For you, a rip or tear in your automobile upholstery-or a cat scratch or puncture in your leather loveseat-is an aggravation and an eyesore. But for JoAnn and Jim Foster of Tinley Park, it’s the stuff of which entrepreneurial dreams are made.
In the past 14 years, the Fosters have taken a business they started virtually from square one and transformed it into a thriving enterprise that this year will generate more than $2 million in sales. In the process, they’ve managed to supply jobs not only for their three children and a host of other family members, but for franchisees and their employees in eight states from the East Coast to Montana.
Their company, Creative Colors International Inc., serves car dealerships, furniture retailers, restaurants, hotels and motels, health clubs, medical offices and private individuals, providing on-site repairs of vinyl, leather, plastics, velour, carpeting and other materials at a fraction of the cost of replacement.
Operating a fleet of white mobile repair vans from a building behind their home on 175th Street in Tinley Park, the Fosters and their staff of 13 technicians have traveled from Chicago’s North Side to southwest Michigan to repair every kind of car interior and all types of leather furniture.
Actually, repair is not the ideal term to describe what CCI does-magic is more like it. It’s not unusual for a furniture store manager to examine a restored leather loveseat or sofa and point out a flaw in the surface. The manager has to be informed by the CCI technician that the irregularity identified is a natural imperfection in the leather that was there all along. In fact, the rip or tear has been repaired so flawlessly that it’s all but impossible for anyone except the technician to tell where it was.
Such artistry has kept CCI’s phone busy with car dealers eager to sell vehicles handicapped by worn and damaged interiors, and has resulted in the company’s furniture repair volume quadrupling since that division was unveiled just two years ago. The company has been so successful in serving existing clients and attracting new ones that in 1991, the Fosters began franchising their concept.
Since then, the company has been lauded by nationally known franchising experts for providing a franchise environment that is not only “women-friendly,” but also encourages an exemplary level of franchiser-franchisee communication.
In its May 15, 1994, edition, National Business Employment Weekly named Creative Colors International one of the nation’s 53 best franchise buys under $100,000. CCI, which charges $9,950 for a 50-dealer franchise, was the only Illinois company to make the list.
Susan P. Kezios, president of the American Franchisee Association and Women in Franchising, both headquartered in Chicago, said she has been impressed with CCI as an opportunity for husband-and-wife franchisees.
“As far as a low-cost way to learn how to run a business, you couldn’t find a better franchise opportunity under $100,000-and their franchise cost is far under $100,000,” she said. “The best thing about Creative Colors is that the original entrepreneur, JoAnn Foster, is still running the company. She feels the franchisees are her partners, and that’s why the company’s relationships with franchisees are so good.”
The inspiring climb to much-admired franchiser was far from the mind of JoAnn Foster, now 50, when she started her company. “Back then, we were just desperately attempting to develop a business we could call our own,” said JoAnn. “It was run from week to week. I never gave a thought to the idea that we would ever add more (mobile) units or be as successful as we’ve become.”
The colorful saga began in 1980 when JoAnn was working in outside sales and Jim as plant manager for a manufacturing firm in South Holland. JoAnn saw an advertisement offering licensing agreements with a Minnesota-based company that had developed a method of dyeing vinyl interiors in automobiles.
Viewing it as an exit from a job JoAnn didn’t like, the Fosters put up $30,000 for a distributorship. After spending a week learning how to mix the dyes and use a spray gun, JoAnn quit her job and started J&J Creative Colors, a name still used by the family for its own repair business.
Calling on auto dealerships in Tinley Park, Oak Forest, Midlothian, Oak Lawn, and Orland Park, JoAnn explained her coloring services, then went through the dealerships’ inventories, noting what used cars required interior work.
The deal she offered made excellent business sense for the dealerships. Her price of $35 for dyeing the vinyl represented a 75 to 90 percent savings compared to what the dealerships were paying to have auto trim shops replace faded and worn upholstery. Equally attractive was the fact that the cars stayed on the lots while the work was done.
Within a month, the business was growing so fast that Jim quit his job and joined his wife in the company, whose fleet consisted of two mobile repair units: a battered green Ford Pinto station wagon and an equally unimpressive beige AMC Hornet.
“Dealerships reacted to us very favorably because we were there every week, and we’d come at any time of the day they wanted us there-even 7 p.m.,” she said. “And from the very first week, they were asking us to not only dye the upholstery, but to repair vinyl and leather and clean the interiors. They had all these cars, and they were desperate to sell them.”
The upholstery and carpeting in some cars they encountered were in such bad shape that there was almost nothing they could have done to make them look worse. So JoAnn started experimenting with ways to repair vinyl and leather. By the end of the first year, J&J Creative Colors had hired additional employees to serve the dealerships interested in having their car interiors restored.
The prospects for additional vinyl and leather repair business looked bright until about 1983 when automakers started phasing out the then-popular vinyl interiors in favor of fabric upholstery. “Then we had a problem,” said JoAnn. “We had to figure out how to fix cloth.”
She began researching that subject, reading everything she could regarding fabrics, experimenting with different materials and methods and eventually devising a technique that involved filling a hole or rip with materials similar to the fabric and using an electrostatic applicator to create a virtually invisible repair in the upholstery.
Finding an adhesive that didn’t simply pull off at the first sign of wear was the toughest part, family members recalled. “We needed an adhesive that would adhere to the material, and that was a problem for a couple of years,” said JoAnn. “The problem was finally solved when we came up with a mix of different chemicals that offered both flexibility and adhesion.”
