September 2012
| Business World Magazine | 93
practices, and cross promotion.
“
The classic saying in franchising is ‘being
in business for yourself, but not by yourself,’”
Grandpre says. As part of company with
multiple brands, franchisees of Outdoor
Living Brands are even less alone.
The origin of Outdoor Living Brands
goes back to 2005, when Grandpre joined
the Archadeck business. After a year or so, he
and the shareholders decided they wanted to
transition from a single branded franchise
company to a multi-branded business with
a family of related companies all serving a
similar demographic of clients. The overrid-
ing goal, Grandpre says, was to help a retail
customer enjoy an outdoor living lifestyle
and search for opportunities that would be
logical diversification options for existing
franchisees.
“
That’s when we created Outdoor Living
Brands as a new parent company,” he says. “It
served as an acquisition vehicle to acquire
the stake in Archadeck that we didn’t already
own at that time. Then we made subsequent
acquisitions in September of 2008 of Out-
door Lighting Perspectives, then Mosquito
