Geeks On Call owner Glenn Davis. Photo by Paul Chin, Jr.
By T.J. Prieur
It’s common to hear of someone buying a franchise — one McDonald’s, one Subway store. We also hear of the successful franchisee who owns a dozen or more stores. But how often do you hear about someone buying the entire franchise’s corporate structure? That’s exactly what Glenn Davis did in 2009 when he bought out Geeks on Call, a 10-year-old franchise company that offers technical support and repairs services to both residential and business customers.
Davis was a partner in a local telecom company which specialized in selling voice and data services as well as tech support. He’d begun to think about expanding their business out of state, but was concerned about the logistical difficulties. “How were we going to supervise managers three or four states away, especially when they didn’t have the same stake in the business that we did? That’s when we began to look at franchising the company we had,” he says.
Then he heard about problems at Geeks on Call, a well-known franchise that was suffering from a variety of problems, both financial and structural. He began to research the company, and decided that despite the problems, Geeks on Call offered many advantages over starting his own franchise from scratch. “They had already had a strong national presence on which we could overlay our business model. The company had been having financial problems and the 55 franchisees had lost a lot of trust in corporate,” he explains. “But they had a successful infrastructure; instead of having to build our own, we could just fix their issues,” he explains.
When Geeks on Call began to franchise in the early 2000s, it was geared toward residential customers. While many of the franchisees had moved into the more lucrative area of tech support for small businesses, the corporate offices had “never made the jump,” Davis says.
He also realized that his own company’s experience in telecom would be a great asset to many of the franchises.
But acquiring the company wasn’t simple.
“It was a publicly traded corporation. If we had tried to acquire it by purchasing stock we would have taken on a lot of debt,” he adds. Instead he was able to acquire the note for the company’s debt and foreclose on the company, forcing the board of directors to surrender their assets. “That way we acquired control without the liability.”
Then Davis began the task of rebuilding the trust of his franchisees.
“We had to get out of the gate and ramp up very quickly,” Davis explains. “We did have several benefits. First, we had an existing infrastructure. Second, we had 54 successful owners who had weathered the storm. We flew the franchise advisory council into town to discuss with them what we could do to help them re-energize.”
The first thing Davis learned was that communication between the corporate office and the franchisees had been non-existent. He immediately instituted weekly conference calls that last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. “I’m on Twitter. I do conference calls and video blogs. The franchisees know that if they need to reach corporate quickly, they can.”
He also reworked the website within 60 days to reflect the reality that Geeks on Call was in the business of servicing other businesses. A live chat feature makes the site more user-friendly, a call center helps set up appointments, and search engine optimization has increased traffic and brought new, favorable, attention to the brand.
As the head of a national franchise, Davis sees his role as different from that of his franchisees. “You get what you want out of life when you help others. That’s the franchise environment. My mission is not to be the best computer repair company on earth. That’s our franchisee’s job. My job at the corporate level is to enable their success.”
