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Batteries Plus' Secrets to Success: Empowering Franchisees and Unmatched Customer Service
Batteries Plus has consistently shattered company sales records this year, leaving many curious about the secret behind their remarkable success. In this insightful interview, we sit down with Jon Sica, the Chief Business Officer of Batteries Plus, to unravel the strategies that have propelled this specialty retailer to new heights in a challenging economic landscape marked by inflation.
Jon provides a compelling narrative about the brand's thriving franchise model. With a keen focus on the unique advantages of franchising, Jon illustrates why Batteries Plus stands out as a powerhouse in the industry.
Delving deep into the business model, we explore Batteries Plus' evolution and its transition into providing tailor-made battery packs for diverse sectors. Jon shares the key ingredients to their success, emphasizing their extensive range of batteries, value-added installation services, and the unparalleled benefits that franchising offers to aspiring entrepreneurs. Through this conversation, gain valuable insights into the captivating realm of batteries and discover how Batteries Plus is empowering individuals to create lasting wealth through franchising opportunities.
In the latter part of our discussion, we shift our attention to Batteries Plus' customer-centric approach. Jon Sica elaborates on their innovative solutions, from seamless key fob replacements and programming to adapting to the preferences of an increasingly hands-off generation. Gain a deep understanding of Batteries Plus' market stewardship program and gain a glimpse into the future of franchise growth, all while appreciating the brand's commitment to enhancing the customer experience.
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Welcome to the Retail Wire podcast, your go-to source for all things retail. Whether you're a seasoned industry veteran or just dipping your toes into the world of retail, our podcast is the place for the latest trends, insights and discussions that are shaping the future of retail. I'm your host, chase Binney, and today I'm joined by John Seca, the Chief Business Officer for Batteries Plus. Hey, john, how are you doing? Good, chase, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm excited to have you on this episode.
Speaker 2:Excited to be here.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people. They don't even realize how many batteries they're using every day. So I'm really excited to dig into this topic from a practical standpoint and from a business standpoint, and what you guys are up to at Batteries Plus. Tell us a little bit about your current role and the focus in your career.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. My current role as Chief Business Officer. I get to work with teams across the business, from franchising to technology to store development and BI. As I look at our business, my main role is helping our franchisees be successful and come into our system and help grow our model as a franchisor. We rely on investors coming in and building stores and expanding our brand across the United States. We're at 720 stores and growing in 48 states and Puerto Rico. As a franchisor, it is incumbent upon us to provide we are the business partners to all of our store operators. As a business partner, we've got to provide all the insights from you would get at a major retailer, from merchandising to marketing to technology support. With my team, we focus on not only helping people join the business, be trained and be successful as a owner through developing stores, but also how we're developing our technology platforms to support our owners, whether it's in ordering inventory, creating marketing plans, creating B2B email campaigns or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting that the franchise model unlocks that extra partnership framework. Have you always worked in a franchise model retailer or have you come here from another model?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I came up in a more conventional specialty retail business, an outdoor company called Cabela's. I worked there many years and through that business, many of those lessons and specialty retail and how you succeed in specialty retail whether it's in a big box or small box format, it's all the line upon creating that selling culture and creating that competitive advantage. When people are coming to a specialty retail, they're coming there for a reason either because you have bigger selection, you offer service, there is some component there that you are leaning into from a specialty standpoint. It's not just EDLP, everyday low price. After my career at Cabela's transitioned to restaurants, I got into the franchise industry and learned quite a bit about franchising at Waterburger, which grew very quickly as a franchise business, learned, was able to benefit from their decades of successful franchise relationships and experience, and then was able to bring that with me to Battery Spluzz when I joined this brand in 2019.
Speaker 1:Was there a switch? I'm imagining there's a big difference between the Cabela's and the franchise model at Battery Spluzz. Is there a superpower? A little switch that has to switch in your brain in order to make it work?
Speaker 2:There is and you know, and really you know there's two switches. I mean the, the. The first is economic. In a franchise model, you know we live off a 5% royalty as the franchise or you are not. You know when you think about product costs and you know set top-line sales. Yes, you want to go top-line sales because you're making a royalty off those top-line sales, but you're keeping your franchise partners in business by making sure that there's enough gross margin after that 5% royalty to make them rich and make them, make them successful and make them want to build more stores. So that's one switch and the other switch.
