By Chigumbu Warikandwa
Since its inception, the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair has never overflowed. In 2019, it has. This can never be described as a bad omen even by the most imaginative enemy of Zimbabwe. Nobody window shops in a shop they detests. And, in the reality of consumption mechanisms and shop management, it is the huge number of walk-in clients who go out without buying anything than those who do the actual buying.
The actual buyer is yesterday’s window shopper. Up to eighty-five percent of shop walk-ins do not result in a purchase on the same day. Some will never return. However, what these go carrying is the good name of the shop. This calls for good customer handling regardless of whether or not that customer will buy. Customers do not call again in shops that treated them with hostility. Neither do they refer other would-be buyers seeking goods or services of the same shop. Instead, they will energetically bad mouth (with exaggeration too!) any shop they were treated with hostility.
Bulawayo is famed for its friendly people and outpourings of hospitality. All the visitors attracted to the city by ZITF are going to carry these memories to their respective cities and countries. The story of not only Bulawayo but Zimbabwe will be carried back to the sixteen nations exhibiting under different organisations from their homelands.
With this year’s overflow on Hillside Road, already curious fence peepers cannot wait for ZITF 2020 to see that which is attracting international business to Zimbabwe. If a buyer visits the same shop four times before purchasing a packet of candles, how much more will an investor intending to establish a billion dollar company visit his intended investment destination?
True to Zimbabwean politics, sceptics will be up on their feet soon after the business visitors bid farewell to Bulawayo. They will begin pontificating that the business fair was a huge yawn. They will even begin accusing the media of blowing all and sundry out of proportion. They will not care to visit the ZITF to see the overflow there. They will not care to establish facts of the presence of teems of firms from sixteen countries with relevant government departments that establish contact with such visitors. They will never phone the Zimbabwe Investment Authority, the Immigration Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade nor the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to get facts surrounding investor interest on the 2019 ZITF.
The sceptics’ only tool will be data bundles and an active Twitter and Facebook account. There they will go to the well and back graphically describing how the ZITF was a huge flop.
A tuck-shop owner does not wake up seated by his house shed and only decide to build and operate a tuck-shop at noon and start selling by sundown. A small investment of that nature may require such a subsistence businessperson in excess of four months of deliberations, planning, capital vending, market analysis and final project launching. How much more should a mining firm take to do pre-launch ground work?
Businesses decide on such things as business climate, labour, input and recurrent costs, taxes, rent and market competition before they launch a business. There is need to design satisfactory reactions to all these concerns. Any critic who expects the visiting firms to establish firms in Zimbabwe by Friday must not put his argumentative power or lack of it thereof on economic debates. He must try his futile energies in social soccer and juju talk. For a good insight into prudent business establishment, one must meet John Moxon and ask how much time his forefathers took before they eventually settled to invest in the Meikles Group in Zimbabwe or how many visits were done by Old Mutual between Salisbury and Johannesburg before they spread their wings into Zimbabwe.
The Mnangagwa administration has traversed the expanse of the globe seeking re-engagement with long lost friends while strengthening both new and old friendships. Belarus is obviously leading the pack of the new excited friends. ZITF has mirrored the investments poured in the many international junkets by leading government officials and the presidency. It is time for humble pie for the bashers of the international trips. International diplomacy does not come cheap. And when it pays, it pays big.
