Tyler Schooley knew he wanted to make a difference as a young man, but he had his own aspirations, too. When the Enid, Oklahoma, native finished college at Oklahoma State and left for Uganda to try to start a business, people assumed he was doing charity or mission work. Maybe he was developing a nonprofit.
It was none of those things. He had seen a lot of the world by the time he was 23, and he felt the most organic way he could contribute to less-developed areas was through job creation. Schooley was entrepreneurial, and he had it in his head that if he could go to a developing country and start a business that became successful, then he could create jobs, make a positive impact, uplift and empower the local culture and satisfy his own financial aspirations.
“I wanted to make a difference with my business while being profitable,” Schooley says. “I made the decision to test that thesis by moving to Uganda in 2008. I had never been and didn’t know anybody.”
This isn’t the story of an American taking his branded merch company and branching out into a foreign country. This is the story of someone starting from scratch in another country. In fact, Schooley’s first attempts at businesses weren’t even in the promotional industry. He spent the first five years in what he would describe as “failing forward” and paying dues while discovering the complexities and cultural differences of doing business in Africa. None of his early businesses failed dramatically, but they didn’t reach the success or have the impact he’d aspired to.
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Then, at about the five-year mark, he was evaluating his options, including the possibility of returning to the States. He’d built a decent network of marketing managers and brand managers in Kampala, Uganda, a number of whom worked with multinational companies.
“Through those relationships, I had a few people say, ‘Hey, if you can do promotional products and corporate gifts and branded merch, we would love to work with you,'” Schooley recalls. “The market was kind of speaking to me.”
And thus, Rocket, the Ugandan-based distributor, was born in 2013.
- Now, the business has 25 employees and Rocket Group has companies across multiple African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.
- The firm serves local clients as well as multinational brands such as Coca-Cola, Shell and Vevo.
- Schooley says the company has always focused on a Pan-African vision, reaching the entire continent while also keeping a global mindset, as the branded merch industry really has no borders.
‘I Bootstrapped It’
Schooley faced a steep learning curve, and it was twofold: He had to learn how the branded merch business worked, and he had to figure out how the logistics of such an operation could be run out of Africa. A lot of distributors operating out of the Western world might take for granted just how many suppliers are at their disposal.
“There are really no suppliers in Uganda, so I really had to build out the whole supply chain,” Schooley says. “In the U.S., there are thousands of suppliers; you just get on SAGE and find them. In Uganda, that’s just not how it works.”
Figuring out where product can come from and how to get it where it needs to be affordably, responsibly and efficiently isn’t something that was laid out for him. There were options, of course, and the only way to know what worked was to explore them.
“You’ve got to look to China, Dubai and South Africa, and then you have to figure out all those shipping logistics,” Schooley says. “You’ve got to do the import taxes, and it’s really like an A-to-Z solution for the end clients. It adds a lot of complexity.”
Tyler Schooley
Founder, Rocket
But Schooley was a novice to the branded merch industry itself, so you really can’t imagine how much money and time was spent on flights. It was all about finding out. Finding out how the industry worked and finding out what would work for his industry. He flew to China plenty. He trialed and errored suppliers until he found reliable partners.
He still remembers going to South Africa for a meeting before he fully understood the difference between distributors and suppliers and being told, “You’re meeting with the wrong people. You need to be meeting with a supplier.” But his persistence paid off. Even that meeting led him to a valuable connection.
- In the year after he founded Rocket, Schooley traveled to The PPAI Expo, as well as trade shows in Dusseldorf, Hong Kong and Johannesburg – all of which he would attend many times over in ensuing years.
“I just thought, ‘If I get around all these bright minds in the industry at these leading trade show, I’m going to tackle that learning curve of this industry really quick.'”
The theory was correct. He learned plenty. He figured out his supply chain and logistics. He focused on his clients in Uganda but made the business about a Pan-African vision.
