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102 103 specialty pet food retailer in the world, if you con- sider that we’re not private equity-owned.” About six years ago,Walker, and two partners, Dino Fragaglia and Paul Thomson, started buying shares in Franchise Bancorp, completing a final purchase of the company, a year ago. They also changed the name of the company to Global Ban- corp, with Global Pet Foods being the largest com- ponent of the business that also has some smaller retail brands within it. Today, Fragaglia is the com- pany President in charge of day to day operations and Thomson ‎is the CEO in charge of finance and corporate organization. Walker oversees special projects, leasing and franchising, and marketing. Each owns one third of the business. Walker reports that Global Pet Foods franchise owners come from all walks of life and all age groups. They connect with the company via fran- chise shows, over the internet, and a lot of word- of-mouth. “If you’re a customer at a Global Pet Food store, and you see the service level that you’re getting and you happen to love dogs and cats and companion animals, what a better business to get into?” he opines. “So, a lot of franchisees come to us as customers, first.” Once accepted as a franchisee, Global Pet Foods offers its new owners considerable support. “They have a significant training period with us –usually six or eight weeks,” says Walker. “They spend time in existing franchise stores to see how they do it, plus we have a training store that they spend a couple of weeks working in.We work with the franchisee to find their store location and once we’ve found it, we have a director of leasing who negotiates the fReShEnS bReAtH cLeAnS tEeTh pOtAtO fReE gRaIn fReE fIgHtS tArTaR & pLaQuE uSa cOoKeD C M Y CM MY CY CMY K FK_LaunchAd_v6_OL_7.5x4.9.pdf 1 4/10/18 9:30 AM GLOBAL PET FOODS HEALTH IS MAGNIFICENT ROYAL CANIN ® recognizes that each cat and dog has nutritional needs as unique as their personalities. Fully supported by scientific research, our formulas are tailored to meet your pet’s precise nutritional requirements. © ROYAL CANIN SAS 2018. All Rights Reserved. terms of the lease. Once that’s done, we handle all of the construction for them.We design their stores and they get to work with us on interior design. When a store comes together, we begin the inven- tory process and they participate in that.We teach them how and why we do the things that we do from a merchandizing standpoint, introducing them to products that they may not have learned about yet, explaining why they’re better than other prod- ucts out there. And then, we have a whole series of training programs that we offer to our franchisees throughout their ten-year term.We have one big, four-day national meeting, which is a combination seminar style meeting and, on top of that, we have a large trade show and a big awards banquet.” “So, it’s pretty all-encompassing.We’re here to hold their hands for as long as they want us to hold their hands. If they don’t need direction in a cer- tain area, we give them a lot of flexibility to create a store for their own needs and customers, which means that not all of our stores will carry exactly the same thing. They may focus on different types of products depending on whether they’re a rural store or a more urban store, and we allow that flex- ibility.We distribute a bunch of private label prod- ucts and controlled label products that we import, but they’re also allowed to purchase from distrib- utors, so we teach them how to do that. Regionally speaking, each one of our stores can select prod- ucts that come from their region. A big and growing part of our business is frozen, raw diets. There are some nationally-sold frozen raw diets, but there are a lot of locally-sold raw diets. So, our franchisees are free to take ownership of that, themselves, and