Speaker 2:You know and you know mainline retail. You can be much more task oriented in, you know. You know sending out. You know through a flexus or another task management system, you know set this plan, graham, send me a photo, make it, make it happen, order this inventory. And you're working off, you know your balance sheet.
Speaker 2:As a large corporation, we're working off around 260 mini balance sheets and creating campaigns of influence to Make the an economic value proposition to our franchisees about. This is why you want to buy this product. It's going to deliver this for you and this many transactions and this meant much profitability and this is why we want you to make this change right away. And you know, sure, as a franchise or you know some, there's a spectrum of you know compliance and accountability, and most franchisors have broad power and control to you know, exert their, their directive sometimes, but yeah, at the end of the day, this is a business partnership. You want to have a good relationship with your franchisees and you want to, you know, lean way more towards you know, the carrot than the stick and, in my opinion, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:In some ways. You have less control of what's going on, but on the other hand, you don't you're not responsible for what happens Downstream. So you kind of make this you're using your funding to to make that demand and then drive people To those products or to those stores.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our ultimate accountability is to, you know, our franchisee success and that's how we look at it. We want them to be successful, we want them to be highly profitable and, you know we want them to continue to expand and, you know, have confidence in the system and the, the products and the, the brand awareness that we're generating overall.
Speaker 1:I heard somewhere in an interview that batteries plus is unique and they said they you have no direct competitors, which was hard for me to believe. But what? What do? What would they mean by that? Could you tell us more about just the batteries plus positioning?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you you think about our business model overall, you could say we compete with everybody and you could say we compete with nobody. And if you took the line of, you know we're not gonna compete with a Walmart or an Amazon on a double-a alkaline battery that you know you can get by those anywhere. Yes, we offer them, but that's not where you know we excel. We excel when customers come into our stores and you know this is where the battery industry, and you know its evolution, is really helping us. Yes, more and more things have embedded batteries. You can't just pop out it's not just a double-a and say, hey, what is this like? I've never seen this before. Help me find this. And and that's where our larger sort men and long tail of Skews and you know the systems we've developed over 30 years in business and the, the, the product libraries and the deep PIM Expertise that we have me a product information management Allows us to help any associate you come in to find what you're looking for. Yeah, with those cross references, to be able to say, yeah, we know what that is and look like an expert and then not only sell you the battery but then help you install it. Back to what is our value proposition as a specialty retailer. It is. There's really service attached with every sale. We will help you and we'll fix your problem.
Speaker 2:And you know and in our case you know we say, yeah, there's, there's no one else out there. You know competing like this is you can go buy those products. You can try to find, you know, a Battery with a 20 digit serial number on Amazon, but you may not know and you may get it in two days. You know, if you have a prime membership, we offer that. You know, at 720 locations. You know right now, and you know we even see that in our buy online, pick up and store data, where you know most items are Fulfilled within six hours because people need what we sell Right now. It's not like, hey, I can wait three days for this to show up. No, I need this device. I need this yeah thing to be fixed, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Thinking of a battery remote that's like the, the interchangeable little annoying thing that, oh no, it's not working. Or you get the warning it says low battery and then you never. You never buy batteries until it actually dies.
Speaker 2:You want it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's that's something unique that I don't think about, because this shift is happening and, and I don't know, someone coined the term, was it? Was it you coined the term, the battery movement?
Speaker 2:It may have been. It may have been. We talk a lot about it internally. You know, for a couple of reasons, there is, you know, the proliferation of batteries and devices of every kind. Everything is connected. Now most of those are embedded batteries. And you know the interesting thing about our businesses were 70 percent retail, 30 percent commercial or B2B, and you know there's even more an impact from the, the Internet, of things on the B2B side. Then there is sometimes on the B2C side of you think of, you know, you know devices in every business, whether it's exit signs or, you know, industrial machinery, that are all battery powered.
