Greg Muzzillo – Go Buy a Mirror!

Bloody here,

I invite those who stop by the blog to help Mr. Muzzillo with his most recent post here at Bloody (crying like a little piss ant that he’s been attacked personally) to help him out and explain to him why this blog is here and just what Mr. Muzzillo cannot see with how he runs his (excuse me, YOUR) businesses into the ground …… (note the guy is so effing stupid that he cannot use punctuation or spell his own company correctly – is this a franchise owner you’d want to be in control of your livelihood?)

greg muzzillo

hello, greg muzzillo here. i am not sure why you choose to attack me personally or the organization i have taken 30 years of my life to build.

your attack is anonymous. your words are filled with lies and misrepresentations.

the fact is that our suppliers are encouraged to pay some money into a preferred supplier fund. and that money is used to benefit the suppliers and the franchise owners.

we use that money to pay for credit insurance. all our franchise owners receive free credit insurance from the preferred supplier fund. the franchise owner benefits. and the supplier does, too. because in the proforma system, both the franchise owner and their supplier knows that they will get paid…even if the franchise owner’s customer doesn’t pay them.

this year that fund and the insurance program has paid millions of dollars to the franchise owners and their suppliers. in fact, i know of a few franchise owners that would not have survived without the credit insurance proceeds.

proforma has been recognized by inc. magazine, forbes magazine, the wall street journal, success magazine, blue mau mau and many others for its accomplishments.

i am proud our system and our people. i regret that you have taken to anonymous slander, name calling, lying and misrepresentation about proforma.

i am proud of proforma. i am proud of the result of my 30 years of hard work. that said, i admit that we are not perfect and invite you to directly address with me any legitimate issues you have with proforma.

we are committed to helping the dreams of our franchise owners come true. in the spirit of that commitment i invite you to an open and honest dialog.

dream big!

greg muzzillo
founder & co-ceo
proforam

Greggy, you might want to go back to school and learn how to spell and type or at least let one of your peons type for you because your default to defense and your imbacile Rah! Rah! statements further prove to all those watching that you haven’t a clue and you don’t own a single mirror!

Bloody

Labor Day in the life of a Zee

Ever ask a zee how they feel about holidays?  Just what goes through the mind of an average person versus the franchisee owner when “holiday” is discussed?  Ever wonder how a zor spends their holiday? In the Americas, the word is “vacation”.  Every paid worker spends their year planning and imagining the relief those two or three weeks truly bring to the family and one’s own inner balance of family vs work vs quality of life.  In Europe, it’s holiday and it’s twice as long as the Americas because most Euro holiday packages are four to six weeks.  The European has come to expect holiday and due to the lack of opportunity, in some respects holiday is one’s privilege.

In the thinking of the blue collar or the white collar or the Euro or anyone else who has never truly owned and run a business, let alone a franchised business, there is no reference or association as to what a holiday brings to a zee.  Their impression is that a small business owner who owns a high-profile franchise operation must already be rich.  They do not know that the life savings and the mountain of debt needed to serve them their 15 second servings of fast food heart attack will never allow me to enjoy another holiday.  The reference of outlay at the onset of such purchase of franchises is referred to “sunk costs”.  Oh how bloody true is that depiction!

Here are just a few interesting problems of the zee during holiday:

• Workers are off, zee gets to stay and keep the doors open (bills don’t do holidays)
• Workers are off, doors have to stay open, otherwise the revenue of the holiday revelers will be lost
• If it’s a day in which stores are closed due to law, I’ll stay and catch up on books and admin as the workers aren’t in
• If it’s a party day where retail is open, I get to stay and help the skeleton shift (who bitch and moan that they have to work)
• Leading up to the holiday, everyone leaves early, meaning I get to stick around to make sure everything is set because I own this mess
• And finally, the schedules are all mine to own and fix and work with due to the fact that no one owns anything but me (the R word means nothing to the hourly worker)

And last but not least, I can visualize and imagine the wonderful times the zor is having attending special events as grand marshall (the honor and respect he purchased with my life savings and ongoing royalty abuses).  After all, his ad fund, his marketing fund, his kickbacks from vendors and his admin, his legal support are all coming from the money I gave, will give him and am generating while working over this glorious holiday!

