Color Me Mine locations offer customers more than 400 ceramic pieces to paint, and more than 65 glazes to apply.

Premier Business Partners:

Julian-Julian Associates

Color Me Mine has always been an attractive concept to many people – each studio provides blank ceramic goods for customers to paint and make their own – but it has not always been a profitable enterprise. In the early 1990s, Mike Mooslin was working for a food industry corporation that bought Color Me Mine because it was a unique business.   

However, it was not part of the food company’s core expertise, and Color Me Mine lost more than $3 million its first year in business after building 14 new studios and investing $12 million.   

This did not please its stockholders, so Mooslin was ordered – by Lee Iacocca, one of the food company’s board members – to get rid of Color Me Mine before it pulled down the rest of the business.

At that time, there were just 17 Color Me Mine locations, and the company owned most of them. Mooslin quickly discovered the franchised locations were much more successful, because their owners were a part of the local community and were better able to attract families, scouting troops, church groups and other community organizations.

With that, Mooslin and a partner bought the organization and incorporated the business as Color Me Mine Enterprises. They made it a pure franchise concept, got rid of the corporate staff and moved its offices to the factory where the pottery was produced.

“This is a family entertainment business,” Mooslin says, now president of the company. “We found the best locations by identifying places that were attractive to families and other community groups. This allowed the company to blossom.”

There are now almost 130 Color Me Mine locations throughout the United States and 11 other countries, with 18 more stores in development. The company may open a location to try out a new market, but eventually all of the stores are run by a franchisee. Mooslin estimates the average store brings in $258,000 per year.  

‘Fresh, Fun, Hip and Appealing’
Each store operates in primarily the same manner. Customers choose from more than 400 ceramic pieces on which to paint. They sketch their design with a pencil or choose from more than 25,000 graphics from a store’s design computer. Once they choose their colors – each store offers more than 65 underglazes – and paint their object, the store fires the pieces in onsite kilns.

For those who are unsure how to paint their objects, Color Me Mine provides instructional technique sheets and personalized help by the staff.

After customers finish painting their items, the store workers fire them in the kilns on premises. When the pieces are complete in a couple of days, customers come back to the store and pick them up.

“Once people try it, they love it,” says Shilpa Patel-Paul, an owner of a store in Carmel, Ind. “Spending time together talking, laughing and creating meaningful memories is so important today.

Color Me Mine provides a relaxed atmosphere where the time-honored practice of painting ceramics has been made fresh, fun, hip and appealing to this generation.”

Color Me Mine locations host activities for birthdays, anniversaries, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, baby showers, bar and bat mitzvahs and team building.

Through the new “Color Me Mine To Go” program, local stores supply the products and materials necessary for an offsite pottery painting party. Color Me Mine locations also work with couples who are planning their weddings. Store employees help couples create custom-painted gifts for each table at the wedding reception, as well as design gifts for members of the bridal party.

Sophisticated Support
Franchisees are responsible for connecting with the community and bringing in burgeoning artists, but Color Me Mine helps them with most everything else, Mooslin explains. An online support center provides franchise owners with access to a message board, financial reports, operation manuals, marketing materials, 24/7 access to home office staff, window display instructions and a large stockpile of designs.   

The company’s corporate office supplies marketing photographs and advertisements in multiple formats, accounting services, online training and live video feeds of classes and meetings.   

The corporate office also manages all of the purchasing and distribution for the stores. Mooslin explains this “full-service” model ensures the entire company remains profitable.

“For what is basically a non-technical business, we offer very sophisticated technical support,” he says. “We negotiate leases, help build their stores and help maintain each store’s Web site. We offer ongoing painting technique training, which allows the store employees to teach customers something new. We also have a new zip code program for marketing that helps store owners to identify where their customers are, and just launched a program where we can send press releases to contacts on each store’s press list.

“We create new marketing materials every year because we want them to be fresh,” Mooslin says. “The direct mail pieces, brochures and marketing materials are all customizable by the stores, so they can highlight what is important for their locations. We provide our franchisees with a tremendous amount of information and support because we want them to succeed.”

A Fun Franchise
Color Me Mine has enhanced its franchisee support in response to the current slow economy. The company’s sales are solid – Mooslin notes same store sales for studios open for more than a year have showed continued growth – but there has been a decrease in the number of franchise applicants who qualify for financing. Color Me Mine is responding to this in a few ways.

Most significantly, the company is offering interest-free loans for a significant portion of the initial investment in a franchise. Color Me Mine also is helping franchisees’ bottom lines by renegotiating rents, analyzing ad rates, determining best practices for stores, and monitoring party and gift card sales to find ways to decrease costs or increase revenue.

Mooslin says Color Me Mine has been attractive to women looking to get back into the workplace, people who want a second source of income or those who want a creative-oriented business. Overall, the model has been attractive to franchise owners because sales continue to grow, even in a down economy. Mooslin attributes this to three factors.

“It appears that as people travel less, they are looking for affordable family entertainment close to home,” he says. “Additionally, families on a budget are increasingly opting for personalized, do-it-yourself gifts that have a higher value perception than the actual cost. Furthermore, while entertainment businesses historically do well during a recession, Color Me Mine also fills the greater need for family enrichment time during periods of higher stress.”

Color Me Mine has been included in Entrepreneur magazine’s Franchise 500 lists for 2009, 2008, 2006 and 2005, and its 2005 and 2006 lists of top global franchises. Its strength has been attributed to a consistent, high-quality supply of ceramics and lower cost of goods sold and lower operating expenses than independent studios.

Mooslin notes the concept requires low start-up capital, is fun, makes a worthwhile contribution to the community and is difficult to compete against.

“We have been opening 15 to 18 stores a year for the last five to six years, and it doesn’t seem like that rate will slow down this year,” he says. “We’ve been looking for new capital partners who will allow us to ramp up and start opening three to four stores a month worldwide.

“That is mostly on hold until the economy turns around, but we will continue to hold our own during the recession. We are the only international ceramics chain in the industry, and we will continue to offer affordable entertainment.”