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Show Weber State College Comment, everybody has great ideas, but the ability to do something and carry out those ideas is as rare as a diamond on the beach,” Olson said. After returning from California without the baseball cap, Kevin, who also attended Weber State, realized that others probably wished they could buy clothing, posters and other items depicting professional sports. Despite discouragement from others Kevin opened a small shop. “When we first started people thought we were crazy, but we made a profit from the very first day,” Chad said. The brothers realized they had a very viable product and set about looking for ways to expand. Two years earlier Chad had decided that franchising was the best way to capitalize a company, so while Kevin took care of the store’s operation and product development, Chad duplicated the original success and developed the- franchise idea, he said. “My first job was with Adventure Land Video, Inc, and from that job I realized I wanted to be involved in franchising. Franchising gives the opportunity to expand rapidly without a lot of investment,” he said. Each of the brothers put up $500 for the venture, and over the next months they worked 20 hour days putting together the concept and creating all the necessary legal, financial and marketing documents. “There are (professional) franchise companies that will help you put everything together, but we didn’t have a deep pocket to finance that, so we did it ourselves. We made our own type of flip chart, and even went to Jazz basketball games to get pictures to give our presentations a professional look,” Chad said. Today when someone buys a franchise for $16,500 plus four percent royalty on all sales the new owner gets the Pro Image name, intensive training, marketing help, legal advice, assistance in selecting a store location, newsletters, trade shows, yearly conventions and a host of other support services. But four years ago the two brothers worked out of their apartments and had little to offer besides the general concept. “In franchising the hardest thing is to sell the first four or five franchises,” Olson said. — 7 Sua BAK Chad Olson, a 1984 graduate of Weber State, parleyed a baseball cap store into one of the fastest growing franchises in the United States. teh had Olson’s brother Kevin could not find a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap when he went to California and it irritated him. So he found a hat manufacturer, bought a load of Dodger hats, Rams hats, San Francisco 49ers hats and similar articles depicting professional sports and in four years Kevin and Chad turned that initial irritation into the third fastest growing new franchise chain in America. Chad, formerly of Roy, is the chief executive director and chairman of the board of Pro Image, Inc. He graduated with an accounting degree from Weber State in 1984, and five years later he sits atop a business that will top $50 million in total sales. “I always wanted to own my own business,” Olson said. Since Pro Image's formation in 1985 that business has sold 215 franchises throughout the United States and into Canada and West Germany with 140 Pro Image shops currently open. Another 45 stores will open by the end of the year, 29 of those in Canada, he said. “We intend to continue at that pace,” Olson said as he sat in his corporate offices in Bountiful, Utah. We’re going to grow.” The franchise business is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. Franchise revenues topped $400 billion this year with one-third of every dollar spent in the United States going to the franchise industry. Estimates are that by the end of the century two-thirds of every dollar spent will go to franchises, he said. The Pro Image carries thousands of professional football, basketball, baseball and hockey logo items including hats, shirts, sweaters, mugs, posters, pennants and the like. “At first a majority of our sales were to youth. Now 70 percent are to adults and 30 percent to youth,” he said. Chad, 30, admits that he and his brother were at the right time with the right market to ride the rising tide of franchise, but their success had very little to do with luck, he said. “I am pleased to have grown so fast, but we knew it could be done. I had a vision and believed we could do it,” he said “Maybe there was some luck involved, but I’m a believer that things don’t happen unless you do something about it. Most later when we returned to that show I looked up that manufacturer and told him we had sold 60. He chuckled again, but in a different way,” Olson said. The Utah Jazz own seven franchises along the Wasatch Front, but the rest are held by private owners, Olson said. Franchises have a much higher success ratio than do the more traditional “mom and pop” businesses, and Pro Image works hard to make sure the 600 people in the nation-wide system are profitable, he said. “The success of any franchise chain is only as successful as the individual franchisees. If we keep them successful, we’ll have a successful chain,” he said. And Chad and Kevin’s success has not been unnoticed. In May President Bush honored Chad as the second runner-up in the National Small Business Person of the Year contest during a ceremony at the White House. “There are 19 million small businesses in the United States and to be second runner-up is really quite an honor,” he said. Pro Image is not Chad’s first business venture. He ran three or four small companies to finance his way through Weber State. But none combined his love of franchising, sports and success so effectively. “And there are some great fringe benefits,” he said. “You get to meet professional athletes and write off your subscription to Sports Illustrated.” i al Chad Olson, executive director of Pro Image, Inc., stands in one of the 215 stores that are part of his international franchise, a $50 million business he built in four years. The two prepared, borrowed an office from Kevin Carmony, owner of Streamline Information Systems in Ogden and a fellow WSC graduate, and held their first “Opportunity Night.” “We paid this kid $25 to hand write a poster board we used in our presentation. I literally got it 10 minutes before we began and didn’t have time to look through it. When we finished the evening I looked at the board and there were seven spelling errors, and the numbers didn’t add up,” he said. “We’re a lot more professional now,” he added. Despite the humble-looking presentation they sold a franchise that first night, and in the first 10 days after their company incorporated they sold a total of seven stores, Olson said. “The idea was so good, and the store sold itself,” he said. “T remember looking in our checkbook and seeing $18,000 and I was shocked. Earlier we had rented an office space in Kaysville and I was real nervous about signing a six month lease at $600 a month. I wasn’t sure how we’d pay for that,” he said. The Olsons attended a manufacturer’s show shortly after their first sales. They explained their program to one clothing supplier, noting that by next year they would have 60 franchises sold. “He chuckled. That made me mad so I went back and worked extra hard. A year July 1989, Page 9 |