Twenty years ago, lack of finance and a difficult operating environment nearly stalled the birth of what is now Mrs Agbel's Ela Liquide Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company.
Mrs Agbeli’s dream of becoming an entrepreneur blossomed after she survived an accident that prevented her from continuing her business as an inter-city foodstuffs retailer. Incidentally, it was this same incident that was to spur her on to firm up her decision to become an entrepreneur.
She said a near fatal accident during one of her journeys to buy foodstuffs for retail scared her away from that business, forcing her to rigorously explore other ways of realising her entreprenuership dreams.
 |
| Mrs Agbeli admires her Ela liquid soap |
The middle-aged Mrs Agbeli told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that way back in 1991, her passion to become an entrepreneur compelled her to participate in an entreprenuership programme organised by the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) in Sunyani.
“At that entreprenuership course, the NBSSI facilitators taught us how to set up a business, manage it, as well as other basic accounting and marketing principles to be applied in the business,” she said.
However, she had barely started the business when she realised that lack of capital was another hurdle she had to confront.
“I did not have enough money to start my own business,” she recalled, adding that the perceptions of her banker-husband did not equally help matters.
“He would always tell me to look at those big factories and ask, where are they? They are all gone and you, a woman, want to go into business. Go, if you have the money.”
Mrs Agbeli, however, persevered in her quest to ran a successful enterprise, although with a partly dampened spirit to contend with, since she was an inter-city foodstuffs retailer.
In that foodstuffs business too, Mrs Agbeli said the issue of limited finance kept rearing its ugly head up, prompting her to intermittently seek for finance from the country’s sometimes unyielding financial institutions.
A near accident and the scare
Mrs Agbeli, who now rans the Ela Liquid Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company, said after that gruelling accident, she quickly took advantage of an opportunity afforded by the Training Teachers Association in 2003 to study liquid soap production. But again, she said, the same lack of finance withered the fruits that would have come from that study, at least after the few years thereafter.
“After I had learnt liquid soap production, how to get the materials to start the business was just a problem. I could not get money again to buy the needed equipment,” she recollected rather sadly.
But that, according to Mrs Agebli, was again not enough to deter her desire of becoming an astute business owner.
The relief and now the odds
Having braced the odds for all these years and not abandoning the dream, Mrs Agbeli said she managed to mobilise some capital and started the Ela Liquid Soap and Yoghurt manufacturing company at Ofankor Barrier in 2009.
Nearly two years into the entreprenuership, however, Mrs Agbeli said her frustration were even mountainous but not enough to discourage her from the trade she had spent almost a decade to develop.
“I currently produce 200 bottles liquid soap and 100 bottles of yoghurt per week. Market for the products is now my problem. There’s no one to buy them and the few who do, do it on credit," she told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS.
“See, even the food vendors, whenever they go to the market to buy the liquid soap, they pay cash for it but when I send mine to them, they collect on credit yet if I go to collect my money, then they start counting their figures and later it becomes a quarrel," she lamented.
Currently, the factory is producing below capacity because of the lack of market and now she only relies on sales across churches and other social events to sell her products.
The perishable nature of Mrs Agebli’s products, especially the yoghurt, does not equally help matters since most people, according to her, find it difficult paying for the credited yoghurt after they have consumed it.
Unreliable power and AMA blues
Not all are impressed by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) mayor, Mr Alfred Vanderpuye’s supposed ambitious plans of ridding the streets of hawkers and subsequently turning Ghana’s disorganised capital into a Millennium City.
Mrs Agebli is one of such people. Far away near the Ofankor Barrier, along the Nsawam road, she said the AMA’s ban on street hawking was further disturbing her already lean market for Ela Yoghurt.
“I used to give some of the yoghurt to the junior high school students to sell, especially when they were on holidays. But now, the AMA task force always drives them away from the streets,” she stressed.
The country’s unreliable electricity supply has equally impacted negatively on the business. According to her, most of the provisions shops that used to purchase her yoghurt are now scared to do so “because of the on-and-off power situation. They always say if they collect them, they may go bad. So, they too have stopped collecting the products.”
So how is Mrs Agebli surviving in the midst of the odds?
“I have always believed that I will go far and Ela would be larger. I keep praying and working hard for God to make a way for me,” she said.
Mrs Agbeli explained that she sometimes had to rely on her initial profession as a seamstress to brace the odds of the manufacturing sector and that she was currently considering adding fruit juice production to the line of products. GB
Elizabeth is on 0245104309
In our next issue, we will feature Ms Fanny Aggrey-Fynn Amissah, the lady who runs Me ‘n’ Eu Collections, a beads and hats company at Tema Community Seven and also doubles as an actress.
No comments:
Post a Comment