Darren Jamieson:
On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking with Casey Ridley from The Designery, a franchisor based in Georgia in the United States. I’m going to be talking to Casey about how he started his business, how he decided that franchising was the best option for him, and what processes he uses for finding the correct franchisees, training them, making sure they’re a success, and of course, marketing his franchise business.
You’re the second person I’ve interviewed this week who is into franchising. Now, there’s not that many businesses from a percentage scale in the UK that are franchises. So it’s very, very big in America. What made you want to go into franchising yourself?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. No, thanks Darren. That’s a great question. I mean, you know, I’m a firm believer that franchising is the greatest wealth creation engine in the world.
Darren Jamieson:
And I think there’s a sound right there, mate. There is a sound right there.
Casey Ridley:
I believe it. I stand by it. You know, it gives people the opportunity to be entrepreneurs and invest in themselves that maybe they wouldn’t have without franchising. You know, creating something from scratch and you don’t know where to start, tough to do, right? There’s only so many Steve Jobs in the world, right? But franchising allows anyone to have the opportunity to create better lives for themselves. So I’m a big believer in that.
But with that being said, franchising to me is about efficiencies. It’s about scale and it’s about opportunities. So when I decided to go into franchising, it was about those things. How do I scale my business? How do I do it efficiently? And then ultimately I found a passion around how do I give opportunities to other people in the country, in the world, who could take place in this journey with me and build something great together.
Darren Jamieson:
How long had you been running the business before you decided that franchising it was the best option?
Casey Ridley:
Roughly about two to three years. Basically, I had very early on, right at the very beginning of me acquiring a small surplus business, I had decided I wanted to grow and I wanted to expand and I wanted this to be a bigger thing. And we went to a second location pretty quickly and things went very well. And that was where I really just dug into how do I make this a national brand, something that is in every city across the country, something that can just be very successful outside of myself and my own purview, if you will.
And that’s when I came across the world of franchising and how incredible it is to bring other people in with other backgrounds, other experiences. We can all learn together and grow together into something much bigger than myself, which is what brought me to it.
Darren Jamieson:
Could you explain very briefly what the actual business was that you were running that you decided to franchise?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, so it was a surplus business as the foundation of it in the construction space. So it was second-hand windows, second-hand doors. We had couches at one point. A very hodgepodge thing in the kitchen and bath space. Ultimately, I decided to revitalise that in a different way. And we dug into cabinetry. We dug into flooring, countertops, tile, really the home remodelling spaces. And then further really dug into kitchens, baths, and closets. And that’s where we found a lot of success. We realised that’s what our niche is. That’s where we are passionate about. It’s where people spend the most time in their homes or really in those places, from an intimate perspective being in their bathroom or their closet, to a family gathering perspective in their kitchen. And because of that, we just dug deep into that. And that is ultimately the business that we franchised, was a kitchen, bath, and closet company.
Darren Jamieson:
Does that mean then, because what you’re selling, you would need layouts for people to see, you’d need quite a lot of space for each one of your premises for it?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. So regarding the space aspect, we’ve been able to really condense our showrooms, we call studios, into a 1,500 square foot commercial space that we’re able to really bring what we call vignettes, which are just displays, we’re able to bring those to life inside that space. But then we lean heavy into technology in order to allow the customer to really see their space. So virtual reality, we have what we call the design centre, which allows customers to really see it on a big screen. So they have all of those tools at their disposal to really understand the project that they’re about to endeavour and what that final product looks like without being able to obviously know exactly the ins and outs. It’s hard to picture it. So that technology gives us those tools and we’re super happy to be a very tech-forward type of business.
Darren Jamieson:
Is that proprietary technology or is that something that other people are able to use as well? Competitors, for example.
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, so it is proprietary. It’s something that we built alongside some design softwares and different technology stacks. So we are, to my knowledge, the only ones out there really utilising the technology like we are. And with that being said, I’m a firm believer that this is a big industry and there’s a lot to eat. So I’m super happy for anyone else in this space to be willing to kind of take a risk in their business and do something with technology. I’m just a big believer in the industry of giving customers the tools they need to see their space. So I don’t necessarily want to gatekeep the technology that we’ve created.
Darren Jamieson:
And with kitchens and bathrooms, there’s a lot of companies in the UK that do that sort of thing. Depending on the type of target client they’re going for, they’ll either be low-end, mid-range, or high-end. Where do you sit in that area?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. So we’re actually very unique because we do have a full spectrum there. So what I mean by that is we do a lot of apartment complexes, we do multifamily, we do town homes, so we do those things kind of more on that lower end, very budget-conscious, typically investor type of buyer. But then on the other side, we also do 10, 15 million USD homes and with very custom touches and very unique preferences. And then we do everything in between. We have a very diverse and resilient supply chain that allows us to adapt based on the client’s needs. We have very competitive pricing which allows us to hit more of that multifamily space.
So, you know, we definitely don’t want to be jack of all trades in everything and have our hands in everything, but from a customer base, we’re very diverse there and we can attack the market in different ways.
Darren Jamieson:
So when you opened your second premises, that was an owned premises by you rather than a franchise. Is that correct?