Bloody

Jim Press – Gee, Great Name for a Zor Capo

Enter the infamous Mr. Nardelli to Chrysler Corporation.  You see, Bobby has never gotten over getting passed over for the much smarter and younger Mr. Immelt (even though Jack never knew Jeffrey would be so liberal in his ways).  He left GE in a huff and took out all of his aggressions on Home Depot.  After the board at HD finally figured out Bobby hadn’t a clue and Jack was right, Bobby weaseled his way into Chrysler declaring GE and HD were all wrong about him.

Once aboard at Chrysler, he steals Toyota’s hatchet man, Mr. Jim Press.  Now how do you think Mr. Press has figured out how to make the Toyota engine run so well?  With threats and manipulations of course!  After all, dealerships are nothing but a bunch of wussy malcontents and once you threaten them within an inch of their lives, they back off and sink themselves even further in debt.

A group of Chrylser (Jeep and Dodge) dealerships experienced Mr. Press’ wrath on a conference call in the spring when he shared openly that he knew the 30% who were holding out and where their kids went to school and where the dealership owners lived.  Yes, that’s right.  Mr. Press said those very words when 30% of the dealerships refused to sign for millions of dollars worth of inventory because they had lost faith in Chrysler, Chrysler financing and the economy.  Yet, Mr. Press is making money hand over fist, selling 15 million dollar condos in NYC and living the life of Reilly.

Don’t be fooled folks.  The elite have their ways and many of them cannot be discussed in the open.  Mr. Press was picked up by Fiat in a heartbeat due to his ability to threaten, coerce and otherwise bring in sales of inventory, force dealerships out of business (losing their livelihood set up by generations of hard work and labor) and make others buy those franchises thus sinking them into debt they will never see relief from in their lifetimes.

Recently, Mr. Press actually sent out a letter asking for the dealerships who weren’t forcefully closed to team up against those who were to throw them under the bus!  Shame on you Mr. Press.  The law should do a full court press on you and put you on the street or better yet in prison for destroying so many lives under the guise of  “it’s just business”.

I have one question for you Mr. Press.  Have you ever in your life had to lie awake at night not knowing where your next dollar or sale will come from because you were a legitimate business man living with the ups and downs of having to bear the long term responsibility for your actions?  NO!  You haven’t the intestinal fortitude to bear the consequences of your actions.  You’d rather take a huge salary and live like a playboy at the expense of hard working small business owners who pay your salary while you threaten them and their children.  Where I come from, that’s referred to as La Cosa Nostra or mafioso.  It’s not legitimate business and you, Mr. Press are a disgrace to this land, this marketplace and this nation.

Bloody

Freddy Crosses Over to the Dark Side…

It was all innocent at first.  Freddy borrowing money ($1,000) from Dr. Peter to start a sub shop.  Try as he did, Freddy couldn’t make it work.  Maybe two would work instead of one?  So Freddy labored all day and all night to become the quintessential entrepreneur.  But just as one didn’t work, two didn’t work.   Just like throwing your last wad of cash onto a single number at the roullette wheel, Freddy opened a third store.  Voila!  It worked.  Three was a charm!  After a number of years, Freddy knew there had to be a better way.  The hours were too long, payroll was tough and working to manage the whole mess was a juggling act at best.

So Freddy learned about the most lucrative business model ever conjured up by man – where you could use other people’s money to grow your business!  It’s called FRANCHISING!  So it was in 1974 that Freddy moved over to the dark side.  On the shirt tails of Ray K, Freddy started selling franchises to any and all who would show.  He especially loved immigrants who were entering the country with their life savings.  Freddy never told them his model wouldn’t work for just one store. But then, Freddy wasn’t running sandwich shops, he was selling franchises.  And should they figure it out, he could sell them more.  The ones that didn’t, could be sold to new marks.

