The Business Plan 163and should be one to three pages in length, with absolutely no padding or puffery. A
sample summary for a hypothetical company is presented in Street Story 5.2.
The company name and contact person should appear as they do on the cover page.
Suggestions and recommendations for preparing the other sections of the executive
summary follow.^20Cracked for Success
First there was a Chihuahua selling Mexican
food. Then there was a quacking duck ped-
dling disability insurance, animated frogs
marketing beer, and a golden retriever push-
ing canned beans. Now there’s a cracked
piece of cement hawking basement repairs.
That piece of cement, Mr. Happy Crack,
has transformed a lackluster father-and-son
small business into a thriving enterprise with
$10 million in annual revenues and more than
ten franchises in eight states.
After spending thirty years building homes,
Mike Kodner started a company to repair
cracks in poured concrete foundations by
injecting them with an epoxy resin. He named
the company Crack Team USA, which got
him a few laughs but not a lot of business.
Kodner’s son Mike wanted to promote the
business in a way that would go beyond the
usual guarantees and promises offered by
most residential service companies. While he
was driving to work one day, the image of a
cartoon character with a big crack in the mid-
dle of his cement forehead and a smiling face
popped into Kodner’s head. Then he came
up with the tag line, “A Dry Crack Is a Happy
Crack!” Within a few weeks the new logo
appeared on the sides of buses all over St.
Louis, and Mr. Happy Crack and the Kodners’
business were catapulted into the limelight.
Today Kodner sells more than basement
repairs. The company gets calls from all over
the country for merchandise bearing the Mr.
Happy Crack logo. Its Web site (www.mrhap-
pycrack.com) sells t-shirts, underwear, mugs,
plush figures, bobbleheads, and even toilet
paper emblazoned with the smiling mascot.
Five percent of company sales come from
the merchandise. Mr. Happy Crack makes
appearances at festivals and major league
baseball games, and has even been a guest
on the “Tonight” show.
The logo helped the core business, too.
John McCarthy of Boston says he looked for
a franchise for ten years before he discov-
ered the Crack Team. “We were in hysterics,
my father and I, looking at everything and we
hadn’t even gotten to the financials yet,” he
says, describing discovering the company on
the Internet. McCarthy calls Mr. Happy Crack
an “unbelievable promotional tool,” and
reports that some customers insist he throw
in a t-shirt as part of the deal. Not that he’s
complaining. McCarthy’s sales doubled each
month during his first six months of business.
Bob Kodner says Crack Team franchises
generally become profitable within one year,
and that a franchisee with one employee and
one truck can gross $200,000 to $250,000 in
a year.
Mr. Happy Crack has helped make the
Crack Team the leader in foundation repair in
the United States. The elder Kodner says the
company is protecting its mascot by being
careful about overexposure, but he jokes that
the company may adding a second slogan:
We Also Fix Basements.
SOURCE: Adapted from Gwendolyn Bounds, “Owner’s
Logo Inspiration Transforms Company,” TheWall Street
Journal, October 25, 2005. Retrieved from the Web
October 25, 2005.
http://www.online.wsj.com/article_print/SB1 130193027513
78106.html, http://www.thecrackteam.com, and http://www.mrhappy-
crack.com.STREET STORY 5.1