you can get this for free. There is not a printed copy that you can order; but you can print out your own copy right now here.

There are 8 new African soaps; 23 new fragrance oils that have never been in an Africa Imports catalog before. There are more new Shea butter ideas; Black seed oil; coconut oil; and more natural skin care products than ever before.

Natural African and Caribean skin care products are some of the most popular African products that we offer. Customers come back to you again and again for soaps and oils whenever they run out. Ethnic skin care creams and butters make your customers more beautiful, and give them the most effective skin healing anywhere.

Jonni lives at one of the orphanages supported by Africa Imports. Here’s a note from our helper in Congo who delivers money to this orphanage each Saturday.

Jonni was brought to orphanage over 7 years ago. He does not know his last name nor his Mom or Dad. A person brought him, but had no details as to his background or family.

On Sat. he so carefully copied the coloring picture - he was so intent on doing it perfectly.

Remember that when you sell more African products, you help to support Jonni and other children like him.

I am the most non-political person I know. The last time I voted for a president was for Jimmy Carter running against Ronald Regan.

When a customer asked us to get Barak Obama T-Shirts I didn’t really consider it. Africa Imports sells mostly products from Africa; and we are not a political sort of business. Other customers have asked for these now too. What do you think?

One thing that we really want to do is to make sure that we communicate with Africa Imports wholesale customers in the best way we can. We want to tell you about the things that are the most important to you.

If you sell African clothing, African oils, or other African products, and can take one minute or less to answer some questions about what you need most; we can make sure to let you know about ideas that are important to you as soon as we can.

You can answer these questions here, or you can copy and paste the following link into your web browser

http://africaimports.com/forms/0708contest.asp

It really is a big help to us at Africa Imports if you answer this customer survey. We can know you better, and we are a lot less likely to send you something you don’t like. Thanks for your help.

About a month ago, I sent an email to our customers asking the best way that they know to invest $500. in growing their business. Here’s the results.

508 people selling African products wrote back with their answers.

250 people (almost half) said that they would buy more products. For them, having more to sell is the fastest and best way to get more sales and more customers.

131 people (about 1 in 4) said that they would spend the money on some sort of advertising or promotions. Renting a festival booth or running ads were two of the most common things here.

74 people said that they would spend at least most of the money on business cards, packaging, and things like this.

53 people said that they would use the money for a whole bunch of other things that are too numerous to mention here.

So why are you interested in this? These are results from a lot of people in a specialized type of business just like yours. Some (probably most) of these people have thought a lot about ways to have a better business. As a group, these people will probably come up with the best ideas for you to grow.

So what do you think? Is this helpful to you?

Two weeks ago I wrote that we were losing 3 very long term employees. Alicia has been here off and on for 10 years; and just left to move to Myanmar. Alicia has worked in Myanmar as a teacher before (as well as in Nepal and Thailand); and is really looking forward to moving back after all of the trouble there.

Alicia was one of the most knowledgable customer service people here. A lot of you really loved working with her when you would call in. She is very friendly and has been wonderful to work with for the rest of us too. We will all miss her.

ps. Alicia is also my daughter. The photo above shows us together on her last day of work here.