Interestingly, the Reagan administration relieved the entrepreneurial establishment from common law and allowed arbitration to be the governing entity.  This gave Freddy and his band of merry con men the final authority on any and all contract negotiation and interpretation.  If things went wrong, the arbitration firm could be paid off.  And God forbid anyone sue Freddy.  Should that happen, Freddy simply uses their own royalty fees and vendor kickback monies to nail their puny little pitiful sorry asses to the unemployment line.  Don’t eff with Freddy or he’ll take you to the poor house in a body bag.  Who needs a mafia when one can use the government and one’s own money against him!

And so you have it.  The day the richest man in South Florida decided working to make a legitimate business was for the birds.  Taking advantage of the unkknowing and trusting immigrant and displaced corporate schmuck is a far easier way to become a billionaire and playboy.  And just remember Mr. Schaden, Freddy’s war chest makes yours look like a kindergartner’s piggy bank stash.

Bloody

Franchising’s Abuses Began with Henry Ford

I’m a little taken aback as to why everyone is so surprised (including the dealerships of Chrysler and GM) as to the path that the government took and the abominations of approving GM’s bankruptcy.  Politics rule and the guy with the most commodity hooks wins.  When Henry Ford started selling Model Ts to the world, he made every dealership pay for the cars up front.  Wheels for the World by Douglas Brinkley exposes the serious ugly sides of Ford, Sloan and others who set this model in place.  Each dealership was required to scrape up the money and pay Ford up front for the cars before they were ever assembled.  The Dodge brothers actually sold Ford the majority of the parts to assemble Model Ts for the first several years.  When Henry went to manufacturing everything, the Dodges’ built their own brand and were later snatched up by Chrysler.  There was no financing and no credit for either Ford or for the dealerships or for the buyers of the vehicles.  All purchases were cash on the barrel head.  When Henry needed more design money or development money, he found ways to pass this onto the dealerships in creative ways.  What could they do?  They had no recourse due to the fact that Henry was the only one making affordable cars.  When Alfred Sloan saw how gullible the dealerships were, he followed suit and thus you have the predatory and abusive model of the franchisor in its genuine origin (Singer is credited with the original idea of franchising).  His claim to fame was the origination of financing (GMAC) so the common man could afford his overpriced vehicles (Model Ts were $750 at their highest and $275 at their peak, while GMs were usually 2K or higher) and pay even more for them (interest plus principal).  Do you realize that the banking and Wall Street relationships were started then and have resided among these families and elite circles for all these years?  (And Obama isn’t going to upse that apple cart without the risk of losing his $60,000 dates to Broadway and his $300,000 photo-ops over NYC.)

Now that GM has found a way to use a company owned dealership (took it over from a franchisee after they failed – hmmmmm) in Harlem to accelerate its bankruptcy proceedings (NY is known as the swiftest), it allows them to simply thumb their noses at dealerships in the name of saving General Motors.  Can anyone explain why we want to save such a poorly run obese corporation which makes supremely inferior products with the lowest resale value since the Yugo?  And is there any reason we should feel sorry for a company that has gouged the masses for a hundred years?

Franchisees, you haven’t a chance in hell of survival when a franchisor can make every business decision, arbitrarily charge you royalties and put those monies in its pocket without having to answer for them and then use them to defend itself in the courts when you are disadvantaged or claim abuse.  When will you wake up and understand that franchising is just a license to use your money to build their kingdom?  Get the hell out, run your own business, make your own decisions and watch your profits go up.  We need to go back to used cars and Japanese cars that don’t fall apart in two years.

Bloody

Who Pays for TV and Radio Advertising?

Turn your television on and for a single hour, jot down the commercials you see on any of the major broadcast or cable channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN, CNN, etc.).  On major channels, there are three main categories of advertisers.  (Check the bottom of this post to find out what those three are.)

Though it cannot be proven, franchising advocates continuously quote that 40 to 50% of all retail is franchised.  (The data is owned by too many people and influenced heavily by pro-franchisor predatory bigots.) When you analyze the data of your one hour’s worth of major network advertising, it will become apparent just what the three verticals are that spend the lion’s share of advertising dollars with Madison Avenue agencies.