Casey Ridley:
Correct. Yes.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. And how far away from your first store was that?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, that one is about 45 minutes to an hour depending on traffic. So it was close enough that I could have synergies around the business operations from management to staff to shipping and partners and installers and so on. But it was also far enough away that it was a different customer base, a different segment, and the brand wasn’t as known at that point. So it was far enough away that we could really test if, okay, new market, no branding, starting from scratch, can we still do it? And thankfully, we were very lucky to find some success there, which snowballed into our next round.
Darren Jamieson:
So what was the process then? So you’ve opened the second store, that’s running. How do you then get a franchise off the ground? Because there’s a lot of work involved with it from obviously documenting procedures, getting your legals in place, which is very important, working out your franchise model and your training and your vetting process for your franchisees. How do you go about doing that?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, 100%. Well, we started with the business model. So when I decided at that point that I wanted a franchise and I was looking at this across the country, I really looked at it from a 4,000-foot view. I looked down at the business model and said, is this easy to replicate in every state, every city, or country? Is this something that can be replicated? Is this something that there’s a customer base everywhere for?
And from that I had learnings. I had things of, okay, I need to change this and I need to have better software here and I need to have a better whatever there. One of those things though was our name. Our name at that point was A1 Kitchen and Bath. It wasn’t catchy. It was just what it was, right?
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. What we call in this country a phone book name.
Casey Ridley:
100%. That was the idea behind the creation of it at that time. And so when we decided we want to go in every city, that wasn’t the name for it. So we rebranded, we redid signage, and we started this new brand from that point.
After that, we went into the legal side and I said, okay, what do I need to do to do a franchise? And I discovered the contracts and the laws in each state and how to protect the franchise owners as well as the franchisor and what that relationship looks like. So I had to understand all of that. And then I did what anyone does that goes into an industry they don’t really know much about. I started going to conferences. I started meeting people. I started networking. And from that I met some incredible people, partners, mentors, et cetera, which helped kind of get it into the franchisees’ hands.
So from an organic approach of how do we get out there in the market, from that how do we partner with franchise consultants who help people find the business of their dreams? How do we partner with them so we can be on their radar? So that was kind of the series of steps I took to ultimately get to where we are today.
Darren Jamieson:
So did you start with what we call a pilot franchise?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. So locations three and four are what we call kind of friends and family, if you will. Kind of the first people that were in my sphere of network who were willing to take a chance, if you will, on the business. And that helped us get some validation. That helped us understand the model when it’s not me every day running it or leading it. How do I give the coaching and support to that person to then go on and do it? So there was a lot of learnings in that. Some were great, some were tough, and others were, why didn’t I think of that sooner?
But ultimately those first pilot locations were instrumental in helping us understand how do we go from that to where we’re at today, which is roughly around 58 locations total.
Darren Jamieson:
And how many states are those locations in?
Casey Ridley:
That’s a good number. I believe it’s around 28 states.
Darren Jamieson:
Wow.
Casey Ridley:
But I’d have to double check me.
Darren Jamieson:
Across from east to west, how far?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. We go as north as Rochester, New York, as south as Miami, and as west as Salt Lake City, Denver area.
Darren Jamieson:
Wow. So that’s really spreading the states. And how do you manage to keep sort of control out of such a wide area because you can’t drive between those obviously?
Casey Ridley:
No. Well, definitely a lot of airline miles to visit the locations. But, you know, it really just comes down to one, you’ve got to find the right franchise owners. We’re very lucky that we have a solid group of owners who are all aligned with the same goal of building a great business. They’re team players. They help each other. We have an incredible culture around that.
Just a funny side note, we had a conference a few months ago and the last day was what we call the gala. So there was dancing and everyone was having a good time and my owners took over the dance floor. They were all out there dancing, having a great time. So there’s a strong culture there. So that’s number one. You’ve got to have good franchise owners who are all aligned because I can’t do everything. I can’t be in every spot.
Number two, you have to have a great franchisor team. So again, I’m not alone. I’ve got great people around me. Some who’ve been in the business with me for years, others who came from other franchise businesses. So they bring that perspective. Others who come from totally unrelated industries, but have a ton of experience in other ways that provide value here. That core team that we have supports all the owners in their endeavours. So that’s super helpful and a key to success, if you will.
And then the third thing is just clear, transparent communication around what the rules are when they’re coming on board and decide it’s the right fit for them, as well as the conversation every time I talk to someone or I go somewhere. It has to be very clear about what the transparency is, communication, what the feedback is from them to me, how can we improve our support to them. It has to be a two-way street, but it all comes down to just transparent, clear communication.
So again, like you said, I can’t be everywhere at one time, especially even flying and the joys of airlines now, it still takes time. I can’t be in every single location in a quick time frame or in a consistent time frame. So those three things have to exist in order for things to continue flourishing outside of my immediate window.
Darren Jamieson:
And it’s one of the things that puts people off, certainly in the UK, from franchising, is the loss of control, that they’re letting other people essentially represent their brand and become them. Have you found that difficult in any way or is it something you’ve just embraced?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, of course, any sort of loss of control from myself as someone who maybe is a franchisee, because I’m also a franchisee of another brand. I own separate locations of another business as well. So I really see it from both perspectives. And losing control is never easy. Sometimes there’s tough pills to swallow, but I do think it’s ultimately something you embrace. And I say that because there’s a codependency around franchising which is what makes the model work.
