After investing almost 3 years of hard work into the Minuteman Press Franchise I purchased, I am feeling like I have had a very good scam pulled on me. I was sold an existing Minuteman Press Franchise in Salem, Oregon in the fall of 2000.
After spending several months trying to check out the company as much as possible I decided to purchase the shop, I was assured by the regional vice president that the shop had been in business for a long time and was using state of the art equipment and actually had much more equipment than a new shop would be setup with, he assured me that I would have no problems of achieving $30,000 to $35,000 per month in sales within a very short period of time, and would most likely be able to double those numbers within a year, all I would need to do is follow the company's marketing plan.
The shop did indeed seem to have a lot of equipment in it and to a novice it appeared to be good equipment. But as I soon found out it was all very old and very worn out. I had invested all of my available assets into purchasing the business and starting out with what I was assured would be ample cash reserves to get the shop where it needed to be to become profitable.
After approximately 6 months of working countless hours I finally did get sales increased to within $10,000 of my goal. For a few short months we actually exceeded our goal, but we also worked 7 days a week and 18 hour days to do that, and were fighting broken down equipment the entire time, or just couldn't do the quality work that my customers were starting to ask for. I had a very competent pressman who did everything in his power to help me succeed, he put in more overtime than anyone should have to do as did I.
We put in a lot of time trying to make the old equipment work mainly because I didn't have enough money left to go out and purchase all new stuff, which I didn't feel I should have to since I had paid a very good price for the business and was told by Minuteman Press and the old owner that it was a good deal and good equipment. The problem was, I kept loosing money almost every month or every other month.
After fighting to grow the business and then just keep it afloat, I had health problems arise in my family. These problems began to take me away from the business for a few days a week.By me not being there for that few days a week I began to see a drop in the monthly revenue. The Franchise was not able to respond to my pleas for help in any type of timely manner. They didn't have enough qualified Rep's to service the area.
Even when they did show up they would spend 3 or 4 hours in the shop do some very quick employee training then write a report about how much they had done and leave. I was asked several times over the 3 years to sign reports by rep's that were not completely true. I found out that the rep's salary was very dependent on having these reports look well and getting good feedback from owners sent to the main office. I was asked more than once to send a letter of recommendation to the main office so they could hopefully get a raise or at least a good review.
I finally decided it was time to sell the business and asked for help from the Franchise in getting it sold. They seemed very helpful in doing that at first. After the first month went by and I kept getting stalled, by the vice president, that his schedule was really booked and that he would have some prospective buyers within another month I was beginning to see a pattern. I had a person contact me who had called on the ad they had placed in the paper for my business, and after 3 weeks had not received a call back from anyone, so I really began to wonder how hard they were working for me.
What surprises me is that the Franchise was very much aware of my sales figures and my financial situation as that was communicated to them several times, and they are sent sales reports every month, so I'm wondering why they never offered or showed up to help me find a solution to the problem as they told me they would when I went to New York for training, they assured me that they had a team of people that would be there to help should I run into problems. I guess that meant until I walked out their door in New York, because once I was back in Oregon it was a different story and I never received the support I was promised.
With all of this in mind and having had it bring me to financial ruin. I will never again look at a franchise as any better business opportunity than going it alone. I probably would have been better off, at least I wouldn't have been sending someone 6% of my monthly sales for doing nothing other than letting me use their name. Oh and I did get a software package from them which I paid for that they never could make-work reliably. I understand that they are now completely rewriting the program, which seems strange to me since they kept insisting to me that I was the only person having the kinds of problems I kept having.
Please be very cautious in dealing with these people, they are very slick at their game. They have also been in trouble with the FTC several years ago I'm finding out and after reading the charges against them, it appears to me that they haven't learned a lot in the years since, because my experience seems to be very similar to what they were charged for back in 1997/98. I think someone from the FTC should do a follow up with these folks and see what they are up to today.
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