For smock and kente sellers: your work, on a link
If you weave kente or sew smock in Ghana, you are not selling from a shelf. Somebody sees a photo, asks for it in their size and their colours, and what they are really asking is: can you have it ready by the day I need it.
That makes your business different from every other shop selling on WhatsApp. A boutique's customer wants to know if a thing exists. Yours wants to know when it will.
Sell the date, not just the garment
Say the lead time first, unprompted, in the same message as the price.
"Full batakari with the embroidery — GH₵650. It takes me eight to ten days from the day you pay the deposit. If you need it sooner, tell me the date and I'll say honestly whether I can."
Three things happen in that message. She learns the price. She learns the wait. And she learns you count in days rather than in soon, which is the single most reassuring thing a maker can demonstrate to a customer who has been let down before — and most of them have.
The temptation is the opposite. A customer says Friday, Friday is tight, and you say yes because you're afraid to lose her. Then Friday comes and the sleeves aren't done. You've now lost the sale and the customer and whoever she tells, which in this trade is a whole family.
Say the true date. If it's too far away for her, some of them will still wait, because they came to you for hand-work and hand-work takes time. The ones who won't wait were never going to be happy anyway.
Taking measurements through a chat
You can't put a tape around somebody over WhatsApp, so the job is making it easy for her to do it right the first time.
Ask for the numbers in a fixed order, always the same one, and say what each is:
"Send me these five, in centimetres or inches — whichever your tape shows: 1. Chest, around the fullest part 2. Shoulder, seam to seam across the back 3. Sleeve, from shoulder to where you want it to end 4. Full length, from shoulder to where you want the smock to stop 5. Your height If you're not sure, send me a photo of a smock you already own laid flat and I'll work from that."
That last line saves more orders than the other five combined. Plenty of customers have a tape and no idea how to use it, and they will quietly stop replying rather than admit it. A garment they already own is a measurement they can't get wrong.
Repeat the numbers back before you cut. One message, boring, listed. When a finished piece doesn't fit, the argument is always about what was said, and a written list ends it in a second.
The Wednesday message about a Friday funeral
This is your trade's most urgent chat and it deserves handling on its own terms.
Someone has died. The family needs cloth for Friday. The message arrives late on Wednesday and it is not really a shopping enquiry.
Answer the person before you answer the order. "Sorry for your loss." Then be plainly useful, fast, because they have a hundred things to arrange and yours is only one of them.
Have ready-made pieces you can name immediately with sizes and prices — this is the one part of your stock that behaves like a shop's, and it's the part urgency will buy. Say what's possible and what isn't: "A new one I can't do by Friday, and I won't promise it. These three are finished and can go tomorrow morning."
Same for weddings and outdoorings, minus the grief and with more time. The pattern holds: name the finished pieces first, the made-to-order ones second.
"Is it real kente?"
You will be asked this by people who have been sold printed cloth as woven, and they're right to ask.
Don't answer with the word original. Everyone says original, including the people selling prints, so it carries nothing.
Answer with something she can check. Where it was woven and by whom. That it's strips joined by hand, and how many. What the fabric is. Then show her — because the proof is visible and photographable in a way that almost nothing else in Ghanaian retail is.
Which is why your close-up matters more than your wide shot. Every other shop posts the whole garment. A full-length photo of a smock tells a customer roughly nothing that a printed imitation couldn't also show. A photograph taken close enough to see the weave — the ridges, the joins, the slight irregularity of a hand-woven strip — is evidence, and it's evidence your competition can't copy because they don't have it.
Post the wide shot to show the shape. Post the close-up to prove the work. If you only have room for one, keep the close-up.
Pricing hand-work without apologising for it
A smock that took you nine days is not competing with a printed one from a market stall, and the moment you price it as though it is, you've agreed with the customer who says it's too expensive.
Put the reason next to the number, once, calmly, and then hold it:
"GH₵650 — hand-woven strips, hand-embroidered neck, about nine days of work. It's not the same cloth as the printed ones, and it lasts."
Then decide, before anyone asks, the lowest number you'd actually accept on that piece — and don't say it out loud. Everything above it you can move on. Below it you're paying somebody to take your work away.
That's a rule, not a mood, and it's the difference between a good month and a busy one.
Your work, on a link
Your customers ask to see what you have. You send an Instagram handle, or you forward photos one at a time.
A shop page ends that. Your pieces on one page at your own address — photo, price in cedis, what's ready now and what's made to order — with an Order on WhatsApp button under each one that opens a chat with the piece already named. It goes in your bio, on your status, on a card you hand out at a funeral.
Here's a live Vendwa shop page: shop.vendwa.com/ghprofugu — smocks and batakari, cedi prices, an order button on every item. Tap it and use it. Yours works the same way.
It's included free on every Vendwa plan, Starter as well as Business, with nothing to add on.
And when somebody taps Order at eleven at night, the chat answers — with your prices, your lead times, and your floor price held politely. It writes the order down with the measurements, sends your MoMo prompt, and tells you in the morning.
What it costs
Plans start at GH₵199 a month, billed in cedis and paid with MoMo. Every plan includes the shop page, floor-price negotiation, order capture and branded receipts. We take 0% of your sales — customers pay into your own MoMo wallet.
The first 50 shops pay half price for their first three invoices: GH₵99 on Starter. See what's on each plan.
Put your work on a link. L0.