If it’s good-to-great to run a business, think what it’s like when yours helps a thousand other people run theirs.
Home Franchise Concepts LLC does that every day.
“Our mindset is helping entrepreneurs,” said Chief Executive Shirin Behzadi.
The company she leads franchises three homecare businesses from a 22,400-square-foot structure in an office-industrial area of north Orange. The one-story Class B building sports a tidy look with burnt orange exterior paint and a half-dozen shade trees in front. Inside, it sells and supports several concepts:
• Budget Blinds LLC, which installs window coverings.
• Tailored Living LLC, which organizes interior spaces, including closets and garages.
• American Decorative Coatings LLC, which resurfaces concrete with patterns, colors and designs under the trade name Concrete Craft.
An HFC affiliate, BB Commercial Solutions LLC, pursues national commercial accounts for some work.
Behzadi calls franchisees “home therapists” because each of the three businesses is intended to help improve one or more interior or exterior areas.
HFC companies serve a roughly 80/20 mix of residential and commercial clients, and plenty of places seem to benefit from the work. Its estimated systemwide sales top $600 million (see “Home Economics,” page 22).
Growth
Budget Blinds began in 1992. Five men—Tony Forbes, brothers Brent Hallock and Chad Hallock, Todd Jackson and David Lewis—started it “out of a small apartment and delivered fliers door-to-door from an old white Jeep,” according to Home Franchise Concepts’ website.
It began franchising in the U.S. in 1994, and the partners added pieces over time.
They created HFC in 2006 as a parent company selling several homecare-focused franchise concepts, starting the second concept, Closet Tailors, at about the same time. HFC bought another, Premier Garage, in 2010, and merged the two to create Tailored Living.
It bought another company in 2014 that became the Concrete Craft operation.
Franchise numbers dipped with the 2008 financial crisis. Entrepreneur magazine in Irvine said HFC’s two concepts at the time had about 1,200 franchises combined, which fell to about 900 by 2012. Today’s totals surpass previous highs, and the company plans to add about 70 Budget Blinds this year, with the other, smaller concepts kicking in a few more.
HFC sold a majority stake in November 2015 to Trilantic Capital Partners LP in New York on undisclosed terms. Trilantic typically puts $50 million to $250 million into firms with an enterprise value up to $1 billion.
Shirin, CEO
The founders and Behzadi hold some equity in HFC, Behzadi said.
She began helping Budget Blinds on financial issues in 1999, and franchise filings show she became chief financial officer in 2003, adding the same titles at each new company as it came on. She became chief executive and president in December 2015 after the buyout.
“I’d been CFO for a number of years and helped recruit the private equity capital” as an exit strategy for the founders, Behzadi said.
She’s also on the board, which includes two members from owner Trilantic Capital Partners, one from private equity firm Fenway Partners LLC, and the former president of 3 Day Blinds, among others.
She’s helmed the company as it has expanded its in-house line of product options—Inspired Drapes was launched in 2012, and Inspired Shades was added last year—and taken it deeper into franchising in Mexico, which Budget Blinds reached into in 2015.
Franchisees can buy multiple territories for a single concept, and Behzadi said a few have also bought more than one of the three offerings, though “running one business can be tough enough” for an entrepreneur.
Information on HFC and its concepts overlap on the companies’ websites and in regulatory filings.
“There’s a lot of collateral cross-promotion,” she said.