Speaker 2:Now the other piece of the, the battery movement, if you will, is the, the shift away from, you know, petroleum based. You know, power generation. You know. Especially, you know, for people's homes, you know it's much easier to a, charge and maintain a battery pack In your home. Then it is to you constantly maintain a generator, you know, change the oil. You have all that waste, have all that mass and you could just have a nice clean battery pack in the closet for when you need to. You know, run something in a pinch, there's a lot here to unpack.
Speaker 1:I see a change from that interchangeable, you know, small device kind of battery, where it's more of a commodity. Oh yeah, I'll pick up a pack of those and, like people, I don't know if people have a loyalty to this brand or that brand. It's kind of kind of all one and the same it's price. Yeah. Price and availability yeah, you're almost. You're almost just because of the market and the way that technology is changing. You're almost becoming more of a technology company because of how integrated batteries are into the products.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's something we think about a lot. People are creating those batteries for very specific devices and for their parodies. It could be an aesthetic reason, it could be a performance reason. They may like, hey, I want it to fit inside this phone, or I may want it to fit inside something else, and that's where you may say, well, geez, I don't know if Apple or somebody else makes a battery, that could make it hard for you guys.
Speaker 2:And that's where many and we appreciate the will of consumers getting expressed through our legislators, where you're right to repair laws help our business but also customers be able to go in. An automaker can't lock the hood of their car. If you buy a car, you need to be able to buy any replacement parts wherever you want. And it's the same concept for many of these devices and similar laws apply where, yeah, if a customer wants to replace it, there's nothing stopping people, especially where those devices are getting a lot of popularity. We have replacements for whether it's a Dyson vacuum or a Wumba iPhones, in addition to the large automobile batteries and even larger industrial batteries that we specialize in today.
Speaker 1:Right, Is that practice still happening, where the product manufacturer is designing an embedded thing that they know will die so that you have to buy it again? Or is that part of that legislation? Is there something that you're seeing for the laws? I actually had no idea that there were laws against making things irreplaceable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's, you know, we see that. You know, with our friends at Apple, I mean, there are aftermarket batteries and you know we have internal facilities here on our campus in Wisconsin that you know will test aftermarket batteries to ensure OEM grade or better performance. But you know, apple is really leading the way and have been great right to repair advocates and they're even providing tools. And you know those parts are very below on the consumer marketplace today in ways they never did before. And again, from a retail standpoint, well, jesus, john, does that make it harder to, you know, sell? And it's like well, no, because we're still selling. You know, the parts have been out there for a long time. We're selling the service. Like, believe me, I've done the repairs. There are a lot of tiny screws, you do not want to mess that up. Yeah, so we've got a, you know, very thorough trading system and tools that helps our technicians. Okay, every screw goes into a certain order in a certain box, you know. And because, again, that's our advantage and that's what we're providing to customers from you know, a vendor standpoint, I think you will see more and more specialty batteries.
Speaker 2:But again, most of those batteries are just cells and some are wired together differently.
Speaker 2:And you know we call the battery pack sometimes and we've actually found that has been a great source of commercial revenue for us to this point, whether it's for government applications or other commercial aviation applications. You name the industry. We probably do a custom battery pack for somebody and, yeah, as that business grows, you know, we think, you know we have the capability to build those battery packs in our stores and to replace those. You know, when it's just hey, I've got these three cells wired together, taped together, like we do that. Wow, yeah, the stories from my, the stories I've heard from some of our franchisees would blow you mind, from you know one of them in Arizona who you know is the only one that makes a certain battery pack that goes in the cockpit of commercial airlines to. You know one in Florida that has worked on you know secret government things for the Navy that have you know gone into. You know underwater submarines and I mean it's like wow, like I had no idea this is going on in a tiny little batteries plus store.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, I want to dive deep on that secret government thing that you're doing. It's just clicking back to this, this franchise model. I never thought how that may empower this much innovation, right, because you know, in a normal scenario like Florida, the Florida store manager might say, hey, we've got this really weird opportunity. And it'd be like, nope, it's not in there, nope, we're not doing that, but there's. There are all these like little opportunities that a store franchisee would be able to take on as an entrepreneurial venture, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the magic of franchising and the magic of entrepreneurial thinking that you know to your point.
