Why does Africa Imports sell some items not made in Africa

08/19/2008

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I get emails like the one below about once every other month:

"Hi Wayne, I'm very disappointed 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, which you can see by clicking this link. 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.