New Stores
Owner: Ryan Frank
Oklahoma City, OK
This past January if someone asked you to pick up and move to a new state and open up a hot tub dealership, what would you have said? Most would agree that this year is not a great time to start a new venture, but Ryan Frank was ready to work for himself.
Frank had worked in the hot tub industry in Michigan for six years, saving up to start a business of his own. So, when the opportunity arose to move to Oklahoma he couldn’t say no.
“Our economy is not that bad here,” Frank says about his new home in Oklahoma City. “I had an opportunity to take the dealership here and it was an open market. Economically it’s pretty stable right now; there is some job loss, but it’s not as bad as, say, you lived in Michigan and worked for GM, Ford or Chrysler.”
Frank felt that running a no-frills operation, keeping his overhead as low as he could was going to be key to making his startup a success. “I don’t have this glamorous showroom on a major street, I do have a large location where I can bring people in to see the swim spas. I pretty much keep [my overhead] low and make sure that I take care of the customers I do have.”
This approach has helped him with customers’ objections to working with the new kid in town. “The one thing they say is, ‘Is he going to be around?’ And one of the things that I can combat [that with] is I [don’t] have a large $15,000 to $20,000 rent payment.”