The board seats, he explained, just caused friction between the franchisees and the franchisor. “We thought we’d won a victory, but in the long term I think it worked to the detriment of the overall system,” says Logan. In the end, franchisees came away with a 40% stake in the brand, two seats on the board of directors, a reduction in royalty payments and provisions that made it harder to terminate a franchisee. The ordeal forced existing franchisees to band together, and Logan found himself sitting on a creditors committee representing about 200 of them. “They weren’t good operators, and it turned upside down pretty quick,” says Logan. Almost three years later, however, the company filed for bankruptcy, having leased many locations that franchisees simply did not want and that became company-run shops. In 197 8 he bought into a hair salon franchise called Command Performance, swayed by a story he’d seen in the Wall Street Journal that touted the organization’s hipness among a younger demographic and its aggressive use of radio and TV advertising. “I thought it made sense to get into a franchise because you had an established business and marketing systems.”Ī Sport Clips franchise in Nashville, Tennessee. “In the consulting business you see a lot of businesses, but you don’t really run a business,” he says. Though he had an itch to run his own enterprise, Logan had no experience running anything other than a flight crew. He went on to spend five years flying C130 aircraft based out of Texas, departing for several months a year on NATO support missions across Europe and the Middle East, as well as southeast Asia.įollowing active duty, Logan attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School while continuing to serve in the Air Force Reserve and then stepped into a consulting position with Pricewaterhouse in Houston in 1976, helping companies manage their organizational structure, cost accounting systems and payroll. “I didn’t feel right getting what I thought was a hokey deferment.” Logan also thought flying planes seemed more fun than engineering. “A lot of my friends were getting drafted,” he says. Though his job offered him an occupational deferment from the draft during Vietnam, he declined, joined the Air Force in 1969 and began training as a military pilot. Logan graduated from MIT in 1968 before taking a job making carpet fiber in Virginia as part of a joint venture between Dow Chemical and BASF. “If you want some spending money, you go out and earn it some way or another.” “He didn’t believe in giving allowances,” says Logan, smiling in a chair in his modest office, surrounded by pictures and models of antique cars, NASCAR memorabilia, photos of friends, his Stetson perched atop a massive globe beside his desk. Logan’s father, a Scottish-born operator of sawmills and a furniture factory, encouraged his son’s endeavors. “It was about the money, but it was fun too.” “I was one of the original recyclers,” says Logan, who graduated to selling fire extinguishers and customized Christmas cards door-to-door. īorn in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1946, Logan began his entrepreneurial career at age 8 as a collector of refuse, selling old newspapers to moving companies (for packing material at a penny a pound ) and discarded clothes hangers to dry cleaning operations. The corporate office netted $4.2 million in profits on $7 1.6 million in revenue for the year. Last year the system added 133 stores and franchisees racked up $625 million in systemwide revenue, paying 6% of their sales in royalties, on top of fees for ads and training. Sport Clips’ 1,76 8 locations are spread across all 50 states, plus five Canadian provinces, and are run by about 500 franchisees. After almost 25 years, the strategy is working for Logan, now 71, who’s rarely without his signature pale Stetson and a pair of western-style boots (he prefers ostrich leather).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |