Darryl Schoen is the founder and president of Manufacturers Financing Services, which, since the early 1990s, has promoted equipment sales, especially in robotics and other manufacturing equipment, by providing custom-tailored, quick turnaround financing.
Darryl has had a lifelong affinity for business: he first learned marketing as a child selling backyard peaches and plums from a wagon. As a teen, he left a boring indoor job scooping ice cream to take up lifeguarding – which he parlayed into a business offering private swim lessons, where he learned about pricing. After receiving his BS at Chico State and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Darryl completed a management training program in banking, then returned to California to be closer to family in Southern California, once again live in a warmer climate, and work with Brunswick. Darryl structured equipment and real estate financing for bowling equipment customers in Western Canada and the Western US. He left Brunswick to work in a more entrepreneurial environment, dealing with budgets, foreign currency hedging, and credit. After expressing a desire to eventually run a company, the company’s four entrepreneur-owners challenged him to devise a business plan for a new business and present it to the company’s board of directors. The Board signed off and agreed to fund Darryl’s new operation. In 2007, he sold the successful business to two Japanese companies, which asked him to stay on as President. He loves working with people – from Forbes 500 companies to mom-and-pop businesses – coming up with customized finance solutions, especially ones they haven’t thought of.
Darryl’s wife, Jacalyn, is a Marriage and Family Therapist with an MS in Counseling from CSU, Fullerton (2012). The Schoen’s have two sons, Aaron, an MBA with Deloitte, and Jay, a Ph.D. candidate in wildlife conservation at Columbia University.
Darryl is has worked as a volunteer mentor for Orangewood Children’s Foundation and has provided guidance and support for individual foster youth. At Chico State, the Schoen’s have supported the new Business Building campaign as well as the Center for Entrepreneurship, including its Shark Tank competition.
As a relative of a Holocaust survivor, Darryl says, “My belief is we all should give back and be thankful for what we’ve got. When I think about the survivors of the Holocaust with the numbers on their arms, when I think about their horror, and how some found the strength to survive and immigrate to America, we are indeed fortunate to have grown up in a safe society with extraordinary opportunities. America has been good to me, so it is now my turn to reciprocate and give back to America. At this stage of my life, I am having so much fun doing it.”