Roxanne Conrad is taking the lead for 360° Painting, becoming its brand president after her success as a franchisee.
When Premium Service Brands began its search for a brand president for 360° Painting, Roxanne Conrad wasn’t expecting her name to be in the conversation.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought about it had they not mentioned it to me,” said Conrad, a franchisee since 2018. “The moment they said it, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. They said the position was missing the franchisee experience and wanted to bridge that gap, so it made sense on both ends.”
360° Painting, with 140 locations, is one of a handful of home service concepts under Premium Service Brands, and Conrad said a priority as she enters the role—her appointment was announced in December—is bringing more awareness to the brand.
“The goal is to increase exposure to potential customers and increase the number of franchisees across the nation,” Conrad said. “We also want to increase the efficiency within which our owners can operate. We’re doing that by investing in specific marketing strategies and updating our technology.”
She said the plan is also to build up the level of communication between the franchisor and franchisees. “We want to help connect the franchisees to the franchisor, and get everyone in 360 rowing the same boat in the same direction,” Conrad said.
“It’s a huge advantage having Roxanne,” Premium Service Brands CEO Paul Flick said. “She’s had a lot of corporate experience through Xerox and she’s faced all the challenges any new company deals with in her time line of going from $0 to $2 million in revenue this year. She’s experienced everything a franchise partner will be confronted with.”
More than 20 years ago, Conrad entered the corporate world and later landed at Xerox, where she worked her way up through various roles, eventually running the marketing division of one of the company’s subsidiaries. She also met her husband, Brian, there, and the two decided to start diversifying their portfolio.
Premium Service Brands CEO Paul Flick says having Conrad in the leadership role is a “huge advantage.”
“We settled on Premium Service Brands before 360° Painting,” Conrad said. “At the time, though, 360 was the flagship. We thought it was the biggest brand in our system, so that’s how we chose it.”
Flick founded the residential and commercial painting franchise in 2006. Premium Service Brands now counts ProLift Garage Doors, Maid Right, The Grout Medic and others in its portfolio.
Conrad and her husband built a multi-million-dollar business in the greater Chicago area, without any painting experience. As Conrad said, “running a business is running a business.”
“We’re not painters, but what we did do is research and one of the things we saw in the trades specifically was a lack of a great customer experience,” Conrad said. “There can be bad communication, where a crew might leave you with a beautifully finished product, but the experience along the way seems to be universally poor.”
The Conrads were determined to turn that experience around within their own business, and their efforts paid off, with success coming faster than they had expected. When they launched in 2018, Conrad’s husband was set to handle most of the duties at the franchise while she remained at Xerox.
“Within three months, it had just gotten to the point where my husband needed me to come on board,” Conrad said. “The goal was originally for me to come on board in about a year, but we had to do it in three months. I joined and we ended up with another territory, becoming a larger system in the Chicago area.”
Their business accomplishments were noticed by the brand, and in recent years the two have assisted the corporate team, advising on new pilot programs and working with other franchisees.
“Some owners kind of go off and do their own thing,” Conrad said. “But we were kind of tasked many times throughout our careers with them so far to do validation calls with potential new owners and we both at different times sat on the franchise advisory council.”
As Conrad takes on the role of brand president, Brian will continue running their franchise operation.