Franchisee Success: How Jim and Kaye Biby Became Successful with Showhomes

Husband-and-wife team Jim and Kaye Biby of Jacksonville, Florida celebrated their highest grossing month ever in June, since purchasing their Showhomes franchise location in 2006.

“Over the past several months we’ve rolled out a few new marketing initiatives, but above and beyond marketing, we rely on referrals,” Kaye said. “Over the years we’ve continually provided a quality product to our customers and it is paying off.”

Franchise growth strategy

Since the Biby’s bought their Showhomes nearly ten years ago, they’ve remained a consistent top performer within the Showhomes’ system, and have also consistently evolved to meet the needs of homeowners and Realtors in their northeast Florida territory.

“In the beginning 95 percent of our business was through the Showhomes Home Manager program,” Jim said. “Today our business is a fairly even 50/50 split between Home Manager staging and traditional home staging and redesign.”

Showhomes is unique in the fact that the system offers many different revenue streams, and the most successful franchisees, like Jim and Kaye Biby capitalize on the opportunities that come along with offering a full suite of services to their clients.

New service offerings

This year, the Biby’s are looking forward to rolling out Showhomes’ latest service in their region: Home Updates.

“This is another great opportunity for us to continue building upon a full line of services we can provide to homeowners and Realtors during the sales and purchase process,” Kaye said. “We’ve received a positive initial response and have already had the opportunity to present a couple of bids and we’re just very excited to continue marketing this new service offering particularly to our Realtor client base.”

The Biby’s agree that by far the most rewarding part of their business is getting the phone calls when properties they’ve staged have sold.

“We’re incredibly proud to have staged properties with a combined list price value of more than $325,000,000 since May 2006,” Kaye continued. “A referral is the greatest complement our clients can give us, and we’ve worked very hard to build a reputation that has provided us highly complementary and consistent referrals over the years.”

In addition to referrals, the Biby’s also have built a network of loyal repeat customers.

“We don’t want to be just another staging company, we want to be the one-stop-shop Realtors and their clients can depend on during the sales process,” she said.

When asked about their dynamic as a husband-and-wife team, the Biby’s both agree, their personalities complement one another, but what really makes it work is that they’re both extremely driven toward a common goal, and that is to provide exceptional service to their clients.