Owner's Logo Inspiration Transforms Company

Mr. Happy Crack Now Lures T-Shirt Buyers, Franchisees To Foundation-Repair Firm
October 25, 2005;

By GWENDOLYN BOUNDS

Dean Becker lives in Florida where, as he puts it, "there are no basements." But when his two children, ages 20 and 23, head for the beach to surf, they are often sporting boxers and T-shirts brandishing the logo of a St. Louis-based firm whose business is repairing cracks in basement foundations. That's right, foundations.

"All the kids are wearing the clothing," says Mr. Becker, of the Palm Beach office of Chicago-based merchant bank Ocean Tomo. "It's wild. We'd probably never need their services, but we're just glad they sell the apparel."

As for what's so special about the logo, more on that in a moment.

Amid the millions of dollars poured into branding each year, comes this story of how of a tiny business with little sex appeal -- or even appeal for that matter (who likes to think about cracks in the basement?) -- managed to achieve national recognition, half a million dollars in apparel sales, appearances on "The Tonight Show," Fox News and ESPN radio, all without hiring a single ad agency, focus group, brand consultant or PR adviser. Instead, the owners just did what entrepreneurs with nothing to lose tend to do before they get big and worried about losing what they've got -- they went with their gut.

In November 2001, Bob Kodner was stuck in St. Louis traffic and thinking about ways to expand his father's local foundation-crack repair business. The residential-services industry has a less-than-pristine reputation and the younger Mr. Kodner hated ads that promised reliability and on-time service because he knew most people didn't trust that. The company's official name, Crack Team USA Inc., already got a lot of chuckles -- "Dad named it before society went to hell" -- but the son had dreams of franchising. He just needed an identity that would make a good sell out of the business of injecting epoxy resin into basement cracks.

Mr. Kodner, who admits he is his "own best audience," says that in the car that morning he imagined a logo featuring a cartoonish, smiling gray piece of cement with feet and hands and a crack running down his head. That's when the phrase, "A Dry Crack is a Happy Crack!" popped into his head. His dad balked a bit, but Mr. Kodner, the company's president, forged ahead. A few weeks later, 34 buses in St. Louis sported the final logo penned by Mr. Kodner's cousin and the accompanying slogan; phones rang off the hook from callers wanting T-shirts and hats, and a brand was born.

Today the Crack Team has 10 franchise offices in eight states and says it's on track to have 25 by year's end and 150 in North America by close of 2007. A Web site -- mrhappycrack.com1 -- gets 350,000 Web hits a month from consumers looking to buy T-shirts, boxers, bobblehead dolls, women's thong underwear, baby clothes and golf balls emblazoned with the logo. A traveling Mr. Happy Crack mascot spreads the company gospel at festivals like the Taste of Chicago and has thrown out the opening pitch for a Major League Baseball team.

Orders come from all over the U.S. and some internationally, a large proportion in places that don't even have a Crack Team franchise. This year, 5% of the company's total $10 million in revenue will come from apparel sales. Mr. Kodner says the company is "profitable" with net income growing 10% a year. He says that individual franchisees typically turn a profit within a year and that "one guy with one truck" can see revenue of $200,000 to $250,000 annually. "It's a very strong niche."

For prospective franchise owners, the Happy Crack brand identity is a significant selling point that differentiates it from other opportunities out there. "Not everyone wakes up in the morning and says, 'I want to be in the foundation business,' " says Mr. Kodner. "We are competing against the Subways of the world and the appeal to what we offer is Mr. Happy Crack."

For 10 years, John McCarthy in Boston had considered buying a franchise, but never found one he would commit to. One day, the general contractor stumbled across the Crack Team ads on the Internet and ordered a package from the company.

"We were in hysterics, my father and I, looking at everything and we hadn't even gotten to the financials yet," says Mr. McCarthy, who opened his Crack Team franchise in May. Customers often book him for a job on the condition that it comes with a T-shirt. "It's an unbelievable promotional tool. It's not that glorious a business." Not glorious, but potentially profitable. At roughly $550 a crack, Mr. McCarthy says sales are "unbelievable" and doubling each month, and he's now looking to hire another employee.

Clearly, there's a certain innate subjectivity about what draws people to a logo, slogan or image -- recall the Aflac duck, Taco Bell's talking Chihuahua dog and Budweiser's frogs. Somehow the message must tap some amorphous common chord in pop-culture zeitgeist that rings true, particularly for consumers to care enough to buy an ancillary product or piece of apparel beyond a company's core offering.

"It's got to be very personal, and it also has to be kitschy," says Mark Hughes, author of the book "Buzzmarketing." One thing working in the Crack Team's favor, he says, is the irreverence factor. "That can go a long way so long as there's an implied element of safety to it."

To that end, Mr. Kodner of the Crack Team says he's already concerned about protecting "Mr. Happy Crack" from brand dilution. "I don't want to throw the name on just every item," he says. Still, as apparel sales continue to increase, he says, only half-jokingly, the company has tossed around a potential new slogan: We Also Fix Basements.

Write to Gwendolyn Bounds at wendy.bounds@wsj.com