We make money when the franchise owners make money. The franchise owners make money when we make money. And it’s just a win-win. And so there’s no way that we make money and everyone out there is doing bad, right? And there’s no way that they’re out there doing well and us do bad, right? Like it’s a synergistic relationship. So when you realise that and you stay aligned on the goals and what you’re there to do and you know the business you’re building, you have a set of core values that kind of guide you, the control aspect is okay because it doesn’t feel like you’ve lost control. Instead, it just feels like you have other people that are all melding their minds together to build something greater. And that helps keep you going when there might be a tough pill to swallow every now and then.
Darren Jamieson:
You mentioned earlier how certainly one or some of your franchise owners are franchisees in other businesses and you mentioned how you are a franchisee in another business. How much do you learn from being a franchisee before franchising your own business?
Casey Ridley:
Oh man, immense, immense amount of information, knowledge, and learnings. I mean some things that I want to replicate and do just as good if not better. And then there’s others that I’m like, I don’t like that. That’s not my favourite way of handling that situation or handling that vendor, if you will. And those are learnings and I can take that back to my business to build a better business and understand the franchise owners in a different way.
I understand not only what they go through for The Designery because I created the brand and did it from nothing to something, but then I also understand it being a franchisee and having the franchisor have rules and regulations that maybe you don’t always agree with and your perspective might be a little different. That’s okay. So I really bring that learning together to help just build the best business here with The Designery that I can.
And I have other owners who were franchisees of other brands before they joined The Designery. And again, they bring a whole level of experience of what their brands have already done that maybe worked or didn’t work or the ways they’ve done it. They also bring in a sense of understanding around franchising and the model, the way it works, the way that you do have to communicate and be a team player. It’s not you’re not in it by yourself, right? You’re in it with other people.
One of my favourite things that we say is you’re in business for yourself but not by yourself. And that’s really key. If you’re in it by yourself, you don’t have to listen to anyone. You don’t have to be a team player. You don’t have to worry about the rules and regulations of something else outside, of course, the law. But when you’re in a franchise, you have to care about those things. But it goes deeper than that. Again, you’re not alone. If it is a stressful day, you have people to call, people who truly understand exactly what you’re going through. If you have a customer that is maybe being a little difficult, you have someone who maybe has a different customer who has a similar situation and you can learn from how they already handled it or didn’t handle it.
So yeah, having another opportunity with another franchise has provided me a ton of value and I think it provides my owners a ton of value, and of course any other franchise out there, I think it provides them value as well.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking here’s a question you might not want to answer. What have you seen either in a franchise that you’ve been a franchisee of or the other franchisees that have come to you from other franchises, what have you seen that you’ve thought, I want to make sure we don’t do that?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. That’s a great question. Well, I’ll speak of maybe not my personal experiences, but what I have seen from others.
One specific situation that I’ve seen from someone else and their franchisor is that they went through a software change and the way they handled the software change was very sloppy. It lacked communication. It was just a poor rollout all around. It wasn’t anything malicious from the franchisor. It just wasn’t done and executed in the best way possible. And so bringing that into my business, we are looking at different softwares and improving our tech stack and how do we just continue optimising for our customers and for the business owners to run their business.
And I specifically talked to someone who told me the good and the bad of what their franchisor did and how they did it. So that when we do it or we add a software, we can learn from that and not make those same mistakes. Not that we’re going to do it perfectly by any means, but if we pay attention to the others around us, we can improve the execution piece of it. So that’s just a very specific example of how being a part of other franchisors has provided value to us and our business.
Darren Jamieson:
And I think it would only be fair to ask that question in reverse as well then. So what have you seen from other franchises that you thought, you know, that’s brilliant, I want to make sure we aspire to copy that, or not copy it, use a similar model?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, absolutely. One thing I’ll say in specific of a franchise where I know they execute very well on social media. We live in a digital age where everything is posted online. People are tracking online. I just recently went to Japan and when we were planning the trip, what did I do? I went on Instagram and I looked at things to do in Tokyo or Kyoto and the other places I went and I looked at those videos and I went to restaurants that were on Instagram that were being talked about as being good places to go. And a lot of people do that because those restaurants were slammed. You couldn’t get in. They were busy. You couldn’t get a reservation. So it’s true and it works.
So another franchisor that I watch, they’ve done a really good job with social media, being very brand-focused, building a following, and just being very, hate to use the word trendy, but being trendy where people are looking at it and it’s catchy and there’s good music around it and it’s edited well. That brings a lot of learnings to us. The kitchen and bath space and the closet space is fun. It’s a sexy thing. People like to see a beautiful kitchen or a beautiful master closet. And so I want to take the learnings that I can see from them of how they’ve executed that. How do we replicate that in our industry and how do we create a viral following and things like that? And my team is focused on building us to a household brand name in the kitchen, bath, and closet space.
So I think that would be a very clear-cut way that I see someone doing something good that I want to embody on our side.
