When their HVAC contracting business began to suffer during the Great Recession in 2008, Ray and Tina Bramble of Front Royal, Virginia, didn’t throw in the towel and give up. Instead, they decided to convert their independent business, LCI Services Inc., into an Aire Serv franchise.
“We were mostly doing light commercial business, and the market started slowing down,” Ray Bramble said. “We got a call from Aire Serv about an opportunity to become a franchise. So, I went and visited them and was blown away. I met some great people, and they had such a great structure from the office dispatch program all the way to how the technicians meet and greet customers. It’s the whole nine yards. Tina did most of the research — she went out and looked at what it would cost to get a dispatch program, have a full-time consultant, and did an invoicing of the whole gambit, and, believe it or not, the costs were very similar. The only difference was we wouldn’t have been part of an amazing organization, such as Aire Serve and The Dwyer Group.”