David Burchett is the Founder and CEO of Avance Vinyl, a leading DTC shop with high-quality vinyl, rhinestones, sublimation paper, and crafting supplies. He is also the Owner of The Plug T-shirt Store, Avance Vinyl’s brick-and-mortar print shop that has six locations. With 14 years of screen printing experience, David personalizes each item for his customers.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [2:42] David Burchett shares why he transitioned his business online and his growth methods
- [8:06] How to exit your business
- [10:03] David’s background in business and his franchising strategies
- [21:05] Tips for keeping policies and procedures relevant and consistent throughout growth
- [23:52] What does Avance stand for?
- [25:41] David talks about the next steps in his franchise journey and how he addresses growing pains
- [31:08] The value of networking and sharing clientele through Plug Bucks
In this episode…
Franchising is a great way to grow your business and plan an exit strategy. Yet, many entrepreneurs believe they lack the knowledge and processes to accomplish this. Today’s guest proves that long-term growth is not as complicated as you think.
David Burchett started with a vision; he created a T-shirt shop, transitioned to an ecommerce site to handle his business’ supply chain, and is now franchising to prepare for a future sale. He shares two crucial considerations for franchising and exiting: can your business function without you, and can it grow without you? Implementing and updating consistent processes and hiring qualified leaders to guide your company to success and ensure a smooth exit are essential.
In this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, Joshua Chin hosts David Burchett, Founder and CEO of Avance Vinyl and Owner of The Plug T-shirt Store, to discuss his successful approach to franchising and scaling. David shares why he transitioned his business online, how to exit a business, and how he addresses growing pains.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Joshua Chin on LinkedIn
- Chronos Agency
- eCommerce Growth Hackers Facebook Group
- Avance Vinyl
- The Plug T-shirt Store
- The Plug T-shirt Store on Instagram | Facebook | TikTok
- Avance Vinyl on Facebook | Instagram
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!
Our team of passionate email marketing experts has helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.
Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.
If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the ecommerce Industry and take an in depth look at the struggles and successes in growing ecommerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:20
Right and we live. Hey guys, Josh Chin here. I’m the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts entrepreneurs in the ecommerce Industry and beyond. And we look behind the scenes of the struggles and successes of growing a brand. And today’s episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you’re on a direct to consumer ecommerce brand that’s ready to scale and to double your lifetime profits. Chronos is the company for you. We’ve helped hundreds of brands, scale email, SMS, and mobile push, and skill profits should outweigh getting an average of 30 500% ROI throw efforts. We’ve worked with brands, like truly beauty, the UDI, alias, skin, doctor, Livengood, and many, many more. The next step is to email us at sales at Kronos our agency. Or you can go to our website to check us out at Kronos dot agency. Today’s guest is Dave Burchett. Or David, no, David owns The Plug. That’s a screen print shop, currently with six locations in Illinois, and one in Colorado. And what’s interesting is, most recently, Dave has shifted his business to an online business model on top of his brick and mortar business. So now his revenue comes basically 50/50 between online and offline. And his second business is called Avance. And that sends for an acronym, so we’ll talk about that in a little bit, is a business that he created to manufacture all the supplies for The Plug. So that’s basically the supply chain, right Dave?
David Burchett 2:00
Exactly, that’s our supply chain. When also it’s also taken off in solo turn. So we’re also supplying our competitors as well. Because yeah, we have street stores, we have all the Advance products. So people that are you know, they rip the screen on Friday, they can’t wait till Monday, you know, screen, they can just pop in and grab the products. So it’s a it’s actually turned out pretty huge for us.
Joshua Chin 2:25
That’s beautiful. But welcome to the show. And thank you for for joining us. I want to kind of pick your mind a little bit what what made you what inspired you to make that shift online and upstream and supplying your competitors that way.
David Burchett 2:42
So when we first opened the first store, obviously, we built it so we could replicate it in. You know, we knew we want to scale it out. The number one thing that we saw was that as we went to scale, we were missing out on a lot of revenue by not having the supply chain in tech. So we wanted to you know, manufacture our products and stuff like that. So we went down that road took about six months a year to get the get a couple of our first initial products taken care of. But that was that was supposed to be the vehicle behind The Plug. That was the ideal. What we saw when we started supplying the stores, we saw a lot of competitors that had a real need for it. So we looked at as I was a quick way to grow grow, which was b2b, not necessarily all like b2c or DTC stuff like that.
Joshua Chin 3:31
So b2b is that is are these transactions done primarily online? Or are you still having people call up? Okay,
David Burchett 3:38
no, no, in the Shopify site, we create, you know, dealer portals and stuff like that. So they can log in, they can actually, so they get a different, you know, a different pricing rate, because they’re, they’re spending so much in a quarter. So they’re tiered by how much they spend it per quarter. Right. That’s all done online.
Joshua Chin 3:58
I love that. So your stores are replicable. And the six the six stores in Illinois and one in Colorado? Are these franchises? Are they all
David Burchett 4:12
So someone else only three of corporate owned, the rest are all licensed out of franchise out.
Joshua Chin 4:18
Okay, and you plan to grow more over this year?
David Burchett 4:22
Yeah, this year, we’re looking at 10 in a couple different states, as well as probably another 100 within the next three to five years.
Joshua Chin 4:32
Right? This is top of mind for me because I have you know, people have different opinions about this. VC, venture capital money, you’re considering taking venture capital money to expand your business. Why why do that? Why not just grow through revenue and take a loan and running it that way?
David Burchett 4:55
Well, so for one, we’ve been all self sufficient. So you know I’m not borrowing money, we have no no debt on the books. So we owe nobody. Yeah, so but the whole idea is I tell everybody, when I start a business, don’t ever start a business without exit strategy. So, you know, end of the day, I’m not going to be seven years old, running around trying to open up the stores. So the idea is, for me to build this, I gave myself a time limit, my build out as much as I can create the value as high as possible. And that way, I can exit and still keep out some royalties. And as well walk away with my own, you know, little nest egg, that’s my pilot, that’s my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow right there. When you talk about venture capitalists, it just depends on the rate you want to grow. They also bring certain values, certain experience along with it. So you know, you have some sort of venture capitalists, like, you know, 139, dunkin donuts in seven different countries. So when you’re talking about overseas, and you talk about territories, they got that experience along with the money as well. So it’s not always about money. You know, it’s that’s the key people think it’s, you know, you just want the money. It’s not, you know, it’s, it’s not necessarily about that it’s experienced, that comes behind them working overseas, working in Canada, Mexico, and things like that.
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