The Premier Rental Purchase Philosophy

Typical franchising is about an entrepreneur who starts a concept and tests, tests and tests it to perfection. Once they think they have it down and successful, they market their concept to investors. That’s not Premier! Premier was started by a group of franchisees who left a competing franchise system because we believed the franchise was no longer serving our best interests, and we were unable to effect change within the organization. I was one of those initial dealers. I know how frustrating it is to have a franchisor take a percentage of my revenues and not provide me with the support and services I need for those revenues to obtain my business goals. When Premier was formed by this group of ex-franchisees, we set out to change the basic franchisee-franchisor relationship so that the organization would best serve the needs of its dealers…US!

The challenge for most businesses is to continually provide the best service, product and price to its customers compared to its market competitors. In addition, they must continually be looking for new ways to streamline their business operations to maximize profits. Franchising has proven to be an excellent model for small business success because statistics show as much as 90% of all franchises in America are still in business after their first five years, while as much as 90% of all independent small businesses fail within their first year. Franchises are generally effective because they bring the collective power and knowledge of many dealers together to help each individual dealer.

The unfortunate part about most franchise organizations is that it is too easy for the franchisor to begin to focus more attention on selling their franchise and lose touch with the day-to-day needs of their franchisees. At Premier, our unique approach to preventing that is to design the organization around serving the needs of the dealers. All of our services are optional to our dealers, and they can decide individually what services they will utilize.

At Premier, we have our 80-20 rule. With almost any of our support services, up to 20% of our dealers will choose to do something different because they believe they can do it better. For most franchise organizations, that is heresy! At Premier, we encourage the entrepreneurial spirit and welcome any new answers our dealers might come up with. If any of our support services fall below 80% participation, then Premier needs to consider that the service is failing to meet the needs of our dealers and ask them why. When that happens, we learn from our dealers why the program isn’t satisfying their needs, and we change the program. Oftentimes when we look to change a program, some of our entrepreneurial-minded dealers in the 20% group have already found a better path, and Premier will simply adopt the best new approach or service they’ve found.

Every good company needs an active R & D program, and they will spend up to 20% of their revenues researching and developing new products and services to serve their customers and stay ahead of the competition. Premier considers our R & D department to be those 20% of dealers who break from the ranks to try a new path. Premier encourages our dealers to be entrepreneurs and challenge the system. I continually say, “If they think there is a better way to do something, try it!” In some cases, if a dealer has a promising new idea, Premier will co-invest our monies and provide our resources to help test it with the dealer. If the program fails, we learn something. If it is successful, we adopt it and continue to stay ahead of our competitors.

In short, the Premier franchise organization is designed to support our dealers’ needs and allow them the freedom to try new approaches to out run the competition. Everyone is working together, including the 20% renegades, to find better answers and solutions from which every franchisee can benefit.

Premier has always considered our franchisees as business partners. With most franchises, the franchisor and the franchisee are always in competition with each other. The franchisor wants to make money everywhere he can from the franchisee. The franchisee wants to save money everywhere he can. Not surprisingly, that traditional relationship can become adversarial as both begin fighting against each other to make money. At Premier, we encourage our franchisees to get involved and voice their opinions. We are never offended when a franchisee criticizes the system and challenges the system to do better. If the franchisee believes a program can be changed to save them money, then we work with the franchisees to help them accomplish that goal. If Premier is slow to respond, the franchisee can act on his own. The entire relationship works beautifully.

We believe all of our dealers are very satisfied with their choice to become part of the Premier family. If anyone questions that, call them! All the phone numbers are on our website, and we always encourage prospective franchisees to call and hear firsthand the raw feedback from our dealers. It follows that if current dealers aren’t satisfied, why should any prospective franchisee consider joining Premier?

What Premier has done is to improve upon the traditional franchisor-franchisee relationship by encouraging franchisees to be entrepreneurs and get involved. Our purchasing program is a coop and managed by an elected board. Our marketing fund is a dealer-managed elected board. At Premier meetings, all services are evaluated and where franchisees believe there is improvement to be made, they work on it together.

