WOW 1 DAY PAINTING – The Future of Home Services? by Vetted Biz

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Brooks Gammill
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Published on 28 Oct 2022 Time to read 15 min read Last update on 5 Sep 2023

This article is based on a video originally recorded on Vetted Biz Youtube Channel.

WOW 1 DAY PAINTING is a professional commercial and residential painting business founded in 2005 and is a franchise concept in the Home Services industry.

The parent company of WOW 1 DAY PAINTING inc. is “1 Day Corporate” a British Columbia, Canada corporation.

Contents

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Jack:— Jack Findaro here, along with Adam Winnett from Wow 1 Day Painting looking forward to having the discussion today, learn all about what Wow 1 Day Painting is offering, its franchise system, its background, and go over the most important questions that a potential franchisee candidate might want to know. Adam, thank you so much for joining us.

WOW 1 Day Painting

Adam:— Thanks, Jack, happy to be here. Wow 1 Day Painting is part of a bigger family of home service brands. You can see, I’m sitting in a big office here right now, that company is called O2E Brands, or Ordinary to Exceptional Brands. And the founder of that is a gentleman named Brian Scudamore. He started doing the franchising thing just over 30 years ago with a company called “1-800-GOT-JUNK?” which is the biggest junk-removal company in the world now, and they’re all over North America and Australia.

Painting Business

The next place he saw a very similar opportunity was the painting space. He looked at this and said, you know, “I’ve got my house painted a ton of times. The experience… it’s not fun. Painters are tough to get a hold of. Who do you even call? They’re not reliable. The communication’s terrible, the work is iffy. If I don’t like something, I can’t get a hold of a person.” Just people are anxious about it, they dread it. If someone’s in your house, it’s intrusive, really annoying.

So, Brian, being a customer-experience guy, looked at that and said, Why can’t it be different? And I want to give customers the opportunity to have a great experience. Painting doesn’t need to be that stressful. It doesn’t need to be that intrusive. It doesn’t need to be that annoying to deal with.» And so, what if inside the home we could come in, paint, do an amazing job, and be gone in a day? Remove disruption and allow customers to choose speed and quality?»

And that's what WOW is, it is speed and quality. Customers get both!

That one-day offering is focused on the residential interior space. Now, we do exterior and, you know, that’s a different part of our business, but really that one-day concept again is coming into your home, acting almost like a restaurant instead of cooking your meal, you know exactly what the day is it’s going to happen; you know what you’re going to pay; you know what you’ve got. There’s no mess for you, there’s no work for you. In, out, exactly what you need.

 
WOW 1 Day Painting

Initial Franchise Fee

$32,000 – $56,000

The initial franchise fee is a minimum of $32,000, which includes $20,000 for the first sub territory, plus $12,000 for one additional sub territory. The minimum initial investment is a territory consisting of two sub territories. Each additional sub-territory is $12,000.

If granted multiple sub territories within which to operate your Franchised Business, the franchisor may allow you to pay the initial franchise fee with respect to some of the sub territories in equal monthly installments, without interest, for a period not to exceed one year, however no other financing is offered by the franchisor.

WOW 1 Day Painting Franchise Cost

The total investment necessary to begin operation of a WOW 1 DAY PAINTING franchised business is $67,000 to $129,500.

The territory you are granted will generally consist of two to four of these geographic areas, each of which will be considered a “sub territory.” The minimum population in a sub territory will be 50,000 households.

Additional Cost Breakdown

Below is a list of the costs that factor in the range of startup costs from $67,000 to $129,500.

  • Initial Franchise Fee: $32,000 – $56,000
  • Initial Marketing Expense: $15,000 – $20,000
  • Computer Hardware and Software: $1,000 – $3,000
  • Vehicles & Graphics (Lease / Purchase Deposit): $0 – $5,000
  • Real Estate / Rent: $0 – $3,000
  • Training Expenses: $3,000 – $6,000
  • Insurance: $1,000 – $4,000
  • Office Equipment & Supplies: $0 – $1,000
  • Licenses and Permits: $500 – $2,000
  • Professional Fees: $2,000 – $5,000
  • Equipment: $2,500 – $4,500
  • Additional Funds (3 months): $10,000 – $20,000

Ongoing Franchise Costs and Fees

Royalty: 6% of Gross Revenues-

Sales Center, Marketing & Technology Fee: 5% of Gross revenue

Payment: Royalties are due semi-monthly

-Minimum Royalty: Depending upon your year of operation, the Minimum Royalty will range from $2,000 to $4,200 per Sub territory per calendar year.-

Local Advertising Payment

You are required to pay $15,000 for Initial Marketing Expenses. The company will spend this amount in your area to market and promote your Franchised Business before you open and during the first 6 months after you begin business.

If you purchase additional sub territories, or are in a brand-new major market, the company may recommend that you spend an additional $5,000 for Initial Marketing Expenses. The Initial Marketing Expense is non-refundable.