Darren Jamieson:
Is there a particular franchise that you could name that you could say does that really well?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. Absolutely. Gosh, there’s a lot. Let’s see which route I want to go. All right. Let’s go in the health and wellness space. Orange Theory Fitness. If you’re familiar with them, it’s a fitness class style, membership style. They do really good, even to the point where their music is curated by a very well-known DJ that people know throughout the States. It’s the same music that’s played in their classes and they show a lot of really fun videos and pictures of people in their studios doing classes. They have milestones after you do so many classes. So people are posing with a good backdrop and taking pictures with their sign that says they’ve completed 100 classes and then they’re posting it and tagging them in it and so on and so forth. So I think they’ve done a really good job of creating a very well-known brand.
Obviously there’s a lot of fast food type businesses that do a good job. And then going maybe a little outside of social media, but most people don’t realise that the NFL is actually a franchise. So football and that is a very well-known, it’s on every, there’s a ton of commercials. All of their players are doing sponsorships with other businesses. So they, in a different way, are taking advantage of a mass following in a digital space. And that’s also a franchise. So everything from something very small to something really big, I look at that and see how we can embody that on our side.
Darren Jamieson:
And of course, the NFL, we’re recording this podcast a few days before the Super Bowl, which I’m going to be staying up for. Going to get myself some chicken wings in and watch that. One thing that is rumoured the NFL is doing, I don’t know if it’s confirmed yet, is that they’re going to have a team outside the US. They’re going to have a London team. That’s going to happen in the next three or four years apparently. That would be fantastic.
Casey Ridley:
I really enjoyed waking up Sunday morning and having the earlier games for us because it’s over the pond. So that would be fantastic. Be a bit of a commute for the fans for every game.
Darren Jamieson:
But obviously we have two or three games a season here anyway played in London at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. But that’s taking a franchise international, which a lot of American franchises do. What plans have you got to go international?
Casey Ridley:
Well, definitely international is always on the radar. I’m very ambitious and I have a lot of growth-minded aspirations, but I will say I’m very focused right now in the States of just growing our current brand. I want to be very focused on building something successful here before we go international. But of course, like I said, it’s always on my radar and if I had someone approach me tomorrow saying, hey, I’d love to do something in XYZ country, it would definitely be something that I paid attention to and would be curious about.
But my focus is definitely currently on the States. But I will say obviously that progression internationally will probably be somewhat either Canada or European countries. It makes the most sense for us. And there is a reason why I go to McDonald’s in most countries that I go visit just to see what they got at the McDonald’s there, right? So you’re right. A lot of American companies that are franchising end up going international and I love that because it again just brings the world closer, right? It creates opportunities for people in other countries and it just brings us all together again under like-minded goals and an ability to learn from each other and so on.
Darren Jamieson:
It’d be fantastic because one of our oldest clients here at Engage Web is an American franchise company called Minuteman Press, a printing franchise. So they’ve got, it’s about a thousand or so franchises, I think, across the United States, but they’re in other countries. They’ve gone specifically into English-speaking countries. So they went to Canada first, obviously that’s an easy step, and Australia and the United Kingdom, but they’re also in South Africa. So it might be an approach for you to go Canada first because that’s an easy transition really for a franchise before going into other English-speaking regions.
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. No, that’s a great point and I think you make a great point that going into English-speaking countries might be kind of the next progression before you venture outside of that a little bit more. But that’s fantastic.
Darren Jamieson:
And as obviously we do marketing for them, one of the strongest aspects of a franchise, whatever the franchise may be, is the procedures, the systems, the suppliers, and the fact that everything is the same from one business to the next. But from a digital marketing perspective, one of the biggest weaknesses of franchises is that everything is the same from one to the next. So the websites tend to be the same, the content tends to be the same, and that can negatively affect them on search. It can negatively affect the traffic they receive.
How do you market your franchises? And is there an overall marketing budget the franchisees pay into? What do you promise the franchisees on a monthly basis? And what autonomy do they have to do marketing themselves?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, that is a great question. I’m glad you asked that. So at a national level within our corporate team, we have a marketing team and they work on exactly what you said, branding, the consistency, the procedures, the guidelines, blogs, website, all of those things. There’s a budget that people pay in, that all locations pay into, that’s then deployed out for the betterment of the network, of the national brand.
Where does that go? How do we do that? We of course partner with the franchise owners to get their feedback on how do we deploy those dollars in the most responsible and impactful way possible. But we take it a step further because I completely agree with you that we can’t lose the local touch. When I was a one-location, two-location thing, that was one of our biggest advantages, that we knew the community, we knew the people, we were in front of the people and we cared about the community and those sorts of things. And we can’t lose that as we continue growing.
So we put that in the hands of the franchise owners, of course with our help and our playbooks, as we call it, of instructional manuals of how to do these things. But things like being a part of networking groups locally, being a part of the local news and different press releases. But then beyond that they actually have access and control over the local website, over the local social medias. They can post things. They’re posting stories. They’re at local home shows posting videos of them at the home show. Anything like that to just make the franchise owner or their staff, depending on the way they want to run it, the face of the business at a local level is key.