Like most good organizations, Premier is constantly surveying the franchisees for their feedback. Each month when the franchisees do their royalty reports, Premier asks for their opinions and what services they are using. What Premier does that is very unique is that they ask each dealer to calculate the financial benefit for each of the Premier services. In the end, the survey shows the total amount the dealer believes Premier’s support services are worth in comparison to the royalties that month to Premier. In the four years since Premier began asking for that information, not one franchisee has ever reported to them that they believe the franchise fees were greater than the financial benefit. That’s satisfaction that counts!

Premier’s franchising philosophy is unique among franchise organizations. Our goal is to help our dealers be successful. The more successful they are, the more The Premier Companies will be successful.

The national office of Premier Rental Purchase is located in Williamsburg, VA. All Premier stores are independently owned and operated. Visit Premier’s website at www.premierrents.net or call (800) 2Premier and ask for Trooper Earle.

As Manuel Garcia climbed the RTO ladder for a major chain, he was building valuable operational expertise that led to his becoming a district manager. His best friend, Steven Fox, who brushed with RTO only briefly as a customer service associate during college, was developing finance and managerial strengths through a career with The Vanguard Group, a major financial institution. Both were successful and happy, but Steve began to think about how to merge his skills with Manuel’s to form a lucrative business.

He pitched the idea to Manuel, who at first wasn’t ready. But an acquisition within Manuel’s company and the change in its climate and culture made him think again about Steve’s idea and he agreed to it.

Manuel knew Ted Krygoske and Paul Bottomly, who had formerly worked for his company, and he knew they had become independent business owners through Premier Rental-Purchase. Their success prompted him to look into Premier for himself and Steve.

“I liked Premier,” said Manuel. “Premier had some amazing resources to help us get started.” These resources included contacts in the financial community as well as legal consultants familiar with the RTO industry. Premier helped Manuel and Steve with their business and finance plans and with establishing record keeping, software and hardware systems. They even provided them with a step-by-step guide to opening a store, cutting down to 90 days what it would have taken them 12 -18 months to accomplish on their own. They opened their first store in Saginaw, Mich. in April, the first in what they plan to be a multi-store RTO operation.

Steve agreed that Premier’s structure for franchising was just what he and Manual needed, but the “number one reason Premier was our choice was the flexibility it offered us as entrepreneurs in our selection of products and pricing. We didn’t want to be stuck in a lock-step operation.”

Ben Pior reviewed his options. He had managed for a number of years for a major RTO firm. He had partnered as a franchisee for another large RTO company but felt it was time to truly break into business for himself. He could strike out as an independent as he had watched friends do. But there were drawbacks; one of them was having enough money compete.

“You must have enough money to compete with the big guys,” he said. “You need enough to do it right. Inventory is a big deal and you must have enough cash available to buy good inventory for your customers.” That required the difficult task of developing a relationship with a loan source. Plus it seemed daunting to launch out without any support system.

Ben knew he could start up again with a large corporation but there were drawbacks there, too, not the least of which were the expense and diminished flexibility. Ben wanted it all – something that would give him the best support but leeway to run his business as he wanted to. He thought long and hard and discovered he could have that support and leeway through Premier Rental-Purchase.

“I had heard about Premier and talked with Trooper Earle [president and CEO] many years ago. What impressed me was how Trooper stuck with me while I thought about it – for six years!”

Ben liked Premier’s SBA program rather than the revolving program many franchisors favor. “Premier’s program made getting a half-million-dollar loan for my new business easier than closing my mortgage,” he said, adding that he also could save 10% by establishing his own contracts with vendors rather than paying the mark-ups required by larger corporations. Ben also liked Premier’s benefits and payroll services as well as advertising. “It’s invaluable to have that in place and not have to keep up with it. I can focus on what I need to focus on. The whole system works very, very well. It made opening this store easier than when I opened stores before.”

RTO Online is the official channel for Rent-to-Own Industry News and the only independent source of news for the rent-to-own, rental-purchase, lease-purchase trade. RTO Online (Rent to Own Online) represents the choice of the entire RTO Industry for trusted information, as it happens.

Tell us what you think
Rate the article at the top of this page