By Betsy Ramser Jaime
‘I am Eric Agyei Tuffuor, a self employed person that trades in second hand clothes across some various regions of Ghana.’ Eric is a graduate of Sunyani Technical University and graduated with a Higher National Diploma program in Electrical and Electronics engineering.
After university, Eric completed his national service by serving as a teacher at Keniago junior high school. During his time teaching, he taught science, religion and moral education, social studies, and Ghanian. After teaching, Eric started back at university to receive an education degree, but ended up leaving after a year due to financial reasons.
While this might have been the end of his work in education, it was just the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey. He shares, ‘From there, I entered into business where I started selling second hand clothes and business was good, I must admit. I did this business for over four years after which I traveled to the United Arab emirates (UAE) which is close to two years.’
After his time in the UAE, Eric decided to return home to Ghana, continuing to operate his clothing business. In describing himself Eric write, ‘I am a hardworking person with a good human relationship and a family man with two kids. I am thirty five years of age and a male. I Like rice and soup as my favorite foods and football and volleyball have been my favorite games with Liverpool as my favorite team in the world. I also like reading and listening to music.’
Eric is pleased that since his return from the UAE, business has been very good. He is able to purchase his clothing stock from wholesalers and then re-sells clothing all over Ghana. Describing his growth he says, ‘I am currently expanding my business by increasing the clothes that I purchase every week and with this business and profit keeps on increases every week. Business has been of useful help to me and I must admit that I am doing well and with the help of Zidisha.’
Since joining Zidisha in 2019, Eric has raised 11 Zidisha funded loans from $8 to $1,679. With these loans, Eric has had the resources to continually purchase new clothing stock for his business and also pay for the associated transportation costs to ship clothing throughout the country.
Recently, Eric shared this inspiring update on his discussion page, ‘I am bouncing back to work. Thank you so much lenders. I started with Zidisha with nothing but now because of Zidisha loans, I have been able to restock my shop with the necessary clothes. I have also been able to add shoes sales, belts and other items to my business. All these came into reality because of Zidisha loans. It started right at the beginning of the covid 19 pandemic and Zidisha wasn’t reluctant but continued to help throughout the covid 19 period.’
Would you like to help other Zidisha entrepreneurs go after their dreams? Make sure to head on over to our Browse Projects page to read about Zidisha business owners around the world.
