Company History
We've Come a Long Way
The Povlitz brothers prided their work on attention to detail and organizing focused work teams. For The Silverdome, the work had to be done overnight, so the brothers formed 10 teams in charge of 100 cleaners who worked from the top of the stadium to the bottom. With a little friendly competition, the Silverdome was sparkling by morning.
The partnership expanded over the next 15 years and averaged over a quarter million dollars a month in the late 1980s. Dave took an early retirement to Florida. It was then that he discovered franchising. “I couldn’t believe it, says Povlitz, “When I had my own cleaning business, I never paid much attention to the franchise operators. Then, when I saw how they really worked—how profitable they are—I was truly amazed!”
Povlitz began a new cleaning business under the name Anago, derived from a Greek-Latin word anagoge, meaning to “uplift or guide.” He began filing papers for Anago’s Uniform Franchise Offering Circular with the Federal Trade Commission, and by 1991, Anago’s legal right to sell Unit Franchises was ready, beginning with South Florida. Subsequently the company further developed its computer systems and operations, and by 1995 Anago began to sell Master Franchise territories, or Master Regional Offices. The first office was South Florida, converted to a Master office, followed by Tampa in 1997. Following the pattern of South Florida and Tampa, next came Cleveland, Chicago, and San Diego.
Anago began offering its Uniform Franchise Offering Circular to potential Master Franchise Owners, and progressively signed up Dallas, Washington, D.C., and many other cities.
In 2000, South Florida Business Journal wrote about Anago Frachising in the article There's money in dirt.
Povlitz says, “Building a cleaning company into a franchising enterprise took a lot of sincere and diligent effort on the part of all our staff, plus the continual refinement of our systems.”
It paid off: by 2001 Anago was on the radar of Entrepreneur Magazine. In 2008, Entrepreneur Magazine ranked Anago as the 25th Fastest Growing Franchise in the U.S.. In 1999, Florida Trend Magazine placed Anago in the number two spot for Florida’s largest franchise operations, after Burger King.
Throughout the 90s, the Anago team focused on perfecting the information systems the company needed to manage the business side of commercial cleaning. Beginning with national databases for prospecting and appointment setting, along with automated estimating programs, Anago’s IT team assembled a complete set of systems designed to handle the Franchise Owner’s business from top to bottom. In 2003, the company deployed “thin client” technology from Citrix and other technology providers, allowing Franchise Owners and clients to log on to Anago’s private Intranet to get up-to-date account information.
The new millenium has seen a dramatic spike in sales of both Master Franchises and Unit Franchises. Total franchises nearly doubled from 73 to 142 by 2001, then rose to 200 in 2002. Sales soared in 2003 to 485 U.S. franchises, and rose again in 2004 to 900 total franchises. Now in 2007 over 2000 Franchises have been sold.
Scalable
Anago's president, Terry Mollica, leads Anago's continued expansion. He is seeing an acceleration of sales of remaining available Master Territories. He explains, "A lot of good business people are being downsized out of the traditional corporate model. Our model shows that with a good model, most anyone can make it no matter the state of the economy."
The reason Anago is so attractive to entrepreneurs,” Mollica explains, “is that it is very difficult to find another opportunity that helps them grow a solid business as quickly and profitably as Anago.”
Mollica adds, “When compared to other models, whether food service or retail or other, Anago far exceeds many others. In fact, one of our Master Franchise Owners told me that he compared Anago to other models like Subway and he concluded he could make substantialy more money in the same period of investment.”
As the U.S. campaign heats up, Povlitz expects to begin opening up outside the U.S. “Our systems position us to expand overseas more easily than other companies because we’ve made the Internet a central part of our operations,” says Povlitz.