That allows us to play a little bit of both realms. We are able to do the national approach, we’re able to have the consistency and consistent branding to where if someone moves from New York down to Miami, they can go to The Designery and get the same experience and can benefit the whole network and each other, but at the same time, the person in Miami is posting stuff about their Miami community and the things they’re doing in the community and the places that they’re going in the community and the shows that they’re a part of. So it’s really important to kind of merge that together, if you will.
Darren Jamieson:
So each franchisee has autonomy to post what they want on social media and on, do they have their own website or is it a section of the national website they have?
Casey Ridley:
It’s a section of the national website. So we call it their local pages. So they can go into their local page. It’s thedesignery.com/location slash and then the name of the location. And that is where they’re posting local blogs. You’ve got an about us, about the owner of that location and the areas they serve and all sorts of stuff they want to post. So they do have autonomy over that. Now of course within guidelines, right, because we have to make sure that we’re protecting their neighbours from any misdoings of each other. And that’s kind of where we come in, just making sure that everyone plays in the sandbox correctly, if you will. But they have autonomy to build the biggest castle in the sandbox and not rely necessarily on others to do it at the national level. They can also do it locally and we pair that together to build something as great and as fast as possible by having both approaches.
Darren Jamieson:
And as a result of that, if you’re letting the franchise owners have autonomy to do that, depending on their skill sets and their interests, some of them will be absolutely running with it and flying. And there’ll be others, because I know people in the kitchen space certainly, who will be like, social media, what’s that? That’s for posting pictures of your dinner. I’m not touching that. I don’t know anything about it. So how do you encourage people who are, should we say, less inclined to do that level of marketing for their business?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. No, that’s a great point and we definitely have some of those as well. I mean, I’m roughly kind of on that wavelength. I’m not a social media person. I am not someone that posts all the time myself personally. I’ve gotten better at it and I’ve got a good team around me who helps post things and kind of manage things for me, but I had to really force myself.
Thankfully now for our owners, they don’t have to force themselves as much. We still post on their behalf. So we handle a lot of it for them if they don’t want to touch it. But then the other aspect is maybe you don’t know how to touch it. You don’t know where to go about it because you’re used to just seeing a beautiful dinner spread on your page. So how do you post something about a kitchen? We have examples. We have instructions. We have ways to help. And that’s what a franchise is, right, is we can’t do everything for you necessarily, we can do some of it, but we can support you and show you the how. You can learn from the people around you so then ultimately you can get good at it.
And I’ve got owners who didn’t even have a Facebook before they joined and we told them, well, you’re going to have to get a Facebook because you need to be able to run your own Facebook pages for the business. And now they’re posting videos of them talking and they’re an expert in their space and they’re soaring with the eagles. So it’s all about just having a willingness to learn and get out there and kind of overcome fear, which is obviously probably the biggest thing that I think holds anyone back. It’s not money, it’s not knowledge, it’s fear. Everything else can be figured out. But if you can get over that fear, anything is possible. It’s the same thing with social media. You feel silly, right? You don’t want to get in front of people. You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to act like you know everything when you feel personally like you don’t know everything. But getting over that fear and then ultimately you can become the expert you seek.
Darren Jamieson:
And you mentioned networking as well. You encourage them to go out networking. I’m in a networking group that’s from America called BNI. It’s probably one of the ones you’ve got them in.
Casey Ridley:
Yeah.
Darren Jamieson:
How much encouragement and training do your franchises get?
Because some of them presumably won’t have ever run a business before. So how much support do they get in terms of you can do this, this is how you run a business, this is how you deal with staff, this is how you deal with payroll, this is how you deal with tax, this is how you deal with going out and speaking to customers or customer complaints, should you get any of those? How much support do they get in all of that?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a ton. So just starting out, we approach it in kind of three phases. So phase one is what we call the online learning management system. So internally it’s called Elevate. And that is what it sounds like, an online learning system for owners to go through and kind of get the foundation of this business as well as just their financial and business wherewithal overall.
Phase two is in-person training. So people come in to our centralised facility and we have a several-week-long crash course of everything you need to know to run the business. We’re doing sales role-playing, we’re doing designing, we’re doing CRM work, we’re doing product knowledge, all of those things that you need to learn in order to run a successful business, we’re doing that in person.
Then when you leave there, the third phase is we have a shadowing programme where you can go to another location and you can shadow the employees and the owner there. So you can really get hands-on with how to actually do this in your community. And then of course you’ve got all the post-training stuff after that. So all of the things to reinforce what you’ve already learned in the online management system and the in-person training, the reinforcement of it. So the practices, what we have, webinar series, et cetera.
Then on top of that, we have a fantastic suite of vendors and that goes outside of just the product vendors. It also means we have great bookkeepers. We have great softwares. We have great dashboarding. We have great tax experts who they can bring on and help them in their business. So they don’t need to know really anything. I mean our best owners knew nothing about business ownership and were rock stars in the corporate world before they decided, hey, why am I making money for all these other people? Let me try to do something for myself and bet on myself instead. And they come in and they just have a willingness to learn and they just soak it all in and then they execute on it and they flourish.