But that’s not the question or the purpose of this post.  The question is: Where is the money coming from?  First of all, some history.  McDonald’s ignored all conventional wisdom over three decades ago when they surpassed the 100 million dollar mark in advertising spend in a single year.  Most could not fathom the thought of such.  How did they justify it?  Simple, it wasn’t their money!  It is the money of hard working franchisees who pay exorbitant royalties to franchisors who spend it freely and with reckless abandon.  McDonald’s practices are truthfully depicted in in Fast Food Nation, author Eric Schlosser.  They pioneered the principle of going after your children, the pester power method.  But that again, is not the issue.  The real issue is that many franchises are B2B and not B2C.  Nearly all of the franchises that are offered at low entry fee are B2B.  These predatory franchisors have no intention of doing anything with the hard-earned  money they collect for advertising from your profits.  When asked the question of where that money is spent, or better yet when reading an FDD or UFOC, it is up to the sole discretion of the franchisor whether or not those funds are even earmarked for advertising.  Read an FDD and if you can even find the subject covered, you will see that the money can be used for advertising or any other thing the franchisor chooses.  Many simply use if to fund their playboy lifestyles.

So the next time you see David Brandon bragging that he’s giving money back to Main Street, don’t believe it.  He’s spending the money of the franchisees as though it is his.  When you watch a Subway commercial, remember that Fred DeLuca is the slimiest franchisor in the world, fighting more lawsuits than McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut combined.  Fred gladly sells single franchises to unsuspecting immigrants (all they need is a pocket full of cash) when he couldn’t make it until he owned three!!!  When you see a Quiznos (seedy and poorly thought-out million sub giveaway campaign), know that Rick Schaden and his staff of flunkies approved the campaign and then fired the VP of Marketing (who came from telecommunications – how ignorant and cheap is Schaden for even hiring her) as a scapegoat.  (It’s only a matter of time until Quiznos loses the pricing game, thus driving all of their franchisees out of business.  Freddy D. has 6 or 7 times the number of franchisees, thus a war chest of over 400 million dollars a year at his disposal (pun intended).  Ricky hasn’t a chance of winning a price war.

So the next time you watch a Nascar race (if you can stand the fact they never learned to turn right;), count the number of advertisers who sponsor a car and then see how many are franchises.  Then realize that Ricky and Freddy and Davey are all spending 4 to 5 MILLION per car to put their brand on the hood of a race car!  That’s right, the hard-earned money of your relatives or friends or immigrants (who are unaware because they’re probably working 7 days a week just to make ends meet) is being spent so Ricky and Freddy and Davey can sit in the infield or in VIP boxes,  get special privileges at the expense of those who labor just to scrape by.

The three vertical leaders in advertising are auto, beverage and food.  (Yes, they are all franchised; GM not for long – they are soon to be owned by you and your Commander-in-Chief, who by the way, operates just like a franchisor.  He spends your money and you have absolutely not one damn iota of say in any of those decisions!)

Bloody

Nardelli finds out – Obama Is NOT Your “Sugar Daddy”

So Chrysler’s list is now public and people are scrambling to find out if they’re a victim or a temporary survivor.

One more interesting advantage to franchising – you can simply publish a franchisee’s name (at the bequest of the Commader in Chief) and tell him and all their employees that their livelihood will now end!  Thank you Barack.  What else are you going to do?  Maybe next you can close hospitals and simply tell the sick and their relatives that they can “check out”?

“Have a nice life mechanics, salespeople, administrative staff, finance professionals.  It’s not my fault, you did it all to yourselves.  You staked your livelihood on the most powerful industry in the country, worked your butts off and now you’re screwed! But hey, I can do $335,000 photo-op shoots of Airforce One and laugh at off color jokes about Rush” — Barack Obama

The list is here, enough said!

Bloody

Chrysler Dealership Hit List

Greg Muzzillo is Pro-Bankruptcy (but only if you’re a vendor giving him kickbacks)

Words of wisdom from a franchisor:

Proforma’s co-CEO Greg Muzzillo said “the filing will improve Norwood’s balance sheet immediately”.  Well, no sh** sherlock! Bankruptcy is a great vehicle to screw your creditors!  (Greg gets a 2-3% kickback on every item a franchisee buys from Norwood.)  Why not screw them all the way just like you do your franchisees, Greg (and your wife too)!  After all, you learned from the best – Mr. DeLuca.  And your little whipping boy Brian Smith can help you snow the franchisees into believing that all is OK while you rape and pillage their future livelihoods too!

