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Importing ... easy as ABC International: an on-air shopping network helped this royal family increase sales.


One-thousand orders! 2,000 orders! Operators are standing by. The phones are ringing like sleigh sleigh: see sled.  bells, and that black box in the left corner of your TV screen just keeps going up, up, up.

Americans are in love with Kwesibear, a 16-inch teddy bear adorned with a kente ken·te  
n.
1. A brightly patterned, handwoven ceremonial cloth of the Ashanti.

2. A durable machine-woven fabric similar to this fabric, prominently featured in Afrocentric fashion.
 cloth slash, a crown and a staff--Ashanti kingdom regalia. Entrepreneur Naa Asie Ocansey just wrapped up her two-hour stint at QVC QVC Quality Value Convenience
QVC Question Valid Command
 Network in New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
. The home-shopping hostess is also the president of New York-based ABC ABC
 in full American Broadcasting Co.

Major U.S. television network. It began when the expanding national radio network NBC split into the separate Red and Blue networks in 1928.
 (Advanced Business Connections) International, a product/packaging development and general merchandising company that makes Kwesibear.

Ocansey started the company in 1989 with about $4,000. Her husband, Dayo Babalola, joined the firm in 1991. After creating African-inspired promotional items and packaging for such companies as beverage titan PepsiCo, cosmetic queen Flori Roberts and Timelife Books, Ocansey began concentrating all her energies on upping the sales of her prime product, Kwesibear.

Two years ago, Ocansey, her husband and two employees were brainstorming the best way to sell the stuffed animal
For preserved dead animals, see taxidermy.


A stuffed animal is toy animal stuffed with straw, beans, cotton or other similar materials. Some stuffed animals are very old – home made cloth dolls stuffed with straw go back to at least the
. They targeted department stores This is a list of department stores. In the case of department store groups the location of the flagship store is given. This list does not include large specialist stores, which sometimes resemble department stores. . Soon, QVC Network, which offered a captive and credit-card holding audience of 50 million viewers, wanted her bear to be sold on the station.

Ocansey spent six months fine-tuning QVC's idea for an African shopping show. Last February, the QVC Network launched Destination: Africa. The show was a moneymaker. Last month, QVC launched its first Kwanzaa program--also co-hosted by Ocansey, 35. Both programs highlight African products. "We wanted to have a vehicle to show the real beauty of Africa, to unveil the Dark Continent," says Ocansey. "The negative portrayals are always shown."

Talk about a royal deal. Ocansey, a princess from the Royal Family of Ada Ghana, gets to showcase her own products on her home-shopping specials. Last year, Kwesibear brought in $300,000, and annual sales for 1995 are projected to top $700,000. Other Ashanti Kingdom Collection products include Kwanzaa lights emblazoned with the seven principles in English and Swahili.

But don't let the tiara fool you: Ocansey, a packaging engineer, and her husband, an architect, are graduates of Rutgers University's College of Engineering in New Jersey and the City University of New York The City University of New York (CUNY; acronym: IPA pronunciation: [kjuni]), is the public university system of New York City. . From 1984 to 1992, Ocansey worked as a packaging engineer at Del Monte, PepsiCo and Avon Products.

Fostering a commitment to ethnic packaging and promotion, Ocansey has opened channels to work with smaller African entrepreneurs who lack packaging and promotional expertise to sell their wares on her show.
COPYRIGHT 1996 Earl G. Graves Publishing Co., Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1996, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Article Details
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Title Annotation:Akan Princess Naa Asie Ocansey markets African imports
Author:Reynolds, Rhonda
Publication:Black Enterprise
Article Type:Biography
Date:Jan 1, 1996
Words:411
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