Speaker 2:You know, if a you know Navy SEAL walks in and says, hey guys, can you make me one of these?
Speaker 2:You know if it was a store manager and most retail chains, and you know, not a knock.
Speaker 2:I think you know all of us in the industry I mean I mean most managers be like, yeah, we don't care anything like that, whereas you know, in our franchise model, we, you know, when you open a store, you get all of these tools and we also have a library of tools and a you know literal battery lab as part of our campus where a franchisee can call it. Be like, hey, a guy came in today and he had this battery pack and it's got this specification Can you help me make one? Or can you give? You know, I get the parts to make one? And we'll be like, yeah, yeah, we'll help with that and we'll help you test it and we'll help you figure that battery pack out. And to enable our franchises to go after those opportunities and, you know, enable them to be entrepreneurs in their markets and grow their businesses, you know, by whatever way they can, because you know, for them, for our franchises, I mean, this is an investment, that this is about creating generational wealth for their families, and that's what we want to enable.
Speaker 1:It's a refreshing perspective. We also learned that you've been breaking multiple company records and doing it very quickly, thinking, since you have no direct competitors, you could tell us the sauce. What's been playing the most significant roles for you guys?
Speaker 2:Well, you know one of them. I mean because you know we have no direct competitors and you know people think of batteries plus and most people you know you drive by the store and you say you know batteries plus on a double A batteries, maybe some light bulbs. You know you don't necessarily think of everything that we do, which it goes from, yes, your normal household batteries to large commercial batteries, car batteries, boat batteries, where we motorcycle batteries, where we have a wider selection than anybody else, and we, you know we'll install it for you, like you don't have to call a dealership or call a auto shop and make it a form. You can just come in, we'll just vote in for you. And also, you know key fob replacement and key fob programming. You know most vehicles come with key fobs today and if you went to a dealership that may cost you $350 to get a key fob replace, you know we'll do it for less than half of that. And again, like mountain appointment, you probably may not have to wait. You know we will have the part. You know you just drive up and you know take 15 minutes, go outside and make it happen.
Speaker 2:And it's that you know immediate. You know servicing those immediate needs is where we found our niche, because you know the things we do, would we are able to do in a franchise model would be very hard for a big box to do and it requires that you. You know you have great franchisees who are engaged in their business, that want to, you know, invest in retaining people, invest in retaining great management and technicians to be able to do these things, and that is, I think, the model is as much a secret sauce as anything. And you know, from a brand awareness standpoint, we have Medalia as our customer experience source of record and you know our net promoter score is in the mid 80s, which most people, when we find it hard to believe that it's that high.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know when we are. You are coming to us in your time of greatest need or a time of great need and we're solving, we're making your day better, we're solving your issue there on the spot, and that's you know why. You know customers love us and from working at other businesses you know at. You know Cabela's especially, you would look at, okay, we're looking at. You know customers. You know male demographic age. You know 40 to 60 prime earning years who are participating in outdoor activities. You know everybody uses our products. You know our customer base is people across the board, and so we've been setting records because people just haven't seen us coming, which we like, and you know it's very hard for our. You know competitors in our same categories, whether it's pure play commerce or you know brick and mortar to keep up with the level of service we're able to deliver.
Speaker 1:A lot of retailers want to have that level of customer service. Because of the install piece, you were required to have that and it ends up sounding like that's. That's one of your advantages. Absolutely, absolutely. Something that someone may have said man, I wish that these things install themselves, but you wouldn't. You wouldn't have that net promoter score as high as you would if the product just installed itself. Yep, correct. They might even be more frustrated because it says it installs itself and it doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you get home and you try to take something apart and like, uh-oh, I've gone in too deep yeah.
Speaker 1:Like Ikea has kind of mastered that. I don't know how much further they'll be able to go with this, but just the instructional put it together yourself. But still the memes and the videos and jokes about putting together the furniture wrong. There's only a certain level of you know putting that under the customer that the customer can handle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're seeing the trends very much shift from a generation of do it yourself to very much a generation of do it for me. Look at your DIFM.
Speaker 1:I'm a millennial, come on.
Speaker 2:No, that's true.