Ongoing Marketing

During your first four full fiscal quarters of operating the Franchised Business, you must spend an amount equal to 12% of Gross Revenue quarterly on local advertising and promotions.

During the fiscal quarters thereafter of operating the Franchised Business, you must spend an amount equal to 7% of Gross Revenue quarterly on local advertising and promotions.

WOW 1 Day Painting

WOW 1 DAY PAINTING Sales Figures

This information excludes information from six franchisees that closed during the 2019 Reporting Year (two of which were open less than 12 months), and eight US franchises that opened during 2019 and were therefore not in operation for the entire 2019 Reporting Year.

U.S. Franchisees — Calendar Year 2019

Franchisees operating over 24 months Franchisees operating 12—24 months All Franchisees
# of Franchisees in Range 20 of 26 6 of 26 26
Total Gross Revenue $12,531,064 $2,491,309 $15,022,373
Average Gross Revenue $626,553 $415,218 $577,784
# and % of Franchisees at or above Average Gross Revenue 8/40% 2/33% 9/35%
Median Gross Revenue $458,589 $402,888 $448,969
Highest Gross Revenue $2,042,987 $677,792 $2,042,987
Lowest Gross Revenue $48,642 $235,646 $48,642
Average Job Size $2,687.85 $2,696.42 $2,689.83
# and % Franchisees at or above 8/40% 4/67% 12/46%
Average Job Size
Median Average Job Size $2,647.99 $2,860.80 $2,656.62
Average Gross Profit Margin 44% 35% 41.9%
# and % Franchisees at or above Average Gross Profit Margin 14/70% 4/67% 16/62%
Median Gross Profit Margin 43.9% 34% 41.6%

Key Highlights from Sales Figures

Average Franchise Gross Revenue (26): $577,784

Average Gross Profit Margin: 41.9%

As seen in the chart about, the businesses in operation over 24 months had both a higher gross revenue and higher gross profit margin, which is a good indication of increased profit as you become more comfortable running your business.

Wow 1 Day Painting Franchise: customer-experience-focused

What we’re excited about with Wow 1 Day Painting, and all of our owners across North America, is disrupting this painting industry. You know, no one’s done this. Painting’s kind of been the same forever, and it’s mostly just painters. And for customers, what we’re seeing year after year, franchise after franchise, is customers putting up their hand and going like, “I want this. Where has this been?” you know, and “why isn’t this everywhere? And I’ll pay for this.” And that’s exciting for us. It’s not painting being exciting, it’s about having a customer-experience business that paints.

Most people that are drawn to this, that’s the thing that they connect with, is having something different and having something unique and customer-experience-focused. And it’s every little touch point and step of the way is where we excel. 

WOW 1 Day Painting Franchisees Advantages

And then you have this backing, you know, of 300 people at our head office that are there to help you and support you with marketing and call centers and business coaching and processes and technology and all that stuff that I’m sure you’ll ask me about. But that’s the key of who we are, what we’re doing.

It is not creating a whole new space but it is creating a new category in an industry that has been around a long time and has only accelerated in the last couple of years during this Covid time

And is only going to keep growing as people are spending more and more money on their homes. And we’re there to help service them.

Jack: What are the advantages for a franchisee to join Wow with it being part of O2E Brands?

Adam: Yeah. I think there are two things that jump out at me. One is just the track record, again, this is not the first time we’ve tried franchising. As much as we are still what we would consider an emerging brand, you know, first 10 years and growing, as a group and Brian Scudamore, this is 30 plus years, 500-million-dollar company behind us.

So, we’ve made mistakes and learned from them. We’ve had tons of successes. And, as a person coming into this, you get all that experience. You get all of that path that we’ve already been on to build businesses this way.

O2E Brands

And there’s a reason that Wow 1 Day Painting and our other brands actually are growing faster than “Got Junk?” was at this point, is because you have all that learning.

The second piece would be we share with O2E Brands a huge amount of information and tactics and processes and technology and all these things at a head office level. So, you have a marketing team working across all three brands. You have a technology team across all three brands. You have business coaches from different brands that work together. What that means is that, as one brand may be trying something and seeing success, the other brands can use that. Or one brand may be trying something that doesn’t work, the other brands can avoid that.

WOW 1 Day Painting

Competitors

Jack: For sure. Thank you for going through all that. Now, from a competitive standpoint, who are the competitors? Are there regional brands or is it franchises, is it independent painters, what does that look like?

Adam: Yeah. So, it’s all of those things. And one of the reasons Brian chose this space is that it’s highly competitive. When we see that, that gets us excited. And some people might, “Oh, it’s competitive…” we’re like, “great, go to that. That just means there’s a massive demand.” And we’re seeing that.

When you look at the competition, a couple of notes around that there are other franchises, there’s probably a handful that are kind of leading the way in the painting space. Combined, if you took all the franchises in the industry, in North America, we make up less than 10% of the market. The leading franchise in our system has less than 2% of the market share.

