not provided by the franchise but North American sales increased by nearly $3.7 million last year (see table) among its 245 shops, which numbered 30 fewer than the prior year; average sales per shop jumped to more than $1.3 million (from less than $1.1 million in 2013). Alliance Franchise Brands: Allegra, American Speedy Printing, Insty-Prints, Speedy Printing, and Zippy Print Sales representation is a main focus for Alliance. “Our outlook for 2015 is more optimistic than in recent years, largely because our members have embraced diversification and our ‘sales driven, solutions provider’ model,” Milroy said. “We entered 2015 with more than six dozen new outside salespeople within our ranks, resulting in more than 70 percent of our members now with reported outside sales effort. Training, onboarding, coaching, and mentoring programs have all received high participation and new hire-performance is improving.” On the diversification front, more than half of Alliance members now are involved with mailing services and the large-format printing of signs, banners, and experiential graphics, Milroy reported. (See pie chart for breakdown.) “3D printing … is not a gimmick; it is a viable profit center, and we are offering an opportunity to our center owners to sell 3D printing as an outsourced product line.” – ICED president Jay Groot “A majority are also now adept at launching multichannel marketing campaigns that integrate print with the Web,” he continued. “A majority are also capable of executing highly personalized and/or versioned projects to drive higher response rates to these efforts.” Several Alliance members have dual-branded with the purchase of an Image360 franchise from Allegra Network’s sister company, Sign & Graphics Operations in their effort to take advantage of strong growth in the broader signage and graphics industry. “We anticipate more of our members taking this route to drive growth in areas involving corporate art projects, wayfinding sign systems, and total signage solutions for larger buildings and organizations,” Milroy said. More than one-quarter of Alliance members also have sold and executed digital services including website development, mobile websites, search engine optimization services, email campaigns, online referral systems, and online document purchasing and management systems (web-to-print portals). Yet, industry-wide among franchises, web services accounted for less than one percent of overall sales, down from more than three percent in 2013. In the case of Alliance, “the majority of these projects and campaigns involved our Marketing Resource Center (MRC) for creative services: creative strategy, copywriting, design, web programming, etc.,” Milroy said. “The MRC includes a centralized staff of marketing planners, creative staff and web marketing and social media professionals. “To create the time and financial resources that allow adoption of our sales driven model, we remain dedicated to our Profit Mastery program based on our long-standing Operating Ratio Study (ORS) of financial and operating efficiency benchmarks,” Milroy explained. “This information, when used as guidance within our Performance Groups, allows small groups to serve as each other’s boards of directors. Group members compare financials against norms for top profit performance and devise specific plans for profit improvement and growth.” Franchise Services, Inc. (FSI): PIP, Sir Speedy, and Multicopy “We had a good year in 2014 with comparable network sales up 3.2 percent while the printing industry was flat,” Lowe said. “We renewed over 90 percent of the franchise contracts at the end of their 20-year term in 2014.” Customers have many alternative ways to communicate with their prospects and customers, Lowe added, which means that FSI members need to continue to evolve their product and service offering to remain relevant and valuable. “Our marketing services strategy remains on point,” he added. “We approach each interaction with a customer trying to help them better communicate with their prospects and customers.” While wide-format print overall is down 1.5 percent this year among franchises (see pie chart), Lowe pointed out that signs have been a go-to product for FSI since 2012. “We have doubled our sign business in the past two years to more than 10 percent of our overall sales,” he said. “Selling signs fits perfectly into the marketing services strategy and plays on our strengths of creativity and manufacturing. I expect us to continue to grow our sign business substantially.” MyPRINTResource.com Quick Printing | April 2015 11
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