Meanwhile, JoAnn and others in the company were perfecting their skills in leather repair, which they report is much harder than vinyl or fabric repair. “Leather is a skin, and repairing it is like performing a skin graft,” said director of operations Bill Foster of Manhattan, Jim’s brother. “You can’t just weld it together. We had to discover what the leather would accept in the way of a bond, and what material would hold once we filled the hole.”
Added JoAnn: “With both leather and vinyl, the most important thing was the reinforcing nature of the bond, which was needed to give it strength so that it would hold as well as the original.”
By the late 1980s, there was more work than the largely family-operated business could handle. In July 1991, the company began franchising under the name Creative Colors International. Today, there are 18 franchises spread across Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey and Ohio. All franchisees are trained at the company’s headquarters, learning in two weeks the secrets that took the Fosters 14 years to hone.
“It’s two weeks of very long and intense days,” said director of sales and training Verni Foster, Bill’s wife. “They have to learn all the processes, and that’s a lot to learn in so short a time.”
After they master the artistry, franchisees spend a week in their own territories with either JoAnn or director of operations Mark Bollman of Tinley Park, the fiance of the Fosters’ daughter Kelli, who is company treasurer.
“We’re there for guidance, to offer a helping hand,” said Bollman. “We do some cold-calling on (car) dealers to help them establish accounts, we give out brochures and we do some of the cars for free, to show them our work. And because the franchisees are a little bit slow still that first week, I wind up working along with them.”
The company’s first franchisees, Jim and Linda Waitekus of Streamwood, who call their franchise Kolorpatch, report that they’ve been very successful since starting the enterprise in 1991.
“I don’t know much about other franchised companies, but if they were all as good as CCI is, every franchisee would be successful,” said Linda Waitekus. “The training they put franchisees through is very extensive. It’s an ongoing thing, because JoAnn is always experimenting with new techniques, and she passes on everything she discovers. They’re great people to work with. They’re very supportive.”
Customers of CCI are equally enthusiastic: “They’re a super company,” said Pat Bridgeman, assistant used car manager at River Oaks Ford in Calumet City. “They’re very efficient and they’re always here when they say they’ll be here. They’ll make a tear, a rip or a burn hole in a seat look like new.”
Meanwhile, the leather furniture segment that began two years ago has grown even more swiftly than the automobile division of the business. It was initiated when Chicago-based Craig A. Ruse Sales, representatives for Natuzzi America, the largest manufacturer of leather upholstery in the world, commissioned Creative Colors to fix scratches, punctures and tears in costly leather furniture that had been imported from Santeramo, Italy, and could not be returned.
“When there was damage to the furniture (during shipping), they’d hire us to do the repairs,” said Verni. “They liked the work so much they referred us to furniture stores from Indiana up to the Wisconsin border.”
Laada Ruse, who with her husband Craig owns Craig A. Ruse Sales, said CCI is the company’s exclusive repair contractor in the Chicago area. “Their work is terrific and their prices are affordable,” she said. “They’re very conscientious, quick in answering our calls and getting to the repairs. It’s been a very good working relationship.”
Many of the best-known Chicago-area furniture retailers have since come to use CCI as well, among them Elmhurst-based Harlem Furniture. “I deal with them all the time, and I’m very pleased with their work,” said Penni St. Clair, who works in customer service with the retailer. “They can repair tears in leather furniture and make them look like new.”
In turn, referrals from furniture stores have led to a variety of commercial accounts for the company’s furniture business. CCI now repairs furniture in restaurants, banquet facilities, doctors’ waiting rooms, and office buildings, to name a few.
Repairing leather furniture, company employees have found, requires more artistry than restoring leather auto interiors. “People look at their furniture day in and day out, and hold on to leather furniture for years,” observed Bill, who oversees the furniture business. “Cars you’re not going to keep as long.”
However, the extra effort involved in repairing a pricey leather sofa, loveseat, or chair is offset by the gratification the technician derives from admiring his own artistry. “There’s nothing like someone pointing to a spot that’s a natural imperfection in the leather and having him say, `I still see it,’ ” he said with a smile. “I’ll have to tell him: `That’s not what I repaired; it’s over here.’ And he’ll have to get out a magnifying glass to see it. That’s a nice feeling.”
Success has helped eliminate many of the company’s competitors but has also encouraged others to jump into the field. To stay on top, JoAnn continues to work in the research and development of new techniques to make the repair magic even more impressive. “For example, the newest thing we’ve learned is repairing multi-colored fabric upholstery,” said Kelli, pulling out a swatch of gray fabric with tiny red and yellow dots. “In the past, if we’d repaired this, the repair would have looked like a gray spot. Now, we can do it so it blends right in with the other colors.”
While JoAnn has been the innovative force behind the development of new repair methods, husband Jim, 53, is often the one who lands and helps keep customers. “He has a super personality in dealing with people and doing the person-to-person PR for the company,” said JoAnn.
JoAnn and Jim see the company’s goals as twofold: to be the national leader in repairing furniture and upholstery and to gradually turn more of the day-to-day operations over to the couple’s three children-Kelli, 25; son Gary, 31, the company’s vice president; and daughter Terri Sniegolski, 29, of Oak Forest, the treasurer of the firm. But JoAnn admits it will be hard to step away from the one reward she savors most.
“What I like is the gratification that comes with having satisfied customers,” she observed. “It’s not the amount of money you make, it’s the satisfaction of the customer.
“We believe in customers first-and if they’re taken care of, everything else will follow.”