Except that if you are a franchisee and you chose bankruptcy for protection, you lose everything (Section 13, xii in the franchise agreement)!  So what’s good for the vendor who is feeding kickbacks to Mr. Muzzillo is death to the franchisee who is giving nearly 25% of its net worth to a fat lazy schmuck who sues his ex-wife to get out of child support when he’s making 38K a month and she is a homemaker!  Can you spell D-O-U-B-L-E S-T-A-N-D-A-R-D Greg?

Update: For all of those who don’t know it, Mr. Muzzillo gets it both ways.  He takes kickbacks from every vendor that sells to any franchisee in his system.  If you’re a franchisee, he’ll twist your arm and make you buy from a “Proforma PLP (preferred limited partner)” because there’s a 2% kickback from the heavy volume PLPs (BIC, Norwood, Vantage, SanMar) and more for low volume PLPs who spend their time schmoozing Greg and Vera and Brian.  You would think that franchisees would have more clout since they are losing over 10% in royalty fees as compared to the PLPs.  But oh contrare!  The franchisees are nothing but marks and only those in the “Million Dollar Club” are given any attention (and very little at that).  They are in fact the angriest!  You see, if they do 1 million in business at a net profit of 35% (highest average of all franchisees), they would receive $350,000.  Yet they end up paying Greg and Vera a whopping sum of $100,000 (28.5% of their net profit for absolutely nothing)! (If one only makes 25% net profit on 1 million, then Greg and Vera would receive 40% of the franchisee’s net profit!)

You see Greg and Vera don’t know an effing thing about selling print, promotions or apparel (that’s how Greg got in the business, but he hasn’t been in the trenches for over 25 years.  He was actually an accountant by trade and Vera is an investment banker.)  They are in the business to sell more franchises to more unsuspecting marks and they aren’t very good at that!  Franchise counts are not measurable as they are simply the word of Greg and Vera.  Franchise discontent continues to grow year after year (especially with those who are successful in spite of Greg and Vera).  As one makes more and more profits, Greg and Vera get more and more and more for less and less and less.  What do they do with all of the marketing monies, you ask?  They spend the royalty dollars marketing Proforma to prospective franchisees and mostly for their personal PR to prop up their personal image.  If you want marketing services for your specific franchise, that’s extra and you either have to do it yourself out of your own pocket or you can buy those services from Greg and Vera, (but that will be extra).

Bloody

SureSlim: “We are not a Cult?”

This a line from the owner of SureSlim.  See the full article here:  Big Losers in SureSlim row head to court

What’s wrong with this picture?

The franchise started in Australia (it is now in receivorship).

They moved to New Zealand and started selling franchises there, now 17 of 21 franchises they sold have failed.

How about a “royalty and marketing fee”  of 29%!!!!  Let’s do the math.  Assuming one’s business is at the top of the food chain and one of high profit, say 50% markup before payroll, overhead and taxes.  You make $50.00 USD.  It costs you $50 to deliver the goods and services (this is way over the top folks!). Now you pay your royalty fee of $29.00 to corporate?  You have yet to pay taxes!  Are the people that bought these pink elephants really that stupid! (I’m not letting the owners off the hook here, but for all the promises in the world, I’m not giving some gypsy who sells snake oil a 29% gross profit for the rest of my days!)  So, even if you’re a genius and you’re making 50 cents on the dollar, that only leaves you with a Net Profit before taxes of 21%!  No accountant in their right mind would ever approve a business model like that!  After suffering through a year of that, I’d make the franchisor put up my family, feed my kids until he let me out of the contract.  If that’s a cult, then so be it!

The governments of the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canda and others cannot and will not be bothered to keep this from happening!  They don’t want to hear about it, which is why the FTC took over the reins in the 80s during the Reagan administration.  Now it just goes to arbitration.  The rich and the scheming are all in bed together.  They will fleece you, piece you and hang you in the rafters if you are so naive to believe the gypsies and con men who call themselves “franchisors”.  And when their best friends are bankers, mortgage criminals from Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, would you expect anything less?  Who do you think funds these stupid ventures?  Securitizing  franchising loans is a hot investment area now that real estate is worthless.

