Neighbourhood Gong Edition 15

Fashion
Did you know that you could be the
cause of Ghana's economic woes?
'Huh? Me? But I'm not a politician'
you might say.
Well hold on. Let's go and see a play.
Just you and I. And oh, you get to act in
the play. Yaaaaay!
Here's the script.
SCENE 1:
You are a textiles company owner. You
invest a lot of money into ensuring that
your beautiful wax prints are of the best
quality. Your prints are loved. Patronized
by the world. A national treasure. You
employ a signicant number of people
and your contribution to the national
GDP is substantial.
SCENE 2
Bam! Someone decides to be clever. They are going to
copy your designs. But they don't believe in quality as
much as you do. Heck they are only entering the
business to feed off the market you have so tirelessly
built. They have no values, no promise of quality.
SCENE 3
Your evil competitor has found a way to duplicate your
designs. They make the prints cheap and ood your
markets with them. To the untrained eye the prints look
the same. So of course you start losing out. Sales gures
are fast dropping! You need to act fast. 'Surely this is
illegal! You report to the authorities and watch in disgust
as they do practically nothing about it.
SCENE 4
Slowly but surely your sales reach rock bottom. Now
you're almost out of business. You begin shutting down
several of your production lines. You've already laid
down half of your staff and it's looks like many more
will have to follow. The once vibrant manufacturing plant
has now been replaced by a depressing silent spell.
SCENE 5
You go shopping one day. You see
one of your closest friends
shopping. You start walking towards
her. Then you stop in your tracks....
she's busy buying prints from your
unscrupulous competitor. You are
livid. How could she be so disloyal?
Doesn't she realize that by so doing
she's helping them put you out of
business? How can she support the
business of one who steals your
designs? You leave the market
broken-hearted. You'll never be
able to forgive your friend.
Now let's reveal who the real life
characters are.
Textiles company owner-all the local
textiles companies Unscrupulous
competitor -Asian textile companies
which steal designs for their prints.
Wondering who the disloyal friend
is? You guessed right. It's YOU!
It's YOU every time you patronise
pirated prints.
Here are the facts, dear readers.
There are Asian companies which
are copying designs of prints from
our local textile industries. They sell
them under several labels, the most
popular of which is called 'HIGH
TARGET'. They are cheaper and of
inferior quality.
Our markets are ooded with these
pirated prints and like the disloyal
friend in the sketch above,
Ghanaians happily patronize them.
This has serious effects on our local
textile industry which directly
affects our unemployment and
productivity as a whole.
The time has come for us to make
conscious purchasing decisions. The
time has come to say no to pirated
prints.
At WEAR Ghana we use only
authentic African prints and this is
one way in which we continue to
contribute to building our dear
country, Ghana.
18 www.mygong.net