A New Way To Treat Your Window Treatments

OSWEGO (Sunday, February 15, 2004) - Picking out the right window treatments for her Oswego home was a trying experience for Allie Triggs.

She spent hours at a time at JC Penney over a handful of days but couldn't seem to figure out exactly what she wanted.

When Triggs, 32, decided to give up her job at a dotcom company to find a franchise to make her own, she remembered that experience.

V2K: The Virtual Window Fashion Store, seemed to be a perfect fit because it gave her the chance to spare others all of the agony she had over her own windows.

In early December, Triggs became the 7-year-old Denver-based company's first Illinois franchisee, setting up shop at her home.

The crux of V2K's business is the computer software franchisees use to show shoppers what thousands of different combinations of window treatments and colors would look like in their own homes.

Once Triggs measures a home's or office's windows and programs them into her laptop, she can show a customer what any number of styles of drapes, blinds or other window covers will look like in that room.

Meanwhile, the computer tallies up what size the treatments will have to be and allows Triggs to give shoppers a cost estimate right away.

Triggs then orders the window treatments and has a local installer put them in.

Of course, the computer can't entirely replace the need to touch and see fabrics in person, so she can bring samples of different fabrics and styles to customers' homes, too.

Triggs has joined the Oswego Chamber of Commerce and is going to join real estate and home building groups to let people know about how V2K works.

Since Triggs started her franchise, V2K has opened four other franchises in and around Chicago . When Triggs started to consider V2K in October, the company had 80 franchises; now there are roughly 104, said Vic Yosha, one of the company's founders.

Serving Oswego, Naperville and Plainfield — no franchisees have bought the rights to serve Aurora, Yorkville, North Aurora, Sugar Grove or the Tri-Cities yet — puts Triggs in a market that should have a great demand for her services over the next few years.

All of the new homes being built in Kane and Kendall counties will need some sort of window treatment. And most homeowners redo their windows every five to seven years, so there will always be a number of older homes that will be in the market for blinds and draperies, Triggs said.

The biggest challenge in getting her V2K franchise started was the learning curve, Triggs said.

She spent two intense weeks learning everything she could about the window treatments and the computer system before opening the franchise.

"There's so much to learn," Triggs said. "Ten years from now, I'll still be learning."

Eventually, Triggs would like enough business that she can hire salespeople and possibly open a storefront.

V2K, meanwhile, also hopes for strong growth in the next few years.

Yosha said the company had just eight franchises as of November 2001. Now, the company has 104 with goals of 200 by the end of 2004, 350 by the end of 2005 and 500 by the end of 2006.

"Three months ago, we didn't have a franchise in Illinois ; now we have five," Yosha said.

V2K is also rewriting its computer software so that rooms programmed in will be rendered in near photograph-quality graphics, he said.

The franchisor will also expand into other aspects of home decor, including wall covering, art and flooring, in the next five years, Yosha said.

To reach Allie Triggs, call (630) 551-0387 or e-mail her at allietriggs@v2k.com.

Initial consultations are free and usually last two hours, Triggs said.

Triggs lives in Oswego with her husband, Ken.

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