On the verge of opening her third Clothes Mentor store in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on March 17, franchisee Sadie Cherney talks about spring fashions from Clothes Mentor that are available for hundreds of dollars less than original retail prices.
In addition, Cherney talks about the upcoming Girls Night Out event at her Greenville store, featuring hundreds of Lilly Pulitzer items for spring. Watch the video to learn more about these big events.
The following excerpt was taken from the article “Creative Narrative, Original Messaging Offer Powerful Marketing for Unique Franchises” in the January 2016 issue of Franchising World:
NTY Franchise Company is the parent company of five unique re-sale based brands that focus on women’s designer fashion, children’s apparel and accessories, furniture/household goods, electronic sales and repair, and clothing for teens and young adults. Its franchise model is designed to sell gently used goods at 70 percent off the new retail price. NTY Franchise brands are attractive, as they save customers money and pay sellers cash on the spot for items they are no longer using.
Building a business and building a family can happen simultaneously—just ask any of the four mom-preneurs highlighted in this article by Sacha Strebe for My Domaine.
– Sheree Commerford, stylist and founder of Captain and the Gypsy Kid, featured in the article mentioned above.
NTY Franchise Company has helped inspired moms like Sheree pursue their creative passions and achieve their dreams of owning a business many times over. Passionate about fashion and kids? Open a Children’s Orchard store and do what you love every day.
Check out the article for more inspiring tips and advice for running a successful business while raising a family.
NTY Franchise Company is Number 28 on the Fast 50! Take a look at this interview with Chad Olson. Source: bizjournals.com
We asked Chief Operating Officer Chad Olson:
What was a key accomplishment for your company in 2014? Our largest brand, Clothes Mentor, had a record year for new store openings — 34 in 2014.
What was the most difficult challenge of 2014, and what did you learn from it?Keeping the lead funnel full for selling new franchises. We learned we needed to focus our online strategy for generating leads and we needed our people to be in the right positions to qualify the leads and sell the prospects on our franchises.
Where do you see your company in five years? Crossing the 500-store mark and well on our way to seeing our longer-term goal of over 1,000 stores across America coming into view.
How does it feel to be one of the Twin Cities’ fastest-growing private companies? We are excited to be one of the Twin Cities fastest-growing companies. But the reality is, we have a lot more to accomplish and a lot of room to keep growing.
Congratulations to Bill Carson for winning the 2015 AVA Digital Gold Award. This award was given for his creative work on the NTY Kids’ Whiteboard Animation on the website.
As AVA stated: “AVA Digital Awards is an international competition that recognizes excellence by creative professionals responsible for the planning, concept, direction, design and production of digital communication. Work ranges from digital engagement campaigns – to audio and video production – to website development – to social media interaction – to mobile marketing.”
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal released their list of the Fast 50, a list of Minnesota’s top entrepreneurs for the year. The list takes an in-depth look some of the fastest-growing companies in the state, and Ron and Chad Olson were featured as part of this list.
The article looks at the humble beginnings of the company, as well as how Ron and Chad were able to take the Clothes Mentor store and turn it into an empire. The full article can be accessed from the Fast 50 List on the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Magazine Website.
Ron Olson and his son Chad were recently featured by Franchise Times in a “Where Are They Now?” article. The article takes a quick look at the past, present, and future of franchise owner Ron Olson, speaking about his role as an “entrepreneur’s entrepreneur”, and the new franchise concepts for NTY. The full article can be seen below. Sourced from: Franchise Times
A serial entrepreneur is playing it again—but not in used sports equipment this time. Today it’s clothing for women, teens and even men. The secret is to be upscale and not segregate the plus sizes.
Ron Olson so believes in the power of recycled goods that he’s recycling his career. The Minnesota-based businessman made it big with his original multi-concept company, Grow Biz, which is now Winmark.
After selling the company in 2000—which included Play it Again Sports, Once Upon a Child and Plato’s Closet—Olson retired. Five years later he discovered something AARP never tells seniors: “Retirement is very boring.”
“I was looking for other opportunities as every entrepreneur does,” he says. He found it in Columbus, Ohio, where he was having dinner with Dennis and Lynn Blum, who wanted to show him their new concept, Clothes Mentor. The resale store for women had good bones, but needed fleshing out. His specialty.
Olson is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. His forte is investing in others’ concepts and helping grow their business. Almost anything can be recycled into a business, he says, except perhaps tools. “No one wanted to sell their (used) tools,” he says about the one concept he couldn’t hammer out—Re-Tool.
The beauty of a concept like Clothes Mentor is the customers never age out. “Women change sizes, they change professions and they don’t wear clothes that long,” he says. Most of the clothes he teaches franchisees to buy are two years old and hardly worn.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into pricing,” he says. “Our secret sauce is the pricing” and which brands to buy.
The beauty of a second time around is you’ve already made the mistakes. His son Chad, who joined him at his original company right out of college, is COO of the new company, NTY Franchise Co. Clothing Mentor has more than 100 stores, with 67 in the pipeline, Olson says.
Coming online are two other concepts: NTY Clothing for teens and 20-somethings and New Uses for household items. “It’s a totally recession-proof business,” Chad Olson says.
The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal released their list of the Fast 50, a list of Minnesota’s top entrepreneurs for the year. The list takes an in-depth look at some of the fastest-growing companies in the state, and Ron and Chad Olson were featured as part of this list.
The article looks at the humble beginnings of the company, as well as how Ron and Chad were able to take the Clothes Mentor store and turn it into an empire. The full article can be accessed from the Fast 50 List on the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Magazine Website.
