Reply To: Dr. Vinyls Working Together

To all Techs and Owners,

In our Franchise we usually do work for individual car lots or restaurants. However, we also do work for some car lots and restaurants that are under some kind of umbrella. With car lots they may share a familiar name followed by the Vehicle brand (i.e. Rusty Wallace Chevrolet, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, etc.). With restaurants it can be a little harder to tell. While some restaurants of the same name (i.e. Panera Bread) are corporately owned and operated, there are many that are privately held by individuals or holding companies. It is those holding companies that I would like to discuss today. Prior to last year I worked for a handful of Panera Breads in the Knoxville area. Last year they were bought out by a holding company which was a new one on me. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. I thought they might do things differently and not need my upholstery services any longer. The reality of the situation was quite the opposite. They were very happy to have me not only continue at the previous locations but expand into some of their other locations.

In just two weeks during August, this holding company needed work done at a dozen different locations. They were all within about a hundred miles of each other and in areas that we already worked and serviced. So, while the distance I mentioned may seem intimidating to some, I think the sales totals might persuade even the most cautious tech to overcome any hesitation or reluctance to make the drive. The upholstery work done in just those two weeks was about $20,000! That is not bad for just a few days’ work during that time frame. To make the deal even sweeter the holding company started asking if we could do work at some of the other locations they had. I started doing a little research on them and found out they own about 300 restaurants in multiple states! I let them know if we couldn’t work certain locations that we could probably find another Dr. Vinyl nearby that could. Please be thinking about holding companies as another avenue to expand your current upholstery business. As I just found out, it can be very lucrative.

Mitch Reid
The Wandering Upholsterer
All Who Wander Are Not Lost