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Women
In Franchising
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Connie
D'Imperio
Color Your Carpet™
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Connie
D'Imperio, born in Columbus, Ohio, raised
in Philadelphia and now a Floridian, is
one of the happiest woman in the world.
You know it because she radiates a positive,
joyful outlook on life even though she
is in a "dyeing business."
Many
years ago Connie, who is called the "Godmother
of Franchising", wrote a book entitled
"Franchising Made Easy" which addressed
a lot of issues and put fairness into
the frame for franchisors and franchisees.
It has helped countless people through
the franchise purchase process for over
30 years.
Connie
was doing her own thing in the 1970's,
helping people become franchisors and
franchisees, when she was asked to assist
two fellows who were mixing dyes for carpets
in their bathtub and thought they had
an idea that would fly.
She liked the idea, even though their
chemical technology, methods and results
weren't dyeing the wool, and got interested
in the process. Eventually she bought
them out and created a business called
Color your Carpet™.
"It
was the first time in many years that
an idea caught my interest," she says.
"These two guys were mixing dyes in their
bathtub to dye carpets. The dyes weren't
very good but the idea grabbed me."
So,
she bought them out, made up some jokes
about her "dyeing business" and climbed
onto the magic carpet of success. There
were problems, as Connie says, however,
for she had "a steamboat ... not a jet
ski."
So
it was that she began researching the
time-honoured techniques of dyeing and
devoted countless hours to the development
of new proprietary dyes and a unique methodology.
She created a new "language of colors"
to communicate exact shades for men. She
studied the techniques for coloring various
types of fibres and discovered that "dyeing
works best on wool or nylon fibres."
When
she had all the technology and methodology
in place she began to preach the benefits
of "dyeing instead of buying" to people
who were tired of their ugly carpets and
were going to replace them with new ones.
Color
Your Carpet™ offered a better, less-expensive
and more eco-friendly way to bring that
old, downtrodden carpet back to life by
dyeing it.
"Ninety
percent of all carpets can be dyed by
our process. A carpet always "uglies"
out before it wears out and we can save
clients at least 50% over carpet replacement,"
she says. "Dyeing your carpet keeps it
out of the landfill sites and we only
use eco-friendly products."
Color
Your Carpet™ surprised the hospitality
industry when, after many disappointing
episodes using carpet cleaners (to whom
dyeing carpets is a sideline), they tried
CYC™ instead. The CYC™ group came in,
dyed the carpets, were done in half the
time, charged half as much and left the
carpets vibrating resplendently in rich,
new colours.
"With
millions of color choices we can match
any color," says Connie confidently. "Even
faded Oriental carpets respond to our
unique dyes and the carpet, re-dyed and
perfectly color-matched to the original
design, can be walked on in less than
a minute and doesn't require special care
when it is cleaned."
When
Connie decided to franchise her dyeing
business she looked for people who were
single-mindedly focused on details because
the business requires"a devotion and attention
to detail."
Some
lucky entrepreneurs who were anxious to
get into the business included a commercial
rail engineer, a psychiatric nurse, a
computer webmaster, an environmental scientist,
a PhD computer professor, retired military
officers, a commercial artist, a financial
planner, many ex-executives and housewives
and a host of other educated and meticulous
people.
In
the early nineteen-ninties Connie had
several franchise locations in Florida.
After an article authored by Rosemary
Sadez Friedman appeared in the March 9th
1996 Detroit News Homestyle Section, however,
she received so many phone calls from
out-of-state readers that she knew the
time had come to expand.
Today
she has franchises in Canada, England,
Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand
and Venezuela and is intending to dye
all over the world.
Color
Your Carpet™ has been written up and/or
featured in countless newspapers, magazines,
books and journals as well as on a host
of websites. Both Connie and her business
have received many prestigious awards.
CYC™ was rated above McDonalds in the
1st Gold 100 awards in 1990 for the best
evolved franchise companies. Later that
same year the compay was rated the #1
Service Franchise of the Top Ten "Up and
Coming" franchises for the next decade
in America. CYC™ was also honoured for
five years in a row as one of the 100
best evolved franchises in America by
the accounting firms of Arthur Andersen
and Ernst & Young, LLP.
"This
is the ideal franchise for the 21st century,"
Connie says. "Wherever there is carpet,
there is a dyeing opportunity. We're the
Golden Arches of the service industry."
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