The casket micro entrepreneur : Godfred Opoku
Godfred is the son of two love birds, one from Adukrom in the bowels of the Akwapim Range and the other from across the Adome Bridge, Atimpoku.
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Immediately after their honeymoon, Godfred’s parents relocated to Wassa Amenfi and it was in this new setting that the family was blessed with, in the course of 21 years, six children, one of whom was a girl.
Education
Godfred attended Nkran Dadieso Primary and Junior High schools run by the local authority in the area. He admits that his gifts for this pen and paper education were below what would motivate him to further his education. By the time he was leaving the JHS, he was 19 years on account of multiple repetitions associated with poor performance.
Godfred parents were disgusted at him for failing to make a white colour living. When his grades were so terrible not even the least prestigious schools in the district would accept him, and Godfred having refused to retake the exams for the second time, headed for Akosombo.
Godfred wanted to learn a trade. The trade that easily came to mind after many weeks of contemplation was casket designing. This was after the casket fashioned in the form of a giant guitar went on display as the coffin in which the highlife icon, the late Ampofo Agyei was going to be buried in.
Godfred bussed himself to Teshie in Accra and put himself through casket apprenticeship. He would be spending the next five years under the training of vastly talented men with usual skills and expertise in designing and creating caskets in whatever form.
Adventure
When the young man was “passed out” and certified by his patrons as a graduate of the school, Godfred caught the next bus to Koforidua. That was in 2011. But when the Eastern capital failed to deliver the miracle Godfred so badly longed for, he continued to Kumasi. And between 2011 until the summer of 2013, life was horrifyingly bad for the young man. He got hired a couple of times, in Tanoso, then in Koforidua again until he finally arrived in Nkawie.
Godfred partnered the wood worker who masterminded his coming to Nkawie. Together, they set up a shop but in less than a year, trouble brewed between them, degenerating into bitter rivalry and subsequent revocation of the partnership deal. He went solo.
Turning point
By the time a year could go round full circle, Nkawie had started to show signs it would be an exciting business destination for caskets.
The location of business on the Kumasi—Sefwi highway connection and the abundance of quality timber combined to open Godfred’s business to a steady traffic of buyers from Tanoso all the way to the Sefwilands. Worse case sales scenarios could be modelled around eleven coffins a month.
Overcoming labour and capital headaches
By the time orders were hitting twenty and beyond per month, the slow need to add some staff to the three-man team was becoming urgent. Godfred started hunting amongst the local woodworkers and carpenters with the skills to help grow the new business. He needed capital too.
One evening of September 2014, a young man about four years Godfred’s junior disembarked from a minibus and walked towards Godfred’s workshop. At the time a casket designed for a deceased man of God was on display by the highway, awaiting transportation to Sefwi Bekwai. The family of the deceased had asked the casket maker to fashion one in the semblance of the Bible for the burial of their beloved priest. When the casket was finished and went on display in the showroom, the entire community descended to catch a glimpse of the phenomenal artwork.
When this young man saw this coffin and other craft works, his interest in the artist went overboard. He returned two weeks later to make an irresistible proposal: he wanted to be a partner in the business. A deal was struck!
New markets
With substantial capital injection into the business, Godfred went back to his drawing board. He had to figure out how many more employees he needed, the skills, set of these newcomers and when more coffins walk out of the workshop, what miracle would get them to the families of the deceased.
Godfred told me that after the capital arrived, the next most severe headache was how to make the money do its job. And its job, Godfred told me later in the course of the interview, was not just to raise the number of caskets that walked out of the plant but get the products to the families of the fallen ones and into the tombs.
The new strategy
When Godfred scanned his little diary, a wretched jotter in which he listed the phone numbers of his past buyers, it occurred to him that calling such clients might reveal an interesting pattern. It did!
Godfred’s customers came from Agogoso, Ahafo-Mim, Bekwai, Dunkwa, Ayanfuri all the way to Sefwi-Oseikojokrom. After a weekend meeting with his financier, Godfred charged the former to secure what they would later refer to as Sales Points in these areas. He then commissioned his partner to locate cheap shops that might serve their new purpose
Expansion paths
The Sales Point in Agogoso is operational. Same is true of Ahafo-Mim. On the expansion calendar of Godfred and his partner, Dunkwa is next. And that project is about completed. When I asked where the train will stop next after Dunkwa, Godfred’s face beamed with sufficient joy: “That would depend on the next most promising town on the list.”
