Malcolm Parry
Sun
Brian Scudamore’s 1-800-JUNK? Firm topped $100 million last year and plans to hit $1 billion in 2012
IN FOR THE LONGER HAUL: You’d think Brian Scudamore’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK? firm would be literally cleaning up during the Vancouver city-workers’ strike.
Not so, said San Francisco-born, North Vancouver-raised Scudamore, 37, even though the outfit he founded in 1989 is expected to haul away trash to the tune of $135 million in 2007 — up many truckloads from last year’s $106 million.
Business in Vancouver is actually down 10 to 15 per cent, he said, “because the strike “leaves us nowhere to take stuff.”
That’s no handicap, however, in “another 333 markets that aren’t on strike.”
He was talking partially about the remainder of Canada, where 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchises “are completely sold out.” But the firm’s growth now will be in the U.S. and Australia, where Scudamore said he’ll sign 80 franchise agreements this year, thereby tripling those in Australia to 12. Franchisees pay $16,000 for the first 62,500 of population served, and $8,000 for added increments.
That doesn’t include first franchisee Paul Guy, the firm’s former operations director, who got Toronto for free in 1999 and now sets company-wide records in the range of $7 million annually. The second franchise district, Edmonton, “will do almost a million this year,” Scudamore said.
His own target has three more zeroes on it. And he’s actively seeking a president-COO “to take us from $130 million to a billion . . . by the end of 2012.”
With North America counting for $700 million and Australia $50 million of that, Scudamore and the new president will have to find $250 million globally. Scudamore said the firm will “absolutely” return to Britain within 18 months. A trial operation in Birmingham foundered this year, not least because there’s no 1-800 designation, and British telephone numbering wouldn’t accommodate an easily amended title.
Germany and France will follow, with China, Japan and other Asian countries beyond that.
Still, there is no plan to move 240 headquarters staff — and especially a 100-agent call centre — from the three-floor West Hastings Street premises they moved into a year ago. “I hope and believe we can find all the languages in Vancouver and keep it here,” Scudamore said.
As for an 1-800-GOT-JUNK? mascot, it’s no junk-yard dog. Instead, Scudamore has named Shiba Inu pup Grizzly the firm’s director of greetings, and pays him in dog food. He’ll need more than that, though, for a president-COO “who’s been there and done it before — taken a hyper-growth company and made it bigger.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2007