These Entrepreneurs Braved New Frontiers in Franchising and Found Success

With fast-evolving consumer technology and a broadening palate, the franchise world today looks very different from that of a decade ago. Cell-phone repairs. Hawaiian barbecue. Lobster food trucks. They’re all part of the movement toward anything new and everything mobile.

Opening a burger franchise is not easy, but at least there’s a template: Do what the other guys did before you, but do it better and don’t make the same mistakes. Pulling a whole new sector into the franchise industry or creating a concept from scratch? That’s a different challenge altogether. 

Marcel Fairbairn knows this well. He recognized the potential of LED lighting more than a decade ago, despite underutilization by consumers and lackluster marketing by retailers. 

The problem? People were using LED bulbs like incandescents—a 100-year-old technology—which is a bit like buying a supercomputer and using it only to play Pac-Man. LED bulbs are available in almost infinite combinations of color and warmth. Utilized with the right lighting systems, they’ve led to a new era of in-home lighting design, in which a room can have subtle