Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2014 | Page 17

From Summer Job to CEO
Rich Wilson leads a turnaround at CertaPro Painters
BY KERRY PIPES

R

ich Wilson needed to earn
money for his college education. The way he saw it
he had two choices. “I could
either spend a summer crab fishing in
Alaska or start my own business,” recalls
Wilson, president and CEO of CertaPro
Painters. “I decided to stay dry.”
So in 1987 he became franchisee of
College Pro Painters, a painting company
that targets business-minded students.
It worked out: he made enough money

to pay off his tuition bills and enjoyed
running a business so much that, rather
than following his plan to attend law
school after graduation, he joined College Pro’s corporate team, becoming
a division vice president by 1992. He
spent the next 5 years with the organization before a couple of career turns
at Aamco and Maaco before settling in
at CertaPro Painters in 2003.
When Wilson took over as the company’s executive vice president, growth

was stagnant, with annual sales of about
$50 million. He spearheaded major company-wide changes, revamping hiring
processes, improving franchisee relations, and adjusting marketing strategies. In 2008 he became COO, and in
2010 was named president. Under his
leadership, the company saw major results: since 2009 CertaPro has charted
year-over-year double-digit growth, and
in 2013 the company notched $265 million in sales.
And he’s far from done. In January
2013, CertaPro launched two new initiatives designed to make it the most
well-known name in painting. First,
the company is getting a paint job: all
CertaPro logos, clothing, and marketing materials now will use gold as an
accent color. The idea is to focus on
brand recognition instead of direct response marketing.
“The way people associate blue with
Facebook—that’s what we expect for
CertaPro,” he says. “We want people to
recognize the company instantaneously.”
Second, and perhaps even more ambitious, CertaPro is changing the way it
handles customer feedback. The company has always made customer satisfaction its highest priority, and su