Winmark

Ron Olson and Jeffrey Dahlberg started a consulting firm, Franchise Business Systems, in 1986. Olson had been the president of R.J. Brandon Galleries and Dahlberg had been the chief executive officer of his father Kenneth H. Dahlberg's company, Dahlberg Inc. (now Miracle-Ear). Martha Morris was an initial customer of Olson and Dahlberg's consulting company. Morris, who started Play It Again Sports in 1983 in Uptown, Minneapolis, had purchased camping and backpacking supplies, found out she was not interested in camping, and decided to sell her used goods. She had attempted to sell a costly, lightly used backpack through making ads and visiting a sports shop, where an employee told her, "We don't sell used equipment." Morris decided to start her own store since she believed other people might have used sports equipment they would like to sell.

Morris expressed a desire to make her idea a franchise. Although Olson and Dahlberg were first concerned about the idea's outlook for success, their worries disappeared after they dropped by her outlet a Saturday morning and found a line of 10 customers before Morris' store had even opened. Their strategy to captivate franchisees was to add urbanity to something they called a "garage sale-looking environment" but not harm the initial idea. Olson and Dahlberg quickly realized they preferred to be the owners of a company instead of be advisers. Morris sold her Play It Again Sports franchise rights to Olson and Dahlberg in 1988. She sold her stores to them in 1990. Play It Again Sports became Winmark's first division.

The company was incorporated as Play It Again Sports Franchise Corporation in 1988 and was renamed to Grow Biz International Inc. in June 1993. It went public in August 1993. The company was listed on NASDAQ as GBIZ; it is now listed on NASDAQ as WINA. In 1995, a significant number of the company's franchises were on Entrepreneur's annual "Franchise 500" list. In 2001, Grow Biz was renamed to Winmark Corporation. Winmark Corporation is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In March 2000, John Morgan took over as CEO from Jeff Dahlberg. By a year after joining the company as CEO, Morgan rescued Winmark from the precipice of bankruptcy by introducing stringent review of franchisee finances, shuttering failing Play It Again Sports stores, and appointing his own people to executive and board positions. Morgan chose Steve Briggs, who had been at Valspar, as the company's president. He selected as board members Kirk MacKenzie, whom he had worked with at Winthrop Resources, and Paul Reyelts, the chief financial officer at Valspar. In June 2000, Winmark sold its corporate headquarters building to Koch Trucking. The company had lost $350,700 in 2000; in 2001, it had a net income of $3.2 million. Morgan said in a 2009 interview with the Star Tribune about the state of Winmark before he joined, "The company was very good at selling franchises, but it was still losing money." Around 2002, Winmark sold the franchises Retool, Computer Renaissance and Disc-Go-Round.

In 2011, Winmark was ranked the 11th company on Forbes's "The Top 20 Small Public Companies In America". Around 2013, research company IBISWorld found that in the used goods outlet market, Goodwill Industries was first with a 21.5% share, Winmark was second with nearly 6%, and The Salvation Army was third with nearly 4%. In 2016, the company had a $1 billion market share in the $17 billion resell industry through its 1,170 franchisees.

In February 2016, President Brett Heffes was chosen as Winmark's next CEO, succeeding John Morgan, who became the executive chairman. According to a 2014 article in The Toronto Star, Morgan holds the most shares in the company.

It's About Games

It's About Games bought and sold used PC games, video games, and board games. It was founded in Cleveland as Video Game Exchange in 1990 and grew to 83 stores by the end of 1994, but its excessive expansion resulted in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 1995 and the closure of half its stores. Winmark spent roughly $6.8 million to acquire Video Game Exchange in 1997 and renamed it to It's About Games. It's About Games locations were largely in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Georgia and Maryland. It made money for Winmark until 1998. During its last year under Winmark management, It's About Games lost $3.4 million due to excessive inventory, a buggy computer system, poorly chosen products, and improperly trained employees. Winmark owned 60 of the 64 It's About Games stores in the franchise and would have been profitable without It's About Games. Winmark sold or closed all its It's About Games stores in 1999 to reduce losses. Winmark also aimed to cut down on the number of stores it owned because it wanted to focus on franchisee-owned stores.

Subsidiaries

Wirth Business Credit

Wirth Business Credit is a small-business supplies leasing company owned by Winmark. In a 2008 interview with the Star Tribune, CEO John Morgan said Winmark plowed the $9 million to $10 million in profit from its franchisees into Wirth Business Credit because they believed leasing supplies will become a profitable business even though the current growth had been slow. In 2008, there were 27 Wirth Business Credit franchises.

In 2004, Winmark created Winmark Business Solutions, a website for small businesses owners. Winmark Business Solutions was intended to help franchisees and clients of Wirth Business Credit. The website hosted 6,000 pages related to business such as how to found a company and how to sell a company. It had a forum for people to discuss small business issues and its articles also discussed finance, insurance, and technology topics with a focus on business.