Roughly 10 years ago, Zach Tanner was helping launch a painting franchise, when he realized there may be better ways to do it. With just $400 and a ton of ambition, Tanner left to build his own franchise, Painter Bros. By Lizzy Yeserski
Roughly 10 years ago, Zach Tanner was helping launch a painting franchise, when he realized there may be better ways to do it. With just $400 and a ton of ambition, Tanner left to build his own franchise, Painter Bros.
“One of the things that he wanted to make sure he did was build a company nationwide first, so that when we did get franchisees, there was revenue opportunity available,” noted Bailey Rayner, vice president of franchise development.
Painter Bros provides professional interior and exterior services for residential and commercial properties. Besides painting, Painter Bros offers contracting and remodeling, epoxy floor coating, residential repairs/maintenance, pressure washing and drywall installation.
True to his vision, Tanner developed the proof of concept for the brand before he brought it to franchisees.
“We pre-developed 43 markets across the U.S. with search engine optimization to start targeting high-growth areas so the Painter Bros name was out there,” Rayner explained. The corporate team saturated the country with the Painter Bros brand and established recognition in every state.
Painter Bros scored big in the home-improvement sector when they secured national accounts with leading Fortune 500 companies.
“We work with big-box stores. That’s one of our main differentiators. We work directly with Walmart, Best Buy, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Public Storage, CubeSmart – all across the country,” said Rayner. “Being able to work directly with them is a big deal.”
Franchisees (or “zees,” as Rayner fondly refers to them) are awarded national accounts in their territory just for being part of the Painter Bros system. Corporate’s goal is for owners to do between $1 million and $3 million in business annually.
In addition to leveraging pre-existing relationships in developed markets, zees take advantage of proprietary software that handles all logistics, including KPI metrics.
Rayner said the biggest perk to running a Painter Bros franchise is the freedom to run it semi-absentee with a true ownership mindset.
“That is the goal: to have a business running without you having to be there. I think that’s every business owner’s goal,” she said.
Lizzy Yeserski