Last edited 1:26 p.m. April 11, 2011.For many, closets are little more than storage places.
For Telly Parisse, owner and president of Smart Design Closet Co. LLC, closets are reflections of the homeowners.
Since founding Smart Design Closet in 2006, Parisse has created closets, media centers, pantries and home office centers with his clients’ styles in mind.
And in 2010, the company recorded its best year on the books, with revenue estimated at $200,000, up 15 percent from 2009. With that momentum, Parisse intends to open a second location in Kansas City this year and possibly franchise his company down the road.
From baseball to closets
Parisse came to Springfield from Kansas City in 1994 to play baseball for Missouri State University. After earning his bachelor’s degree in hotel and restaurant management from MSU, Parisse was managing a Finish Line store in Springfield when he went to work for a California Closets franchise.
Parisse continued building the closet organization systems with Smart Design Closet offering custom closets, pantries, utility shelving, home entertainment centers and wall beds.
“We completely manufacture our own product,” Parisse says, adding that work is completed by seven full-time workers at the company’s 1,500-square-foot shop just outside Springfield on Valley Water Mill Road while he handles administrative work from his nearby Springfield home.
Consultations are free and most of the closet construction is completed inside customers’ homes, Parisse says.
A master closet’s average cost is $1,500, and Parisse says that the most expensive job his company has completed was one for $18,000 for the home of Mark and Petie Williams of Branson firm HCW Development Co. The closet featured an island, granite countertops, 28 frosted glass doors, crown and base molding, numerous hampers and a fold-out ironing board.
Parisse installed organization systems in three closets of the Woodfield Park home of Jason and Dana Hoffman.
“We kind of maxed out the master suite design,” Dana Hoffman says of the $2,000 job.
Smart Design Closet handles three to four projects a week with closets making up about 60 percent of the work, Parisse says. Laundry room systems represent about 20 percent of his orders.
While most of his work is residential, Parisse also has commercial jobs under his belt, including dressing rooms at Branson’s Starlite Theatre and projects at Joyland Learning Center and Central Assembly of God, both in Springfield.
Investigating the franchise
Although Parisse hopes to expand his business through franchising – he’s been approached about it twice – he believes a more realistic plan at this point is to open branch offices.
He’s hopeful for a branch this year in Kansas City, where he already competes, sending his workers from Springfield to Kansas City to work.
“All the manufacturers and installers come from here, but we have some part-time people up there,” Parisse says. “We really want to expand on that and get that open full time up there.”
Parisse has yet to assemble a uniform franchise offering circular, the first official step in selling franchises.
The legal document is a disclosure of specific types of information that the franchisor must present before any agreements are signed with franchisees, according to online resource
www.franchisegenius.com.
Once he launches a franchise, he will join the likes of California Closet Co. and Closet and Storage Concepts.
“We think we have a business model that can compete in this industry, not just in our market but throughout any market,” Parisse says.
Starting small with staff and investing more in equipment, Parisse says, have been the keys to the company’s first five years.
“We made the investment in a small number of employees,” Parisse says, noting that first full-year revenues were $70,000. “We opted not to go the showroom route, which, when we ran our budget and business plan and everything, it was off the boom of ’05 and ’06, and then all of a sudden, the recession hit, so it was actually a major blessing.”[[In-content Ad]]