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“I wasn’t well capitalized,” Schooley says. “I didn’t have a lot of money, and I bootstrapped it. And so it was really about getting one deal, making profit, rolling that to the next one, paying myself nothing for many years, really, until that snowball started rolling a lot more meaningfully, and to fulfill that Pan African vision, really focusing on growth.”
As is often the case when growth happens, it happens quickly and multiplies on itself. He saw the opportunity to serve clients in other African countries and seized the opportunity to open up shop in other African countries as well. Then hiring became crucial …
‘The Team Is Forward-Facing Now. They’re The Ambassadors’
Once the growth finally happened, Schooley was able to make good on his hope for job creation in the region. Fortunately for him, the people he has hired have been massively beneficial to his own ability to navigate the landscape around him. To understand, consider an American perspective of Africa. The reality is quite different. A land of differing nations with specific commonalities and vast contrasts.
“We’ve really had to spend a lot of time figuring out that complexity, because every country is different,” Schooley says. “A lot of Americans think, ‘Africa, it’s this one big place.’ As Americans, we have our preconceived ideas and perceptions about Africa, what it is, and so on. But the reality is Africa is 54 diverse countries, with, I think it’s 3,000 ethnic groups and 2,000 languages, so there’s a lot of diversity there.”
- In East Africa, where Uganda is located, English is a common language. But there are still native languages you might come across and plenty of traditions, cultural or formal.
“I’ve relied heavily on the team really understanding those dynamics in the marketplace,” Schooley says. “Really the team is forward-facing now. I’m more behind the scenes. They’re really the ambassadors of the business and driving things forward.”
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Schooley has never operated a branded merch business anywhere but Africa, so he can’t speak to what it’s like to run one in the Western world, but he has attended The PPAI Expo plenty and has noticed a number of key differences and similarities.
- Both continents see the industry as relationship driven, something that actually rings even more true with large accounts where you have to offer solutions and not just products or ideas.
- For small clients in Africa, there is almost no online purchasing except in South Africa, which is a bit more sophisticated. Even where the technology is there, the business lags behind.
- In the U.S., business moves more quickly, for better or worse.
“People make decisions quick [in the U.S.’]. There’s quick communication. You send an email; you get a response within 30 minutes,” Schooley says. “In Africa, it’s often less transactional and more relational. It’s like, ‘Whoa, let’s not talk business. How are you doing? How is your family?’ Americans tend to be very direct and tell it like it is. In Africa, people don’t like to reject others.”
Fastest-Growing Continent
Schooley has been in Africa for 18 years now. He has seen it grow at a pace even faster than his business. Countries are developing and economies are stabilizing and even booming all over the continent. Many Americans put negative connotations on Africa, assuming it is full of poor, undeveloped nations. Ultimately, many of the countries are full of people willing to jump on job opportunities that contribute to their city’s rapid growth.
If he stays another 18 or so years, Schooley will see an entirely different Africa:
- By 2050, Africa is expected to have a population of 2.5 billion. By contrast, the U.S. population is expected to be around 438 million at that point, placing the total North American population being significantly under 1 billion.
- The average age in Africa is 19 years old compared to 39 in the U.S.
“It’s an emerging and very fast-growing population of young people,” Schooley says. “They want to make things happen because they’re connected. In the past, they didn’t have access to the internet and what’s happening in the world. So, the ambition levels are rising dramatically.”
The branded industry has arrived in Africa. Schooley says he has traveled to parts of the continent that are more underdeveloped and even considered dangerous and was shocked to find promo firms. While those specific companies might pose more risk, the rest of the continent from Uganda to South Africa to Kenya and beyond has proven that the Pan-African vision for branded merch can be realized, and international business may be next.
“Any [U.S. or western] company that takes a longer-term view, and they’re thinking longer term in terms of building a business, then Africa has got to be part of that equation,” Schooley says.
“A lot of distributors may not have inquiries into Africa, but if someone makes that choice of, ‘I want to really grow and become global,’ it’s important to proactively think how you could supply into that market. So then, when the client comes and they say, ‘I need an Africa delivery,’ you’re ready for it.”
