Rocketeer Tees by Apaneca
When I joined SR back in 2013 I shared a story with Rob about how I wanted to build a couple of soccer fields in my hometown for many reasons:
- I love the sport and have played it since I remember
- Having a space where kids, teens, adults can go and have a good time and do something for their health
- Having a space where less fortunate people can come and keep their attention away from the social problems they might have back at home.
BUT! I couldn’t get any funding/loan from any bank because I was 23/24 years old and I had no experience or record of owning something.
I’ve always been a soccer/football passionate and kind of a good player. And I wanted to share this passion with my community and bring young people to learn what a sport like that gave me during more than half of my life. I learned how to be disciplined, to don’t give up among other things. But the best learning experience I got from that was to learn how to be a team player.
Rob heard this story and he shared his with me, he also wanted to do something for the communities that are attached to his DNA. And as you know his half Salvadoran side connected with my full Salvadoran side and we talked about doing something that will bring opportunities to our community.
Back in 2018 he started a conversation about creating a brand that could make an impact and improve people's quality of life. And that’s how Apaneca was created. We realised that Central America is where a lot of the world famous brands produce their wearables and El Salvador isn’t the exception for that. We started researching how to produce our T-shirts in that country and why not use it as a case study for other Tech Companies to get inspired by Apaneca and follow our path.
It took us some time, and more than a couple of field trips to meet with different manufactures to finally produce our first batch in El Salvador. In 2019 we started producing our Rocket T-shirts under our own brand.
We met Jaime (The guy in the red T-shirt), he runs a small company that does serigraphy and that also works with other local small manufactures, who are his T-shirts and Fabric suppliers.
A few days later I met with Jaime again, and I asked him how does his company works, and how many people were involved in the production of our Rocket T-shirts and I found very powerful to share with all of you this:
Our T-shirts pass through all these hands:
From now on, every time you get a brand new T-shirt with the Apaneca label printer in it, $1 USD is donated to The ServiceRocket Foundation, and those funds are dedicated to help and support other small producers around the world through KIVA.org
Next time you wear your Rocket T-shirt wear it proudly, and keep in mind that by wearing it you are not only representing our community, but you are also helping to improve the life quality of 32 families in El Salvador and supporting 140+ small producers around the globe.