Speaker 1:Here. It's because people are more people live in the city, maybe because of the specialization of our careers. We're not so general store anymore. We're a little bit more like I do, b2b, saas tech marketing. It's like very specific career paths those are definitely known for letting other people do the service side, do the labor, install my TV.
Speaker 2:I relate. I mean, as a elder millennial, I would say that, especially as we all have, you know, or you may have a growing family and you just don't have the time these days. I mean, do you want to spend two hours putting a car battery or a boat battery in yourself, or just want to pull up somewhere and have it done?
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, there's a market stewardship program and I was really curious more details on that. I kind of saw a little bit, but would you be able to explain that to me? Sure.
Speaker 2:As context for anyone who may not be familiar with kind of franchise models, I would say, as a franchise grows and you grow in a DMA, every franchise, in addition to paying a royalty, also pays a required marketing contribution. Yeah, in our case, 4%. You know, when a DMA gets to a certain size with a certain number of stores, they're able to start a co-op and that co-op may be shared across different owners. In Atlanta, what we've had happen when a franchise reaches a certain level of maturity, you're able to attract and invite owners of significant net worth to who want to participate in the business, to begin consolidating. We had an owner come in for a small amount of stores and then see the potential, see the success and then begin having more conversations with us. Again, this is a business partnership which is really fulfilling from a retail standpoint when you have a great franchisee who is not just waiting for you to bring ideas to the table and bring new products. They're like hey, can we do this? Hey, can you help us do this? Like, hey, we want to get big, we want to get big fast. They, of their own volition, started talking to other owners in the market and acquiring other stores while they were working with us on building stores and came to a conversation of can we buy out all the other territories, available territories in the market and essentially close down the market from an opening standpoint, because we operate from a standpoint of every market's open until it's sold. We don't have any, or we previously didn't have any, closed markets and we made this opportunity or we worked with them on the opportunity, and this is all the open territories. We would see, and they have almost acquired all of the other owners in the market With that. We created this market stewardship program to help them grow.
Speaker 2:Back to my point about DMAs and different people. That is a game changer from A because all of a sudden now you have one owner that controls all the marketing spend in that co-op, in that DMA. What's a DMA? The defined marketing area. That's how advertisers look at you may be in this television market. You may be and this is where all the TV stations are selling ads, how marketers divide paid media across the United States based on population and where people conduct trade Through that.
Speaker 2:Now that opens up a ton of opportunity because we also allow one of the challenges in a franchise environment, as you may have two different franchises and they may want to sell different items for different prices. Now you've got an entire DMA. Marketing is being controlled by one person. All the commercial accounts are going to one person. Returns, Returns, all of those things go to one person and you have the ability to set and advertise a common price across an entire DMA.
Speaker 2:That's a huge advantage from taking our brand out of more demand-based marketing approaches and really helping us create brand awareness in a market on an overall basis, because there's no disagreements about how this money should get spent. And hey, I want this just around my store, I want you to send out a postcard just about my one little store, or I want more index to TV ads for this audience. No, you've got now what I would compare to a more conventional marketing approach that allows us to compete more with whether it's big box or other specialty retailers in our types of spaces to create that awareness as the one-stop shop for any battery you need. What if he?
Speaker 1:buys more. What if this group ends up covering the whole state? Do you think there are anything to look out for as that grows?
Speaker 2:Through our processes. Our biggest worry is about when someone expands that big and that fast and this program has been. I think we're probably in year two or three of their maturity in the system. Our concerns would be people-based and I think theirs would be as well. You've got to have those great technicians, those great managers to enable that expansion. You've got to have those training programs. You've got to have that above store. You've got to build out that above store leadership and that's where we have a great staff on our team that has background in Sam's Club, there from Bentonville and other top tier retailers Cabela's and many others that we can show. These are the best practices you need to get bigger and will even help them pause, stabilize after you expand and then get ready for the next step.