Darren Jamieson:
And I don’t want to get figures out of you if you don’t want to give any, but I had a podcast earlier this week with a lady that runs franchises in the UK and it’s a care franchise, hers. So people go into other people’s homes to look after them. So they don’t have to go into a residential home themselves. It works out cheaper for the elderly person that needs care. Her franchisee, she says within two to three years, you should be turning over around a million pounds a year. Do you have targets that you set your franchises in terms of what they could potentially earn? And how many franchises do you have that are hitting or exceeding those targets?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great question. So yeah, I mean we have owners that are just excelling way above expectations even, but I’ll say that most locations within their first year really target that million dollar USD realm and most of our owners are either hitting that, getting close to it, and some are exceptionally exceeding it. Our item 19, which is where some of the figures lie within the franchise documents that people look at, there’s locations in there that are doing several million, and some within early years of operations and some a lot more mature.
So we are very pleased with the performance of the franchise owners. They’re turning profits pretty quickly. One thing I’ll say though that I think is unique in the franchising space is the franchise can do a ton of things to help someone get an advantage and get ahead of running a business, but a lot of it does come down to the execution. So why do we have two owners in great markets with all the same tools and this one in their first year did 1.4 and this one in their first year did 850,000? Both great numbers, right? Both still good businesses, but this is still a lot more. How did they do 600,000 more? It comes down to the execution, their willingness to take the tools and just really dig in deep into them. They’ve hired great teams. They’ve really followed the coaching. They’re in every one of our calls and they’re soaking it in, whereas the other owner maybe didn’t soak in quite as much and they’ve skipped a few calls here or there and et cetera. Again, both great businesses, both great numbers, both turn a profit significantly, but some execute a little better on that.
So I think that’s a big learning of how do we find the right owners who can all be top tier. And again, we’re very lucky with a great group of owners that all excel pretty exceptionally.
Darren Jamieson:
Well, that leads into a question I was going to ask actually about the owners. Because the franchise I was speaking to this week, they’re very, very careful on the vetting process because it’s care. They need to make sure that it’s the right type of person that’s going to do it. How careful are you when you vet potential franchisees? Do you reject people if you don’t think they’re a good fit to your business? And what qualities are you looking for?
Casey Ridley:
Absolutely. We have had to reject people that just it wasn’t the right fit for one thing or another. One thing about our process is, one, it’s very touchy-feely and in person, if you will, meaning that it’s not just one call and it’s not just here’s the business stuff, do you want to do it or not? It’s not all remote and over Teams or Zooms. It’s let’s break bread together. Let’s go out and get dinner. You’re going to come see our team. We’re going to introduce all of our team to you. We want to know about you. We want to have meetings with your wife on there or your husband on there or if your kid’s going to be involved in the business, bring them to meet the team days and let’s get to know everyone because that is key of finding the right people. We need to know who you are and you need to know who we are. It’s not just a business relationship. It goes a little deeper than that because there will be tough times and we need to be able to pick up the phone and have a clear communication to where we can move things in the right direction for your businesses.
So it’s a very extensive process around joining and being a franchise owner. We have had to reject people before. And the other thing too is that I’m always going to do my absolute best to get a franchise owner that I think can be successful, not for us, but for themselves. Meaning, if someone is maybe a little light on the balance sheet, like they don’t have a way to get the right kind of funding, they’re just a little on the low side, could they make it work if they really were scrappy with it and really worked really hard? They could, right? They could. But if there’s one misstep and they are struggling a little bit and they have no sort of available resources to pull from, it puts them in a bad spot and it digs themselves in a hole and we never want to put someone in those situations.
So I have franchise owners who come to me and say, I want to expand. I want to grow. I want more. And I’ll look at their stuff with them and I’ll say, you know, you’re killing it. You’re doing amazing. You’re just not quite there yet. I don’t want you to spend this much cash strapping your business a little bit tighter than it needs to be when you can focus on this and grow this to the next level and then have the resources to responsibly go into the next location. So all of those things are happening throughout this process, from finding a franchise owner but also an existing franchise owner that wants to expand. All of those things are happening because we’ve got to make sure that we continue to build strong owners who can build big businesses responsibly.
Darren Jamieson:
And how do you go about choosing the locations? Because you mentioned you work the full gamut from what we call in the UK a landlord kitchen, which is a cheap kitchen, which probably isn’t going to last that long because the tenants are going to ruin it anyway, and when they move out you’re going to have to replace it, to a mansion kitchen or a footballer’s kitchen, or what you’d probably call a hockey player’s kitchen, that’s going to be the full island in the middle, massive cupboards, lighting everywhere, that sort of thing. How do you choose the areas for your franchises that are going to give your franchisees the best opportunities to do the more expensive builds, the more high-wealth clients?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, we’re going to look at the market data. So we’re going to really dig into the demographics, the habits, the categories customers fall into, their shopping behaviours, where they go to and from different things. The amount of data we can really drill into is incredible. Maybe a little scary, but incredible, because it allows the franchise owner to take advantage of that data to ultimately make the best decisions for themselves, but also for their communities, to put the right business in the right places.
