Bolga boo-boo: E-mail to Getrade (Ghana) Ltd. from Pier 1 Imports

The way you heard it, your employer, Pier 1 Imports, sent a buyer to Accra, Ghana, to find local handicrafts to slake your customers’ insatiable thirst for Africa art. Free-market reforms in Ghana during the 1980s helped ease export procedures, but so far the local entrepreneurs who sprang forward to take advantage of the change are having trouble meeting demand from large-quantity buyers like Pier 1 (and your rival, Cost Plus). The shipment that just arrived from Getrade (Ghana) Ltd., one of your best Ghanaian suppliers is a good example of what’s been going wrong.

Your customers love bowl-shaped Bolga baskets, traditionally woven by the Fra-fra people of northern Ghana. You can’t keep the baskets in stock. So this was to be a huge shipment—3,000 Bolga baskets. You sympathize with Ladi Nylander, chairman and managing director of Getrade, who is trying hard to adapt to the specific tastes of his U.S. buyers. He’s hiring local artisans to carve, shape, and weave all sorts of artifacts—often from designs provided by Pier 1. In this case, your order spelled out that Getrade was to ship 1,000 green, 1,000 yellow, and 1,000 magenta baskets in the traditional shape.

Your overseas buyer heard that the Body Shop ordered similar baskets but with mixed- color patterns and a flatter shape. Pier 1 may have received the Body Shop’s order, because what you received was 3,000 mixed-color, flat Bolga baskets.

Your task: As assistant buyer, it’s your job to compose the e-mail message alerting Getrade to the mix-up. You decide that if you want the mistake corrected, you’d better direct your message to Nylander at [email protected]. If you’re lucky, it may be simply that the Body Shop got your order and you got theirs.