During the last decade, “high tech” has replaced“manufacturing” as Michigan’s economic buzzword. Now it’s the high tech companies who are clamoring for qualified workers; it’s the high tech companies who constantly host job fairs to fill positions. But, even though the state’s economy is shifting from a manufacturing base to a high tech based-workforce, there are hundreds of companies outside of both industries that have quietly carried the Michigan economy for years.
Coffee beans, moving vans and stuffed toys don’t have much in common, but the owners of three businesses working in these markets do: they’re all enormously successful, they all have a national presence, they’re all based right here in the Lansing area where they have been for years.
From Biggby coffee to Two Men and a Truck to Brilliant Sky Toys and Books, area entrepreneurs are finding that business can still boom. These uber-successful owners have out grown the local market and the Michigan market and are ramping up sales and franchises in places like Arizona, Georgia, Canada and South Africa.
Biggby and Two Men and a Truck have already claimed spots on Entrepreneur magazine’s list of top 500 franchises. For Brilliant Toys, which is still in its franchising infancy, a future Entrepreneur ranking is avery real possibility.
From Beaners to Biggby
It’s impossible to drive through Michigan without running into at least one giant, orange and black “B”.
Biggby Coffee, formerly Beaners, is the brainchild of Michigan State University (MSU) graduate Bob Fish, who started the company in1995 in an iconic 1960s building in downtown East Lansing. That store still thrives, along with others in nine states, and the company sits at No. 225 on Entrepreneur magazine’s list of Top 500 franchises.
“You must have a single-minded and well-articulated vision of what you want to do,” says Fish, who started his business process by taking a year off work to develop his business plan. “If it’s just rolling around in your head, it’s just a good idea. If you have a plan, you can simply ride the railroad of that plan.”
He tested that plan out for two years and then, with his partners Mary Roszel and Michael McFall, opened the company’s first store. By the end of 2008, Biggby will have more than 150 stores in 11 states.
Fish’s business plan and attention to customers no doubt played a major role in the success of Biggby, but he credits franchise owners for making his plan work. Fish and his team are very particular about who gets a franchise operation.
“We try to determine if your core values line up with our core values,” Fish says. Franchisees have to understand business, but they also have to fit in with the team. If the values aren’t in line, potential franchisees say bye-bye to the big “B.”
“There’s really no point in talking about surviving if you can’t get dollar one,” he says.
Two Men, Two Women and Lots of Trucks
No, this isn’t the description for a fetish flick. It’s actually the tale of a mother, a sister and two brothers.
Jon and Brig Sorber started the Lansing-based Two Men and a Truck moving company in the 1980s as a way to make some money while in high school. By the time they left for college, they had developed a solid customer base so their mother, Mary Ellen Sheets, decided to keep the business running while they were hitting the books.
In 1988, a fellow panelist on the MSU graduate business panel Sheets sat on suggested that Sheets franchise the company. Her response, according to Jon Sorber, was, “All we do is move people. Who would want it?”
Fast forward to Two Men and a Truck’s 2007 sales, which hit $198.2 million, its 202 locations in the United States, Canada, Ireland and South Africa and you get your answer.
“We’ve come a long way since that moving truck in Okemos,” says Jon Sorber.
Entrepreneur magazine ranked Two Men 198 on its list of 500 top franchises. This is the 29th year Two Men and a Truck has held a spot on the list.
“One of the things that’s made us successful is Mid-Western values,” says Jon Sorber. “In the Midwest, we are hard workers, and for the most part people are very honest—not that people aren’t honest in other areas.”
Two Men is also family-owned (Sorber’s sister, Melanie Bergeron, also runs the company). So, unlike a publicly owned company, the owners can tweak business practices to satisfy customers rather than shareholders.
“We’ve had a lot of people ask when we’re going to go public, and that’s really one of the beauties of our business: the only shareholders are the four of us,” Sorber says. “When lots of companies go public, they put the cart before the horse—it’s profits and then the customer. We believe the customer comes first.”
Brilliant Future for Toys
Brilliant Sky Toys franchise owners, Brent and Sonia Taylor, are a newer area franchise, but one on the rise. The couple opened Treehouse Toys and Books in Lansing Township’s Eastwood Town Centre in 2002 because they found the area’s toy options limiting. They knew they made the right decision in 2007, when the company’s revenues jumped by 50 percent.
“We kind of consider ourselves what Pottery Barn or Williams and Sonoma is to that industry,” says Brent Taylor. “One of the last places people look to cut when things are getting tight is where their children are concerned,” Taylor says about excelling in business at a point in time when the country was experiencing an economic downturn.
Three years ago, the Taylors started tossing around expansion ideas. Several people approached them about opening additional, company-owned stores, meaning they would open the stores and hire managers to oversee them. However, they canned that idea because they felt the personal touch that coincides with franchise operations would yield better results. Then they franchised Treehouse Toys Toys and Books as Brilliant Sky Toys.
“My personal belief is that there’s nothing better than having the owner in the store on a day-to-day basis,” Taylor says.
The first Brilliant Toy franchise opened in Arizona last year. The Taylors expect to have 12 national franchises by the end of the year and 80 within the next five years.
"That development schedule would never work if we were talking about company-owned stores," Taylor says.
Ivy Hughes is the managing editor of Capital Gains and can be reached here.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Bob Fish of Biggby Coffee
The first Biggby (then Beaners) Coffee in East Lansing
Jon Sorber, Two Men and a Truck
Two Men's fleet of trucks
Brent Taylor, Brilliant Sky Toys & Books
Mural at the Eastwood Town Center location
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie