Growing Up Franchising – We’re Talking Motivated, People!

Area Developer:

When she was just 16, Mandy Bryant (now Mandy Bryant Verges) got a job at a Gold’s Gym in her home city of New Orleans. She worked a couple of years in sales and did well.

In April 1995, owner Steve Smith opened a tanning salon called Electric Beach in the city’s Uptown district. When Smith bought out his business partner, he needed a manager for the salon. Bryant asked, he said yes, and transferred the 18-year-old to the salon as its new manager.

‘After a few months, he spoke with me about wanting to start his own franchise,’ she says. Using the Electric Beach salon as a model for creating a new brand, in February 1996 he changed the name to Planet Beach. By April he was franchising.

‘Helping him with the policies and procedures of his first Planet Beach location, I just basically grew with the franchise,’ she says. Over the years, that would mean a little bit of everything: overseeing openings, doing grand opening training, and traveling throughout the U.S., Canada, and Australia to help open salons and conduct classes in training, management, sales, and marketing. Read the whole story.