Tint World, the national car audio and automotive styling franchise chain, is about to make some strategic changes in car audio, said CEO Charles Bonfiglio.
With 150 franchise stores, Tint World can be considered one of the largest car audio chains. And with the help of an investment last October by the Susquehanna Growth Equity Fund, Tint World plans to grow to 500 franchises over the next five years.
One way Susquehanna, which gave Tint World a valuation between $100 and $150 million (Bonfiglio chose not to say exactly), has helped Tint World is through new corporate hires. And the chain plans to soon hire new specialists to help lead car audio.
The company is focusing more on OEM specific products that install easily into certain vehicles, and less on custom work in car audio. “I still love it and there are some stores that still offer that, but to scale a company, you have do what every day people need, rinse and repeat …” Bonfiglio said.
Tint World is in the final phases of its search for new car audio specialists to the lead car audio. It will also narrow its selection of brands to “keep a few vendors that we can do a really good job with.”
One of the new corporate execs at Tint World is Chief Development Officer, Eric Taylor who possesses the corporate background and contacts to be able to sign up dozens of franchisees at once, said Bonfiglio. Taylor has held posts at SkyZone, Sbarro, and Bennigan’s. Bonfiglio said, “I’m used to selling onsies, twosie, threesie franchises. He’s looking for 50 at a time, or someone who wants to buy [the rights to] a state and build them quickly. He has a team underneath him that does real estate development.”
He added, “When you go with Susquehanna Growth Equity, what they do is they assign to us a value creation team of 8 to 10 people that are specialists in each area—one person is in high tech, another finance, another human resources who knows how to hire the right people.”
The company has a new VP Finance, Craig Martin, a new Director of Business Development, Victoria Coia and VP of Real Estate and Construction, Kevin Murray who previously worked with brands including Dunkin’ and Church’s Chicken. Last year, Tint World promoted its Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Norman to President. The company is in the process of hiring a new COO