Speaker 1:If you're an umbrella over multiple stores, there's another set of corporate structure and then the owned and operated, the owner, manager, single store.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and most franchisees need coaching and support to grow into that, which is something we partner with them on, and in the case of this group, they have other. They're also in RVs and they're experienced multi-unit owners and so they're definitely not coming in green, but we still want them to and want to partner with them on going at the right pace and making sure they've got the talent they need to be successful, because we're only successful if they're successful.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, you're tied together, tied success. I have a question about the future and, from your perspective, I feel like you would have some insights on what the future of batteries could be. We talked a little bit about that. You talked about in-home battery backup and all that. What do you see happening that may impact a lot of people in just the technology side of batteries?
Speaker 2:Yeah, from a technology standpoint, I think I'd go back to just the proliferation of batteries and more and more things that don't have them today and the other complications that's going to present to customers. And how are you going to manage those devices? Where are you going to find that battery? Those are all going to be challenges to the customer. I think we're also going to see an increased reliance on more advanced lithium-type chemistries and batteries as well, and that's where we're working today.
Speaker 2:One of the things most people don't know about us again back to brand awareness is we are a large recycle of batteries. We are recycling over 40 million pounds of batteries a year through our stores and that volume of recycling and putting those precious metals back into the battery ecosystem domestically is a priority not only for us but for our country and you're seeing that with a lot of investments that have come out of the infrastructure bill and I think the hope is over time, certainly with the investments the country is making a shorter supply chain you're going to see more access to these batteries and, one would hope, cost advantages for customers over time and hopefully you're still going to need great service to find the battery you need and get it installed in your device when you have an issue.
Speaker 1:What about on the retail side, just the retail industry in general? When you're seeing this level of customer service, this level of care, that's quite an achievement in terms of the satisfaction. Do you have any future predictions for what the customer would want in general, across the board in retail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, like most in retail, we're all looking to AI right now and we're no different. And from a in-store retail customer standpoint, we're already starting to use tools to generate content and answers that make it easier for customers to find batteries and for our associates in the store to find them as well. And I think there could very much be a case for even you're still going to need a. There will always be for us a physical service component of putting a battery in the right thing for you, but there will 100% be a AI self-service component that should be created over time to help customers discover what they need easier and even help that transaction along in a positive way that still requires service but makes it a smoother experience for our customer coming into the store. And we're already seeing I mean from my standpoint.
Speaker 2:I think that we are in a little bit of a wild west of the AI era. It reminds me of the early days of social media, where small businesses and small business owners could get out there on social media and drum up a ton of traffic before any of that was really monetized, and I think we're in a little bit of the same era in companies. These tools are out there for anyone to use. We're working with several of our vendors today and testing various co-pilots and other tools as well and working with them on the front end to really just benefit from these economies of scale before they get fully monetized. And I think that's an opportunity that, because we're a franchise to work and we're lean, we're able to move fast and do that. And I think that's another advantage we have over some of the more monolithic retailers right now where decisions take time. Here we like to say we're not a battleship, we're a pirate ship. We can move fast.
Speaker 1:Wow, I like that you can kind of shift and actually you can send out little test boats yeah, that's right, little speed boats that you pick one or two locations with a store franchisee that's really interested in the innovation. Give it a try, see if it works, and maybe it doesn't work in every market. It's been really interesting just hearing about the business model and the tech and your predictions for the future. I appreciate all these insights. Do you have any closing thoughts or anything that you'd like to share?
Speaker 2:Jayce, I appreciate the time. From our standpoint, we believe that the growth of our business is, and the growth of our business model is not only something that's good for customers, it's good for fulfilling the American dream. We want to continue to not only grow retail and the specialty retail services we provide, but we want to help people grow their businesses and communities across the country and be hyper-local and be able to move fast and respond and test things and meet the needs of customers across the country and see them be successful. That's the magic of Batteries Plus and the magic of franchising that we think is so special in this model and that, as fast as technology is changing, it's fun to see 250-plus owners responding to those changes every day in their markets, not just us sitting up here in Wisconsin responding to those changes. It's great to have that many business partners out there helping us tackle these issues every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get to hear what works really quickly. Yes, we do. That's great. Well, that concludes the interview, with thanks to all those who are listening to today's episode. If you found today's discussion valuable, hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform. We'll be doing a lot more of these. For the latest news, engaging discussions and a community of retail enthusiasts, be sure to join our daily newsletter at retailwirecom. See you next time.
