snow in june? if you have too much downtime on your hands when your main operation isn t running, you may want to think about investing in a seasonal franchise. it is the number one best investment we made for our company. year after year, arnie arsenal was having the same problem. he had to pay 12 months worth of bills while doing only about nine months worth of work. it s very difficult to become a stronger company where you re shutting down from the beginning of december to the beginning of march. with high costs and no money coming in, running landscaping company a arrest nault and sons in spencer, massachusetts, was a bit nerve racking. i guess what hit home for myself was i ended up getting married and starting my own family and found that it was very difficult for us. that s why arnie found a holiday solution to his annual dilemma. the company invested in a franchise. christmas decor was an ideal way
supplies they ll need. we make the investment so that the franchisees don t have to. purchasing decorations is part of the agreement. owners pay royalties and invited to other events. it s a 5% royalty and one percent add fund we use for branding, addm of website, public relations programs. yes, this is a seenal franchise but it s grown in unexpected ways. some decorations are now going up months before christmas. for the last five years, we ve been starting the first part of october. this year we actually went a little bit into september. when we got into this, we expected it to be this business model you could pull off the shelf and operate during the fall. but the client wants to engage earlier. as a result, two things have happened. arnie has a sales rep dedicated solely to the franchise. we didn t realize we d be selling this business year round. we didn t know there would be interest year round. the bills are paid easier.
there was a real need for the service and something people were willing to pay good money for. while anyone can be an owner, operations like this are the best fit. they have the setup. they have trucks, trailers and mostly the equipment they need. they have employees used to working outdoors. wasn t a lot of investment on our side. one of the reasons arnie has stayed with the company is the amount of support he gets from the home office in texas. if you have an issue, whether a question from a client, a product that they may be requesting or things like that, you re able to pick up the phone, reach out to christmas decor and the answers are taken care of. owners and installation crews are required to take part in seminars about safety. everybody is trained. we will not start holiday decorating season until they ve gone through a in-house training which they gave to us to offer to our crews on an annual basis. christmas decor makes an early investment with things like li
to cover his seasonal gap. you start decorating around the beginning of december and you ll fill in at least that time period and a little bit of takedown. we should be able to fill another four to six weeks of work. brandon steechs is the president of christmas decor. we operate a business in the winter time. we go out to customers homes, design displays, install them, maintain them and take them down it at the end of the year. he understood arnie s had dilemma. train all these individuals. it s not easy for them personally to be laid off year to year. sometimes you actually lose them because they find a full-time job that was weekly. christmas decor was started in 1986 in hopes of making the decision to run year-round easier for seasonal business owners. we were a landscape company and we ve grown to a size where we had to make the hard decisions in the winter time.
we don t wonder where the finances are coming from. and ep usually has to hire more help in the fall even though the number of crews no longer fluctuate. we use the employees on the landscaping year round and we ll work them into the christmas part of the business. we ll use the other help to help us in the fall cleanups and closing up the landscaping side of the business. christmas decor may have taken on a more prominent role in arnie s business but he says the original landscaping name still gets top billing. we are 15, 16 years later with the christmas decor brand and a lot of people recognize our company. by associating the brand christmas decor with the logo on all of our vehicles and our trailers, they now understand that they re working with a quality company. brandon says that s the way it should be. he believes the success of christmas decor is in co-branding with entrepreneurs like arnie who know their communities best. as much as it s a benefit to