He Left His Degree To Learn At Kantamanto; Used 50 Cedis To Start His Business - The Story Of Caveman Watches CEO

He had a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from the University for Professional Studies in Accra, Ghana. But that did not stop him from going to the streets of Kantamanto to learn the art of watchmaking, that’s the story of Chief Executive Officer of Caveman Watches, Anthony Dzamefe.

In his sitdown with Kwabena Kyenkyenhene Boateng on the Business edition of 21 minutes with KKB, Anthony Dzamefe recounted how he quit his job as a hotel employee to venture into entrepreneurship.

Anthony was decisive enough after realizing he was not built for a typical 8-5 work schedule. So he quit trying anything but a regular white-collar job.

He failed! But that did not deter him. Anthony kept thinking of new ideas and finding ways of implementing them just so he would ‘make it in life.

All work and no play, they say, makes Jack a dull boy so every once in a while, Anthony would take pictures of himself and share on social media for some accolades – of course, he’s an extremely good-looking gentleman, you can’t blame him for serving some sauce every once in a while.

But the play would soon become the entry point to work for the aspiring entrepreneur.

After purchasing a watch for GHC 50 from a vendor and sharing photos of himself wearing the watch, “fans” instantly turned into a business opportunity as Anthony recounts.

“I saw somebody selling a watch on one of these online platforms for 50 cedis so I just called the person and I bought the watch just to use for myself. I happened to wear the watch, I took a picture of it and someone said ‘chale your watch dey bee oooo, are you selling it’, and I said yeah. So he came and bought the watch [and] I think that was the light-bulb moment for me so I was like wow, maybe I could make a business out of this so I called the supplier back and bought two more, I sold the two and bought three, sold the three and bought four, that was the beginning of my wristwatch adventure.”

After realizing his natural flair for selling watches, Anthony Dzamefe took to the streets of Accra, in a bid to make some more money, to hawk watches.

He moved from one office to another, and from one person to the other, convincing them of the need for them to purchase his products.

This would go on for three years.

While hawking though, Anthony realized that a number of his customers persistently complained about how bad the straps of their watches were and how quickly they deteriorated so in thinking of ways to solve that problem, he decided to become an apprentice to a shoemaker in order to learn leathercraft.

Anthony Dzamefe did all this while also understudying multiple roadside watch repairers so he could fix the watches of his customers should they require such a service.

“After every time I would add something new. It was three years after selling watches and repairing watches and getting to know a lot about watches from the entire industry knowing how they are made because I could break down different watches, take their components out and form a new watch with it that kept an accurate time.”

Soon, Anthony would ‘graduate’ from the street hustle into starting his own company, except, his curiosity got him thinking about the best possible way to break into the market.

Research was the key. 

“I used to research about African watch brands and I couldn’t find any African watch brand so all those things led to me being very curious that I know how all these things are made but how come no African has done anything like this?” and that question led to the birthing of Caveman Watches.

Today, people such as the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, celebrated music icon, Akon, as well as a host of celebrities across the length and breadth of Africa use his products.

Watch the full interview of Caveman Watches CEO, Anthony Dzamefe on the business edition of 21 minutes with KKB below:

Source: Kwabena Kyenkyenhene Boateng | 21 minutes with KKB