We work with an incredible real estate team and vendor who looks at their geography and understands, again, the shopping behaviour, the habits, where people are going to and from, what’s growing, what is maybe if the data is not as great from a current standpoint but we know there’s a lot of money going into this area because it’s growing a lot, what is the pros and cons of those things. So we’re looking at all of that data to ultimately help the franchise owner make the best decision and put their location in the best spot, as well as setting them up for success.
So that’s all happening in that process. So yeah. I’ll kind of stop there, but we’re very hands-on with that real estate approach. We want the franchise owners to what we call start well, go well. And we want them to have the right location, the right place. And I’ll say we’re more data-focused than anything.
The last thing I’ll say with that is there is the subjective strategy base, meaning okay, the data tells us this, but the franchise owner is the one that’s lived there for the last 30 years. They have that subjective perspective that data can’t completely replicate. So we and them take all of that into account and then we look at the strategy of that location, that owner. So I have owners who are really big in that B2B space, the multifamily apartments, and they are just executing that flawlessly. You don’t necessarily want to put them in the highest-end shopping complex targeting the million-dollar-plus homes if that’s not their strategy. Their strategy is a little bit more of that B2B side.
On the other hand, if you have someone who is really designer-focused and they’re really good with mood boards and colour schemes, right, and they’re doing a lot of 5, 10 million homes and doing that very successfully, you probably don’t want to put them in an industrial park that is targeting builders, right? We want to target both one way or another. However, we also want to take into account the strategy of the owner and what’s going to set them up for success. Because we all have our own strategies. I know what I’m good at. I kind of know what I’m not good at. So we want to complement that successfully.
Darren Jamieson:
That’s interesting that you take a different approach depending on what your franchisees’ strengths are and who their target market is. I wouldn’t have thought that. And the data approach as well. I’m not in the least bit surprised that an American franchise is totally built on the data. In the UK, we sort of, you know, what’s the wind blowing like? Let’s see if it works.
Where’s that strategy come from? Is that something you’ve created yourself or is that from another franchise that you were a part of to use that level of data?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. I mean, I would be silly to probably say it was all myself. It’s a hodgepodge probably of just learning from others. I can’t say it came specifically from one company or another of this is the way they do it, so I wanted to replicate that. It’s more of, okay, this company does that aspect of it really good. I like that. This company does that aspect of it really good. And I bring all that together to kind of form the way we do it, which I do think is definitely unique from what I’ve seen out there. So I would say it’s a mixture of those two things.
Darren Jamieson:
I like it. I like it. It gives that reassurance to the franchisee that you have researched it and you know there is a market there for them, which is good. So in terms of a new franchisee coming to you then, because you sort of touched upon you need to make sure they’ve got enough capital there for if something might go wrong or if sales didn’t hit the way they wanted them to hit, how much does a person need to buy into a franchise? So what’s the franchise fee and how much working capital do you want them to have for however long it needs to be before they start turning a profit?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. So the franchise fee is about 50, 55,000 depending on how many territories you get, if you add in the population to it because you want to make it a little bit bigger but maybe not a full other territory. So there’s different things like that in it, but typically about 55,000 for the franchise fee.
Our item 7, which is going to give you a range of here’s all the things that you need in order to build this business and here’s ranges of what it’s going to cost from the buildout to the displays to your lease to insurance, et cetera, that is somewhere between the 180,000 mark to the 380,000 mark, right? And I’m just kind of rounding there, not exact numbers, that’s in our agreements, but that gives you an idea of where things need to be.
Now, as someone who wants to invest in themselves, you might not have 300,000 just sitting there, right, that you can invest in a business. So there’s great lending partners. The SBA does a lot of lending to franchisees that want to start a business in themselves. So we look at all of that. There could be credit aspects that need to be taken into account, what liquid capital they do have that they can invest, and then of course what funding they can get. And of course what does that funding payment look like for the business, making sure that they properly plan for their business, they budget on an annual basis, what that looks like. All of those things is very important before someone decides to buy into any sort of business. But yeah, that’s typically kind of dollar amounts what I see most people have.
Darren Jamieson:
And how do you compare with other franchises that are maybe in a similar industry or not similar? Because I was talking about McDonald’s earlier this week and you mentioned them again today. I believe their franchise fee is well over a million for you to buy into a McDonald’s. So what are the other franchises like in your sector? Are there other kitchen design and bathroom design franchises that somebody could pick from? And how do you differentiate yourself between them?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah. So there are a few others. And I would say dollar amounts are somewhat similar. We’re very competitive because of the fact that we have a really strong vendor base. So we get discounts in pretty much everything they do when they’re building out the showroom. We have great insurance vendors that are giving the best insurance rates that they can get. So things like that. So it’s very competitive on our side to where they are getting in business relatively as cost-effective as possible in the most responsible way.
But I would say it’s somewhat similar to maybe others. In other industries, especially in the food and beverage space, it is very expensive to build out restaurants or anything like that. The equipment’s very expensive, the buildout’s very expensive, the licensing and stuff you have to go through could be very expensive. Thankfully we don’t have those kinds of regulations, if you will, and we don’t have those kinds of fixed expenses up front. So that’s great for us. So we’re a little bit more agile where we can get into business with a little bit less and still drive very great revenues at the end of the day.
