Movable feats - mobile franchise businesses of Joe Lunsford

Entrepreneur, March, 1996 by Holly Celeste Fisk

Mobile businesses moved one entrepreneur to franchise success.

PERHAPS WHAT sets Joe Lunsford apart from the crowd is that when opportunity tells him to jump, he asks, "How high?" The Atlanta owner of a $100 mil- lion-plus franchise system has come a long way from his days working as an electrical engineer for AT&T. Today, he's spending 60-hour, six-day workweeks running the four mobile franchise networks he's founded since 1979: Furniture Medic, Floor Coverings International, Surface Doctor and Professional Carpet Systems.

"I got off work at four," says Lunsford, 43, of his days at AT&T, "so rather than sit around, I went back to school." He got his real estate license and, in two months, was making more selling real estate part time than he made at AT&T.

"It made me view my future differently," says Lunsford, who had once thought he'd work for AT&T until retirement.

Imbued with a new-found entrepreneurial spirit, Lunsford used his real estate profits to buy his own restaurant. But when he tried to hire someone to dye the restaurant's faded carpet, he couldn't find anyone to do it at a reasonable price.

"I started doing research and actually went back to school again," says Luns- ford. The result of his studies was Professional Carpet Systems, a carpet redyeing and maintenance business he started in 1979. Sensing he was on to a hot new business concept, Lunsford sold the restaurant.

When somebody approached him wanting to become a Professional Carpet Systems franchisee, Lunsford hit the books again, learning as much as he could about franchising.

And that's the advice he offers anyone contemplating franchising a business. "Talk to franchisors," Lunsford advises. "Ask them about the advantages, the pitfalls and the expenses of franchising. Go to franchise shows. Anybody look- ing to grow a business should look into franchising, but they need to be prepared to set up a completely separate business. Franchising is a business of its own."

And it's a business that has worked out well for Lunsford. "We found that franchisees took pride in ownership, and as a result, our franchises con- sistently outperformed our company stores," he says. "We decided franchising was the way to grow our businesses from then on."

Franchising each successive business grew simpler, Lunsford says, because the mobile systems are relatively similar. Finding new concepts to fit into the mobile format has proved to be the driving force behind Lunsford's success.

When some of Professional Carpet Systems' carpet-dyeing clients started requesting new carpeting, Floor Coverings International was launched in 1989. In just seven years, the mobile carpet retailer has grown to 480 franchises.

And where many entrepreneurs would have rested on their laurels, Lunsford jumped just as quickly when he got his next idea. When he received some damaged office furniture, he searched for a firm to repair it on-site. After discovering there were virtually no mobile furniture repair companies, he started Furniture Medic in January 1993.

Market differentiation was the key to success for the most recent addition to Lunsford's collection of mobile franchises. Surface Doctor, a kitchen and bathroom resurfacing company he founded in 1994, sidesteps the competition by servicing all kitchen and bathroom surfaces, not just porcelain.

How did Lunsford come up with so many business ideas? "I'm not really that creative," insists the entrepreneur, who notes there are ideas for businesses all around us. He just made an effort to pay attention to those ideas, he says, and looked for ways to improve them.

What's next for this franchisor extraordinaire? For now, Lunsford says he simply plans to spend some time getting his existing companies "up and grow- ing." As for adding another concept to the list, he acknowledges, "There's got to be something"--but what it is, he's not saying just yet.