We Do Lines highlighted in the Hartford Business Journal

The Hartford Business Journal recently published an article on everything We Do Lines including how the concept was developed, why it was developed, the growth of the franchise, and how to become a franchise owner. The story was built from interviews with the executive team: Chris Couri (CEO), Dan Rella (CFO) and Tom Darrow (COO). Currently, We Do Lines has six franchises in Connecticut, the Cleveland area and west and central Florida. The goal is to open 200 franchises over the next three years. Check out a portion of the article below or click here to read the full article.

Idle Thought Yields Plan For Painting Franchise

Three years ago, Chris Couri, Tom Darrow and Dan Rella were commercial landscapers with too much time on their hands. One workless day in the winter, an idea occurred to the longtime Ridgefield residents. They were staring at the faded lines of a parking lot when they started thinking, who’s out there repainting all these stripes?

That thought led them to start a business they named We Do Lines, which has gone from “zero to six franchises” in the past six months, said Darrow, noting line stripping is a $700 million industry in the U.S.

The We Do Lines franchises are in Connecticut, Ohio and west and central Florida. Over the next three years, the owners plan to have nearly 200 franchises across the country.

“Tom came up with line striping. We knew nothing about it, so we started researching. We called a dozen line strippers in the area and no one really got backTom Darrow, one of the co-founders of We Do Lines, works the line striping equipment to update a parking lot. to me. I got the feeling that it was fragmented, that no one treated it like a business,” said Rella.

With a $20,000 investment, the three partners were able to start a business by reaching out to their landscaping customers, many of whom hired them immediately to paint the lines of their businesses’ parking lots. The team also developed an unusual marketing plan. They began painting customer’s parking lot lines during daytime hours as a way to stir up interest in their business.

“Immediately, we started getting interest from people who have never seen a line stripper. Not too many people know line strippers because they’re done at night. What we started to do is create a buzz with our logo, name on the truck,” said Rella. “As a part-time business, we hit solid numbers, validating why it could be full-time. That’s when we decided to start a franchise model. We started hard selling those in October.” (Read More)