There are also some regional painting companies. So, you could have, you know, Miami Painting Brothers or something, they’ve been around for 20 years. And they do a great job, and they’re just in that little area. So, those are all over the country too. 

Customer needs and demands

And again, throw those in the mix, putting all that together, less than 10% of the industry is that, established brands, bigger presence. Ninety-plus percent of our industry is standalone painters. And this comes from Sherwin-Williams, who’s the biggest paint provider and where they serve.

So, the majority of your competition truly isn’t other franchises. It isn’t that local company. They’re around, but it’s that painter with a truck and a brush. Maybe a good painter, often not a good painter, but that’s who your customer is having to deal with most of the time. And often the good painters, if they’re by themselves, are booked up for 3 months because they got a couple of jobs, it takes them a long time to do it. 

So, that’s where we see a huge advantage, again, is giving customers speed and quality and the ability to react to their needs and their demands.

So, just that baseline blows our mind versus the competition. And then, when we go above and beyond for things we do, like flowers after the job, the amount of communication in advance of what’s going to happen, the estimating process, all those things, it’s why we get five-star reviews, it’s why our NPS score is over 90.

Franchisee Responsibilities

Jack: Got it. I see a lot of sense, and thank you for going through that. I think it’s helpful to understand the key differentiator. Now, in terms of the actual operations, so, when someone does become a franchisee for Wow, what are their responsibilities? What did they focus on as they operate their franchise?

Adam: Yeah. And so, there are a couple of key things, and it certainly changes over time, or it should as you build your business and grow, so, the key things when you first launch, it’s really you and a first crew. That’s kind of, you know, day one. And you’re, as the owner, the Swiss army knife of the business, it is an invested-time business. Meaning it’s not a passive business where you just tuck your money in and hope it works, you’re running this business. 

So, you’re driving the sales and marketing side of your business. So, that’s going out and meeting customers and doing estimates, building connections in your community with realtors and other trade partners that will refer business to you, getting marketing and awareness out in your area. It’s driving that side. And it’s leading people.

You know, initially, it’s hiring and training and onboarding that first crew that works for you. And then it’s building a culture that these people want to stay with you, and they want to build a career in your business, they want to progress and be promoted and grow. And then, as time goes on, you’re going to want to launch another crew. You’re going to want to hire probably another salesperson and maybe an office admin. 

Business Leader

And it’s a business built for people. So, your role itself will change over time, as you scale through people, but those key things, again, sales and marketing are a big piece. But more than anything, and anything I would stress to everybody I talk to regardless of their background, this is a people business.

So, a big chunk of your time needs to be thinking about people. You should want a business where “I want to have employees. I want to have teams. I want to coach and mentor and create jobs and promote and create a culture and do events and all that kind of stuff because that’s what this is, that’s the path of success, it’s the path of growth, it’s the path of changing what you do every day.” So, eventually, you’re just leading people that are doing the things that you used to do, but it all happens for people. You’re not a painter, you’re not on-site all day with a brush. You’re leading the business.

Jack: That makes sense. So, working on the business instead of in it, in essence?

Adam: Yeah. In early days, like that first year, part of where we look at you being that Swiss army knife is, if you’ve done the things, then, when you want to bring people in to do them, you know what they’re like. You’ve been on estimates, you’ve sold jobs, you’ve met with realtors, you’ve hired and trained people. So, when you’re then bringing people in to do those things for you, you can speak from experience versus, you know, “I think I know what it is,” or, “I saw it on a website,” as you’ve done it.

Most successful Franchisees Backgrounds

Jack: For sure. Thank you for clarifying all that. Now, about that, from your experience, are there any backgrounds that are necessary or recommended? And about that question, what characteristics or backgrounds do you see in the most successful franchisees?

Adam: Yeah, I would say nothing specific from a specific career job industry. It’s all over the place. And, you know, franchise is a weird one, sometimes you look at someone on paper, you’re like oh, “Slam dunk to be successful, not so much,” and someone else you’re like, “I don’t know,” and they’re amazing. So, I would say, honestly, from a background perspective, the two things that would jump out at me are I’m going to go back to it again, leadership. 

You have experience and desire to lead people, to manage people, people want to work for you, you get them involved with your dreams and what the business can do. They want to see progression in their own life and career with you. That’s number one. Regardless of industry or hobbies, maybe you were captains of teams, maybe you’ve done it professionally, whatever, that’s a big one.

The privilege of owning a business

And the more someone is inclined towards processes and systems, I think the faster and better sort of it clicks for them. And so, that’s big.

When I look at the most successful owners…and we actually did this as an exercise a few years ago, looking at successful owners from all the brands and breaking it down to try to get a feel. It actually boiled down to four things, and we call them the four H’s. So, this means happy. Owning a business is a privilege.

Conclusion

WOW 1 DAY PAINTING is a well-established business and run by a very successful serial entrepreneur, Brain Scudamore. This innovative business model and great leadership will position franchisees for success.

While this may be the business for you, make sure to also check out other businesses offered on Vetted Biz and in the home services industry.

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