So yeah, I would say we’re competitive in the marketplace from a cost perspective. I would say a lot of industries are a lot more. And then you’ve got, of course, other franchise concepts that are more person in a truck and it’s even less to get into business. Now, those typically don’t scale quite as high without doing something in real estate of warehousing or so on. So you’ve just got the pros and cons in it.
I think when I’m talking to someone, my goal isn’t to sell The Designery. It is to equip them with what is the best business for them. If they are really good in, let’s say they have a passion for cooking and that is a passion for them, maybe they should go into a restaurant type of business because they have a passion there. And if they have the financial ability and resources to invest a million dollars in something like a McDonald’s or another actual sit-down restaurant, if they have that and that’s their passion, do that. Be successful in that. I want the best for everyone, right?
On the other hand, if maybe their financial capital is a little bit less and their resources a little bit lower, but they want to bet on themselves, they’re tired of working for someone else, they want to take their own risk and really put their lives within their own hands, well maybe a low-cost franchise in a truck might be the way to go. Maybe it’s a lawn care business. Maybe it’s a window washing business, right? That’s great too. So I think it really just depends on the person and understanding what their strengths are, what their passion and interests are, and then what their resources are as well. And then when you look at those three things that guides them around, do they need something more expensive? Do they want to be in a gym-focused type of or a health and wellness space? Do they want to be in the home services space? Do they want to be in the food and beverage space, et cetera?
Darren Jamieson:
And of course, what their goals are as well, what their ambition is. You’ve clearly got a lot of ambition to franchise this business in the first place and to still run other franchises of which you’re a franchisee of at the same time, which makes you a very busy person. But of course you are franchising, so you’re scaling without doing it all yourself, which is a very smart way of doing it. But what are your plans for the future once you’ve scaled this business, maybe gone into Canada, maybe gone into the UK, Australia, who knows? What’s your exit?
Casey Ridley:
You know, it’s a great question. I’ll say that the world is our oyster. It really is. There are so many amazing places. There’s so many amazing opportunities. So I don’t necessarily have a specific path that I want to go down. Now I might want to run this business and grow it as big as humanly possible and this is what I do for the next 30 years. On the other hand, maybe I do want to exit and I want to sell off and go start another business to affect more lives in a different way. Maybe I have grown this to a certain place where I can step back a little bit more and focus on other businesses while still providing a sort of coaching and consulting to this business.
So I’ll say that there’s really no specific path that I’m like, I want to do this for five years and then I want to leave and then I want to do this. There isn’t anything like that in my mind. It’s more about how do I just continue growing as a person, as a business person, and how do I affect more and more lives. So how can I take these people who maybe don’t know which way to go, they’re stuck in their corporate grind, they can’t let go of a nice salary, how can I help them find a freedom that I truly believe entrepreneurship gives someone? And like I said, I found that through franchising, that I’ve been able to give that opportunity to a lot of people, but with time, maybe it’s different. Maybe it’s a different type of business. Maybe it’s more from an investor of people who have their own ideas and I can invest in their ideas to help give them the resources to take things to the next level. So who knows? But I am so ecstatic and excited about what the future has to hold for all of us. I am a very glass-half-full kind of guy versus half empty. So I very much believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today and I’m just excited for the future and what’s to come.
Darren Jamieson:
That is a beautiful sentiment and a beautiful message to end the podcast on, I believe. But as a final point, if anyone is listening to that thinking, wow, I want to be working with Casey, I want to find out more about The Designery…
What’s the best way for someone to get in contact with you?
Casey Ridley:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m very active on LinkedIn. So, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, Ridley, R-A-D-E-Y, on LinkedIn. You can find me there, connect with me, shoot me a message. Let’s chat and connect. But I’m also on Facebook, Instagram. You can go to thedesignery.com. You can go to any of the biographies on any of those websites and find other businesses I’m a part of and other podcasts that I’ve done if you just want to hear a little bit more. But I love talking to people. I love connecting. So I guess the one message I would say is, don’t wait till tomorrow. Shoot me a message on LinkedIn and let’s connect.
Darren Jamieson:
Fantastic. I will pop those links below the podcast or the description on YouTube and if you’re listening to this on iTunes, Spotify or Audible, it will be in the show notes below the podcast.
Casey, thank you very much for being a guest on The Engaging Marketeer. It’s been awesome talking to you.
More about Casey:
Casey Ridley is an entrepreneur and franchise leader based in Georgia, USA, and the driving force behind The Designery, a rapidly growing kitchen, bath, and closet franchise brand. He began his career by acquiring and transforming a small surplus construction business before scaling it into a multi-location operation and then franchising it nationally.
A strong advocate of franchising as a pathway to entrepreneurship, Casey focuses on helping individuals build successful businesses through structured systems, training, and support. Under his leadership, The Designery has expanded to dozens of locations across the United States, with a model centred on scalable growth, strong franchisee relationships, and a blend of national branding with local marketing.
He is also a franchisee himself, giving him a dual perspective on both sides of the model, and is known for his emphasis on execution, culture, and long-term business development.
You can connect with Casey here:
Website: https://thedesignery.com/about/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-ridley/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caseyridley22/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casey_ridley_/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
