When Pat Swisher sold his Swisher Hygiene Inc. in 2004, he had to wait five years before his non-compete agreement expired before he could start Enviro-Master. Now the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company is adding 18 Enviro-Master franchises in the U.S. and Canada over the next 12 months, including in Phoenix. It currently has 85 franchises.
With a three-year growth rate of 771 percent, Enviro-Master ranked in Entrepreneur’s 2016 Franchise 500 and was named to Inc.’s 5000 fastest growing companies in the U.S. for 2015 and 2016.
The company is an approved vendor for more than 200 brand-name businesses nationwide, including McDonald’s, Home Depot, Outback Steakhouse, Wendy’s and Sam’s Club.
And now his Swisher Hygiene sanitation company that he formed in 1983 is back in his hands. He had originally sold it to South Florida billionaire H. Wayne Hulzenga in 2004, and then last year it was sold to Ecolab Inc.(NYSE: ECL) for $40 million in cash. Last month, Swisher took back control of Swisher Hygiene, which has about $27 million in annual revenue, Swisher said.
“All of this came on top of some real fast organic growth,” Swisher said. “We are growing organically at a 50 percent per year rate.”
Scott Sheldon has purchased the Enviro-Master franchise for the eastern half of the Phoenix metro market. Two weeks ago, he also bought the rights to service Swisher Hygiene customers throughout the entire Phoenix area.Now he has contracts to clean and sanitize about 300 locations in the Valley.
Sheldon said he’ll service those Swisher Hygiene contracts until another franchisee takes over the western half of the Phoenix market.
“If they fill that area, when they buy into the business, they will buy the accounts from me for the west,” he said.The service is more than just cleaning restrooms, he said.
“We sanitize them,” Sheldon said. “Cleaning is part of the process. When they are done, they are sanitized.”
The total investment is typically in the $200,000 to $300,000 range, which includes an exclusive territory, inventory, warehouse, salaries, and operating capital. In a territory with a population between 500,000 and 1 million, the franchise fee is $45,000. In markets with a population between 1 million and 1.5 million, it’s $60,000; and in a market with a population of greater than 1.5 million, it is $85,000.
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