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has now been replaced by a depressing silent spell.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