Impact of Graphic on two oldest vendors

He was introduced into the newspaper business right after he completed the Catholic Jubilee School in Cape Coast in 1971 and ever since he has been an agent of the Daily Graphic and other brands of the group.

Mr James Binney, the Daily Graphic’s oldest agent in the Central Region, had to make a choice between his love for selling the Daily Graphic, The Mirror and being enrolled in the Cape Coast Polytechnic, and the former took precedence.

When he completed Middle School Form Four and could not go to the polytechnic due to financial constraints, his aunt, an ardent reader of the Daily Graphic, introduced him to Mr John Acquah, who was then the agent of the paper, to work under him.

His work

Mr Binney said Mr Acquah, who was a storekeeper at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), entrusted the work to him. He said after working with him for two years, he decided to transfer the agentship to him.

“The agent, after recognising my commitment and loyalty to work, decided to change the agent position into my name and encouraged me to work harder,” the ever smiling agent told our reporter.

He said when he took charge of the business, he was selling about 1,500 copies of the Daily Graphic a day, with students from Adisadel College, Mfantsipim School, St Augustine College, Wesley Girls, the Ghana National College being the biggest patrons of the paper.

“I tell you, students of those secondary schools used the Daily Graphic as the Bible, and queued for it every day, thereby making me do a lot of sales,” he recounted.

Mr Binney, whose, sales outfit is located in the building of the Ghana Commercial Bank in Cape Coast, said he had 12 vendors, with three at the UCC alone.

Impact

He said the newspaper business helped him to support his three daughters to acquire tertiary education.

He said in addition to the Daily Graphic, he now sold the The Mirror, the Junior Graphic, the Graphic Showbiz and Graphic Sports.

Nkansah serves Tema

Mr Samuel Nkansah who hails from Obo-Kwahu in the Eastern Region travelled to Accra in 1978 in search of greener pastures after completing Middle School Form Four.

In the thick of the struggles on the streets of Tema to make ends meet, he met a friend, Mr George Akowe, who was a member of a Special Task Force prior to the 1981 uprising which overthrew the government of Dr Hilla Limann.

Mr Akowe, seeing a young man determined to succeed in spite of his academic qualifications, asked whether or not he would like to be a vendor of newspapers from the then Graphic Corporation. Mr Nkansah said he answered in the affirmative.

That response has seen him becoming the longest serving vendor in Tema for the past 38 years because his friend got him registered with the Graphic Group to sell newspapers.

Being an agent, Mr Nkansah said, had changed his fortunes and launched him into other business areas which had so far proved to be successful ventures.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic at his Community 16 home at Lashibi, near Tema, Mr Nkansah said although it was a very tedious work that earned him 15 per cent commission on his daily sales of especially the Daily Graphic, “It’s been an exciting experience.”

Early beginnings

At the time, the Daily Graphic newspaper, he said, was a newspaper in demand, and he needed a sales strategy to help him increase his commission.

Thus, he acquired a bicycle to help in the distribution of the newspapers which saw him selling about 300 copies each day.

“When the uprising eventually took off, many military people became avid readers of the newspaper, and one could become a victim of assault if you failed to surrender what you had reserved for your regular clients,” Mr Nkansah narrated.

That notwithstanding, he was able to purchase a Datsun 140 J, a second-hand vehicle, in 1985 at a cost equivalent to GH¢21 from savings he made from the commission he earned on the newspaper sales.

Remarkable sales

On the kind of stories that gave him windfall sales of the newspapers, Mr Nkansah said that a story published on a Ghanaian fishing vessel named, “Amma Dela” which capsized and drowned during its inauguration on August, 17, 1985, killing more than 30 people was a major story that saw him making huge copy sales of the newspaper.

“When that disaster occurred, everybody within Tema wanted to read the details in the Daily Graphic which saw the paper make huge sales a day after the incident,” Mr Nkansah recounted.

Mr Nkansah, who had 45 permanent vendors and agents who sold the newspapers at vantage points in Tema, indicated that the number of his vendors and agents had reduced over time to 25 presently owing to the advent of technology which saw the proliferation of radio and television stations as well as new media which all went to affect newspaper sales.

Diversification

Mr Nkansah pointed out that being a vendor of the Graphic Group’s newspapers, Mr Nkansah pointed out gave him a platform to diversify his business interests into areas such as transport services and the provision of haulage and rental services of musical instruments.

“Presently, I have buses that I rent out to companies to transport their workers to and from work apart from others that also run long distance passenger services,” Mr Nkansah said.

Family business

Mr Nkansah, a father of three adult children, two of whom have completed university, said that sustainability of the business saw him introducing his first son, Mr Desmond Omari Nkansah, a product of the University of Ghana, into the business.

Desmond, he said, presently supervised some aspects of the newspaper sales business and had also trained a lot of people who had also established their own vending points.

Desmond, who was present during the interview, told the reporter that his father made tremendous progress with the newspaper sales business with the support of his late mother, “and I don’t want to see my parent’s legacy dying off,” he said.

Supportive wife

Mr Nkansah paid glowing tribute to his late wife, whom he said gave up her paid job as a secretary at the Pioneer Food Company to help nurture the newspaper business which gave birth to the other businesses they had presently.

“She supervised the business and supported the welfare of the vendors and sales people who worked for us and instituted a welfare package for them as a way of motivating them to stay longer on the job,” Mr Nkansah recounted.

“She will usually organised end-of-year parties for our sales people as well as selected vendors, a programme later adopted by the Graphic Group as vendors parties within the Tema Zone,” he added.

He counselled young people who were seeking white cololar jobs not to shy away from the sales and distribution of newspapers, saying, “the commission you may earn today may not be as much as what existed when we had no competition, but in the long run, it will pay off and launch them into an entrepreneurship drive,” Mr Nkansah emphasised.