Business View Magazine
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ing out of the sign industry because they gain synergy
by having the service component along with their fab-
rication division. We look for people who have good
business sense, who appreciate our model, and are
looking to develop a business-to-business service or-
ganization. We don’t have people calling us all day
long; we do more outreach, looking for people who
have the financial wherewithal, as well as the business
acumen, to be successful in running this business.”
Young elaborates upon YESCO’s franchise-awarding
methods, “Because a lot of our focus has been on
small sign companies, we have the ability to naturally
select. There are about 20,000 shops in the world,
whether they’re doing electrical or the vinyl print and
that kind of thing. We’ve focused more on the electri-
cal and folks that we either have relationships with,
through the utilization of resources with one of our oth-
er companies, like manufacturing, or that are tied to
the two key industry associations that naturally attract
those who are truly interested. So, it’s kind of a natural
selection process of whittling that 20,000 down. We
have a qualification process, which is typical of a fran-
chisor. We’ve got our net worth requirements; we have
a discovery day requirement where we met them face-
to-face; and a couple of additional components: credit,
background check, and a lot of gut feel. There’s not a
lot that go through that process that we turn away –
there are some, but probably 85 or 90 percent of them
make it through or they weed themselves out before
they even get to that process.”
Fisher believes that YESCO brings a great deal of value
to its franchisees. “First of all, a fool-proof business
model,” he states. “We have 47 company locations
and have deployed this service model and demon-
