Straight up! Obidiponbidi Sarkodie is leading
his newly created clothing like, Sark to the slaughter, I think. I do
not wish to compare Sark to other foreign brands but selling a belt at
GHC180 and a pair of jeans at GHC250 is rather on the high side of his
fans.
People are all under the illusion that anything sold at exorbitant
price is good. Sarkodie and his team should not tow that line. They
should not see the introduction of Sark as an opportunity for them to
get rich quick or overnight. Else he might end up pushing everyone away.
Sarkodie’s Sark collections which include belts, baseball caps,
sneakers, jumpers, sweat pants, t-shirts, shirts among others with his
face embossed on them are ridiculously expensive. Before the launch
which cost uninvited guests 50 Ghana Cedis a ticket, one of his fans
commented, “Pay GHC50 just to be part of the launch, then how much will
the clothes cost?”
We all know that Sarkodie’s real fans are not the people who are ready
to part with big money. Yes, his fans cut across but a great chunk of
them are the ones mostly on the street. I was present at the forecourt
of the Aphrodisiac Night Club when Sarkodie launched his Sark clothing
line designed by Yas.
Quite glaringly most of the invited guests present to witness the
launch were not his true fans. They were there because they had received
invitations from him or from his team.
After the launch many were the voices that commended Sarkodie for
having taken an enterprising step by investing in business ahead of his
colleagues in music. But a few months after the launch, keen observers
are wondering if Sark will indeed survive or disappear like what
happened to the likes of Stephen Appiah’s StepApp and Obrafuor’s OB4.
You know how painful it is when you do something good for someone and
the person turns his back on you? This is exactly how the Sarkodie fans
are feeling right now. They think the rapper is not being fair to them
when they contributed to his successful career. For many of his fans,
the artiste has become very expensive that, they have to dole out
millions of their hard earned Ghanaian Cedis to be able to purchase few
of his collections.
I’m certain that, Sarkodie has read various comments and posts by his
fans as they vent their spleen on the expensive nature of his
collections. From Twitter to Facebook, the words are that, Sark is very
expensive. The reality is that if your true or majority of your
followers cannot patronize your products because they are beyond their
reach, it means you probably don’t know what you are about. As true
fans, they are the ones to be clamoring for your products, if not then
there is a problem somewhere.
As a rapper who has moved from being a ‘battler’ on radio stations to
an international artiste, it’s fair to say he’s pricing himself out of
the market but then has his management and team done a research to know
the pocket strength of his real fans? Over-pricing the products just
because you do not want just anyone to have one is a lame excuse and
could be spelling doom for him.
Talking about paying people for the good they have done for you, I have
listened to Sarkodie on various platforms as he elucidated and defended
the over-pricing of his collections and I find such excuses very
pitiful and preposterous.
On the red carpet of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards with Confidence
Haugen, Sarkodie said: “When you move out of Ghana, they need to hear
your CV [talking about his music], what you have back home, you need a
movement going on already. First and foremost, they will check your
Twitter following, they will check your Facebook, they will check your
awards and for me to have 5 on the roll that should tell you that, the
guy is doing well…”
When Confidence asked “so how is the shop going?” Sarkodie said “Trust
me from the first 3 days if I tell you the money we have made. People
say my stuff is expensive. Of course you are wearing Sarkodie… we are
coming for the next collections for anyone who can afford it.”
In 2012 Sarkodie co-won the Black Entertainment Television (BET) Best
African Act with Nigeria’s Wizkid. Of course the organizers of the BET
Awards didn’t pluck Sarkodie from Adom FM’s studios and award him.
It was after he got to the top of his game before they thought he
merited that honour. The question is, how did he get to the top of his
game?
He achieved this by the help of his true fans who have been with him
from day one. So why would they be sidelined now that the act has gone
to the zenith of his career?