Canvas company finds success in luxury tent market

Perched atop the world’s tallest mountain is an East African Canvas tent, not as large as the ones available locally but an indicator of the heights the company is scaling.

The company that was started 11 years ago by Rob Flowers and Gary Macintyre sponsored local adventurer Steve Obayyi in his quest to conquer the peak of Mount Everest.

At the factory along Nairobi’s Magadi Road, a large steel frame sits bare in the compound. It is the new material East African Canvas is using instead of traditional wood frames.

With the market running short of hardwood, the company is looking for alternatives especially for customers like Maasai Mara with a sensitive eco footprint.

Looking at a 25 per cent growth in turnover per annum, the entrepreneurs say the key to keeping the business growing is innovation.

Mr Flowers is tasked with coming up with new designs. He had been in the tents industry for over 20 years through his tenting company Pengo Limited before he partnered with Mr Macintyre who was running Sandstorm. They merged the two companies to form East African Canvas Company.

As a tour guide in the region for over 15 years, Mr Flowers spent a lot of his time in tents, but he saw there was potential in improving the colours, designs and comfort of the tents that we being used in the 80s and early 90s.

“Once I got out of guiding, that is what I started to do. Fill that niche,” he said.

When they started, they were faced with the challenge of coming up with a different look for the tents which existed in green and light green only.

“No one had thought of making a beige tent, and now that is almost all you will get in the market,” he said.

Another challenge that they faced was educating the market.

“Educating a market to what is possible is almost as difficult as anything else. It is very hard for people to see innovation unless it is right in front of their faces. Proof of concept is very important, they have to see it to believe it will work,” Mr Flowers said.

Also, like every industry that relies heavily on skilled labour, each time a trained employee left the company, they took with them a small piece of the market share.

However, they have grown the business to attract clients like Fairmont Hotels, Sarova Hotels, Serena Hotels, Abercrombie and Kent, Tanzania Game Trackers, the Heritage Group among others. The company is now expanding to the greater East African market.

“We are picking up the slack in Tanzania, there is a lot of business coming in from there,” said Mr Flowers.

The company is also eyeing the unexploited Uganda and Rwanda markets.

Targeting high-end resorts

The tents industry has grown and in the 80s, tents were only as large as 20 metres and now, it is no surprise to find tents that are as high as 70 metres.

Hotels have helped shape the tents business. In Maasai Mara, permanent structures are rare with more hotel chains going for large luxury tents to accommodate their guests.

With a background in tourism, it was easy for Mr Flowers to venture into the hotel industry, targeting high-end resorts looking for luxury tented accommodation.

“When Gary and I came together, we already had a market base from our existing clientele, so it took only about three to four years to recoup the investment,” he said.

The initial investment that the two made for tent manufacture went into the labour force and the sewing machines.

The whole tent-making process is done in-house except for framework making which is sub-contracted.

The Magadi Road site sits on a 15-acre piece of land, with only seven acres that have been developed. The company has an additional workshop near Nairobi’s Jamhuri Park for tent manufacturing.

They source most materials from South Africa as they are not available locally and get nets and a few other components from Kenya.

To be a successful entrepreneur, Mr Flowers says that one needs to first identify the market and the need for the product. Once this is ready, financing is important.

‘‘Be sure to have a credit line with a good overdraft. It is very difficult to run on what you make from operations only,” he said, adding that one needs to stick with the idea and the business.

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