A word to those who are entertaining any type of franchise:  Ask two lawyers, an accountant, your wife and anybody else who has a brain at least three times whether buying a franchise is a good thing.  And don’t do it unless you have a 100% majority “YES!”.  In essence, stay the hell away from franchising.  Stop the bleeding.

Bloody

“Franchisees – Shut Your Mouth or Lose Your Livelihood”…Rick Schaden

The president of a group of disgruntled Quiznos franchisees says the fast-food chain has been granted a court injunction, forcing him to close his three Oakville-area restaurants. Doug Johnson said the injunction, effective yesterday, was ordered within days of another court ruling allowing the franchisees’ lawsuit against Quiznos to proceed as a class action.

The Toronto Star
May 1, 2009

Quiznos closes plaintiff’s stores
After being certified to pursue class-action suit, owner of three outlets in Oakville shut down
Dana Flavelle

Quiznos closes plaintiff’s stores
After being certified to pursue class-action suit, owner of three outlets in Oakville shut down
Dana Flavelle

The president of a group of disgruntled Quiznos franchisees says the fast-food chain has been granted a court injunction, forcing him to close his three Oakville-area restaurants.

Doug Johnson said the injunction, effective yesterday, was ordered within days of another court ruling allowing the franchisees’ lawsuit against Quiznos to proceed as a class action.

The class-action certification represents a major step forward for the franchisees, Johnson said.

“Without the ability to bring this case forward as a group, franchisees face insurmountable obstacles in enforcing their legal rights. We now have a real chance to fix the problems of the past and help franchisees in the future,” Johnson said.

Once again to quote the now deceased Harold Brown’s book (published in 1980 and updated until Release 32, 2001), Franchising: Realities & Remedies, 1.01 [1]

Background of Franchising

[1] –New Concepts

…..As franchising has grown, however, the growth has been acompanied by a number of disputes between franchisors and their franchisees.  While legal disputes are to be expected in any long term relationship, franchisor/franchisee litigation has resulted in franchisors drafting progressively worse franchise agreements for new franchisees to sign.  Ironically, even a franchisee who prevails in litigation or arbitration ultimately harms prospective franchiseees in his system.  The losing franchisor is faced with two options: (1) alter its wrongful conduct, or (2) draft a more one-sided franchise agreement that states that the franchisor is permitted to act in any manner it sees fit.  Remarkably, franchisors almost always choose option number two, and  written franchise agreements reflect an even greater imbalance in power between franchisees and franchisors from year to year.  Franchisee advocates are forced to argue tougher and tougher cases each year as many courts refuse to recognize the imbalance in the relationship and, instead, enforce the language thrust upon the franchisee.

What a phenomenal business model!  Write a one-sided contract, if they sue you, shut them down!  If you lose, change the agreement to make sure they can never sue you in that manner again and cripple the incoming franchisees even more!  Hello franchisees – are you there!  Do you not understand yet?  You cannot fight a crook using a system run by the crook’s buddies (the courts)!  Call it naivete or ignorance or whatever, but the very reason most end up in arbitration is so that the courts could let the franchisors do “what they please”.  If your case makes it to court, then you’ll only end up with a class action or civil case in which you’ll only receive a small portion of your investment (the lawyers take the lion’s share) and then you get to start over!  Cool!  Awesome!  Wage your entire life savings and lose it.  Borrow more (now you’re waging your children’s and fellow taxpayer’s future lives) and fight the good fight against the enemy on their turf!  While you’re fighting, you cannot make a wage because the franchisor can shut you down!  If you win, you might get a tiny fraction back, if you lose, you lose two lives worth of investment.  Either way, you get to start over and fighting on prinicple, doesn’t pay the bills.  Doesn’t sound like a battle much worth fighting.  (I much prefer finding legal ways to make the franchisor’s lifeso bloody miserable, he has to change or suffer the wrath!)

Bloody