MAYBVM

110 111 MISTER SOFTEE ness as a franchise. That way, we can get royalties and make our money back.We’ll sell the supplies, trucks, and everything that goes with it.”With the franchise model in place, “they really blew it up,” Conway exclaims. During the first half of the 1960s, Mister Softee had explosive growth. “They were on the razor blade model and pretty much giving away the trucks. You could buy a truck for somewhere near five thousand dollars,” Conway recounts. “Be- cause they were financing the sales, controlling inventory, and receiving royalties; they had three streams of revenue.” As business for the brothers grew, so did op- portunities for their children. “My cousin and I are partners,” Conway reports. “We started working at the company when we were teenagers.We began by cleaning trucks, went off to college, and came back afterwards. I came back the summer be- fore John and was running the wholesale supply company for a few years. Then, we became our parents’ exit strategy, if you will. By the late 1990s we both started working in the office, and con- cluded the purchase by the year 2000.” With their parents having relocated to Florida, the cousins set to work plotting the future of the business.With a heavy footprint in the northeast, from Connecticut to Virginia, the company began mapping out new opportunities to the south and west. As Conway explains, “There are so many REPRESENTING OVER 165 BRANDS AND THEIR OFFICERS, OWNERS AND FUTURE OWNERS GLOBALLY IN LITIGATION AND COMPLEX TRANSACTIONS. Since 1995, Fisher Zucker LLC has helped the biggest names in franchising protect, strengthen and grow their brands. Today, the firm represents more than 165 franchise systems in all areas of franchise law worldwide including litigation, transactions and regulatory matters. The firm’s success is based upon its lawyers’ commitment to old-fashioned values—hard work, honesty, integrity and loyalty to their clients and families. 21 S. 21st Street | Philadelphia, PA 19103 | fisher zucker .com | 215.825.3100 regions in the country, Florida and the Carolinas, Texas and California, and so many people who have migrated from the northeast. People tell me stories of people doing U-turns on the highways, running down the trucks.” So the cousins are tapping into nostalgia to enter new, distant markets. New franchisees in Texas, California, and Arizona have built their businesses into multiple-truck operations in a few short years. One of their newer fran- chisees in California is already opening up a storage location for his trucks. As Conway puts it, “These newer markets, which have so many people who have moved from the east, really represent tremendous opportunities for us.” The company continues to see new growth in existing markets as well, including amongst existing franchisees. While Mister Softee builds about 15 new trucks per year, they paint between 40 and 50 trucks. Conway describes