By Ian Ortega
Not more than two years back, I was having a conversation with one of Robert Ahimbisibwe’s friends, and he gave a very honest prophecy concerning the future of this ‘rags-to-riches’ businessman. He said; “Three years from now, Select Garments will be no more, it has started on the road to its demise.” As a student of the curiosa, I was forced to ask this person in particular to explain and support his statement. To my shock, the explanation wasn’t one that could have carried any weight to it back then, but time has taught us, that dots will only be connected looking forward. For a man who closed up the very first branch where he made his first sale and preferred to move to the impressive Forest Mall, no one would have thought this was the move that would start him on the road to an abysmal collapse.
Five days back, the reading Ugandan citizenry woke up to a headline in Daily Monitor; “Select Garments Kicked Out of Mall.” In the same article, it was noted that the management of Forest Mall had closed the main branch of Select Garments shop at the building over $200,000 (about UShs 520m) in rent arrears.
But behind this story was a major story, one of an African entrepreneur who had been fooled by randomness, another statistic in the story of the ever disappearing Ugandan businessmen. If only one had bothered to look closely, yes the closer look would have revealed that this was the cornerstone upon which the last of his business breath was being sourced.
A year back, Ahimbisibwe, the wolf of the garment industry was forced to close the Select Garments branch on Kampala road at Mabirizi Plaza. It was a pruning that had come late, so late it had come that it would be comparable to feeding a man who’s next in line for hanging.
But why did this power horse get to his collapse in such a very unexplainable way? Was his pompous lifestyle one to blame? The live-large, spend large and flaunt it if you have it, had finally caught up with another of its victims, yes; Ahimbisibwe and his businesses were the victims.
The trap most African tycoons tend to fall in, is one of trying to compensate for what they feel were their wasted years when they sunk in poverty. They try to over-compensate by throwing down their hard-earned wealth into the eyes of everyone who cares to notice. And they also tend to forget, that most of these riches are not because they have a midas touch or because they have mastered the art of business, it’s always because they did a few right things by chance and stumbled on success. It’s one thing to become rich; it’s another thing to manage this status of being rich.
We all know, that Ugandan businessmen continue to find a hard-time managing their success, and if they do, then having their businesses continue on after their death is another transition that’s all too hard to make.
The Summit Business Review was to write an article three years ago titled; “Why Indigenous Businessmen in Uganda are disappearing”. To borrow an excerpt, it said;
“Ugandan tycoons have been importing garments mostly from China and Malaysia. Most of them have done the business for over 20 years without significant success. They see a lot of turnover, ignorant that most of this is not profit. And they go ahead and use the same capital to construct mansions, spend in lavish weddings, fleet of useless cars, etc. This is wastage. Imagine someone staying in a house worth Ugx. 5billion! That money is enough to set up a coffee processing plant or model farm employing thousands of people. Whereas the home does not generate any revenue but holds up money, the coffee processing plant would be adding value to the entire supply chain. That is what the rich Ugandans don’t know – don’t tie up money, invest it in value addition chain. And keep improving.”
This paragraph in one way seemed to predict the fate that was awaiting the man behind Select Garments. A flamboyant lifestyle he lived, he splashed money like he owned the tap from which it flew. He milked his business cow dry and forgot to feed it. And he made the mistake all businesses that have survived the test of time make, he forgot to watch and keep an eye on his competition. His good business success became the enemy of his great success that he never reached.
Where other businessmen let their results speak for them, he paid journalists to write about the airs of his business. From one inspiration event to another he walked, offering his business expertise, oblivious to the fact that he needed much of the anti-dote he was offering.
And when he gave out money, he gave out in a tone similar to the hand that madeth this money. He spoke in tens of millions, never less, and he forgot to listen to the voices of his customers who kept complaining of the suits that had lost the touch of class. He had now settled to importing the cheap rated versions of Chinese suits and re-selling them to Ugandans at a higher price.
These were the holes his competitors noticed and built on these weaknesses of Select Garments. If Robert Ahimbisibwe had been a reader, he would have chanced upon the books of Nassim K Taleb, one of which is “Fooled by Randomness-the hidden role of chance in life and in the markets.”
If a man is fragile, it doesn’t matter how much he pretends not to be, soon or later on, he falls victim and his fragility all shines through. Ugandan businessmen tend to forget that most of the time, it was all about chance that they rose, and not because of their genetic or mental make-up of business expertise. Nassim Taleb notes; “Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.”
Taleb further pokes the sting at the businessmen and he says; “I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, the person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans). Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. ”
And yes, the man behind Select Garments had been fooled by randomness just as many other Ugandan businessmen have been fooled in the past and continue to be fooled in times to come. The few that understand the principles of randomness, tend to get better at getting the right people in the management, because they know, it wasn’t because they were good that they became successful, it was an act of chance, and the only way to guard this luck is to master business management, yet most Ugandan businessmen continue to forget this.
Randomness fools them so hard that they forget a simple fact; “simply because they started a business that grew big doesn’t give them the right to continue being the main people in management, when a business gets to the good level, it requires the hiring of smart people, people smarter than those who started these businesses, yet Ugandan tycoons tend to think they are the smartest in the field and never separate their personal lives from the business.”
At the moment, only the poorly designed Select Garments website stands, only the loan-sharks all swaying for his blood stand and for his entire rags-to-riches story, it seems that you can’t escape what you are made of. You can try to disguise it, but soon or later, it catches up with you, and you blow up.
Robert Ahimbisibwe was a perfect time bomb ticking away, by forgetting to look for the invisible risks of blow-up in his business portfolio, he made the greatest mistake. The man who turned around the Garments industry was fooled by randomness. The only prayer is, for randomness to give him a second chance, this current one, being one for introspection so that he gets anti-fragile when the second chance appears.