sept-2017

256 257 business hours, ease of inventory management – it tends to be fairly attractive for that investor group. “Then there are the ones you could term ‘semi-absentee’. You know, sometimes it’s hard to hand the keys of the Ferrari over to someone else entirely, so they have a presence in the business and get to make sure that franchise best practic- es are being followed, and that customer service standards are being upheld by their staff. “Finally, there are those who we term ‘own- er-operators.’ These are the folks that perform the manager role in the business. They still get all the profits of the business, still build all the equity, and they get to displace the majority of the salary expense, which they get to keep as owners. So, from an individual location/cash flow basis, it can be quite substantial for those folks.” Annex Brands likes to be proactive with their franchisees, giving a lot of upfront support. “When it comes to construction and build-out,” Heine offers, “we do have our own contractors, our own fixture providers, our own architects, everything to take you from ground zero to key in the door and open for business.”As a franchisor, Annex Brands tries to maintain profitable operations for their business owners, while also continuing to grow their market penetration. “The trend lines in the industry drive our di- rection,” says Heine. “On the residential side of things, it’s online commerce. You know, I think at this point in time, Cyber Monday is starting to surpass Black Friday in terms of retail sales for the holiday period. And that’s indicative of that shift from brick-and-mortar retail to clicks and bricks, if you will. This does not have a negative ANNEX BRANDS, INC. PREFERRED VENDORS n FedEx www.fedex.com FedEx is an American multinational courier delivery services company headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The company is known for its overnight shipping service, but also for pioneering a system that could track packages and pro- vide real-time updates on package location (to help in finding lost packages), a feature that has now been implemented by most other carrier services. FedEx provides customers and businesses worldwide with a broad portfolio of transportation, e-commerce, and busi- ness services. As of May 2017, the company’s FedEx Freight segment operated approximately 66,000 vehicles and trailers from a network of approximately 370 service centers. The company’s FedEx Services segment provides sale, marketing, information technology, communication, customer, technical support, billing and collection, and other back-office support services. FedEx Mobile provides a suite of solutions to track packages, create shipping labels, view account-specific rate quotes, and access drop-off location information. n Salsbury Mailboxes www.mailboxes.com impact on us; if anything it is a place where we can inject our business model into the middle of transactions that we didn’t used to be a part of. “On that small office home office side of our consumer base, we have seen a kind of ongoing shift of culture and technology that’s really also being promoted in a lot of major, large organiza- tions for the diversified workforce and distributed workforce. So, telecommuters, work flex time, stay-at-home operators, independent contractors, those types of folks - which is essentially creat- ing a whole new consumer base for us. Now, they might be paying for these services on a corpo- rate AMEX or being reimbursed on the expense account, but from our business owners’ point of view, it acts just as if it were a small home-based business.” Having developed the market for 30 years, spreading well beyond Southern California into Mexico and Canada, as well as nearly all U.S. States, Annex Brands, Inc. has achieved some 55 percent market penetration. But that means there is still a lot of room for growth. “Part of our strength comes from our tenure,” concludes Heine. “There are a lot of young busi- nesses that are out there, but we do have an extensive experience base. I have the dubious honor of being probably the junior member of the executive team, and I’ve been with the orga- nization going on 15 years. So, the stability, the culture of our organization - those are important elements for any business investment as well as that ongoing relationship with the perspective franchisees that do join us.”