College Hunks Hauling Junk Sells First West Coast Franchise

(Wednesday, August 29, 2007) - College Hunks Hauling Junk has sold its first West Coast franchise for $112,500, marking the third such deal this year for the 2-year-old company.

Located in San Francisco, the franchise will cover eight zones, each representing 65,000 to 85,000 households with annual incomes of $50,000 or more.

Soon after launching its franchise program earlier this year, Rockville-based College Hunks signed franchise deals in Orlando and Tampa, Fla.

Nick Friedman, president of the trash removal company, aims to ink two to three more agreements before year's end. The company is currently considering possibilities in Baltimore, Denver and Raleigh, N.C. Ultimately, the business wants to have a presence in every major metropolitan market.

"I think anywhere there's a disposable income for homeowners, there's going to be stuff accumulating in homes," Friedman said, "whether they're in transition or starting to do home improvements and need to get rid of stuff."

College Hunks grew out of a summer gig in 2003, before Friedman and his childhood friend, Omar Soliman, started their senior years at separate out-of-state colleges. Using Soliman's mother's cargo van, the two dubbed themselves "college hunks hauling junk" as a way to market their services.

The following year, the two used the summer experience to pen a business plan, which ended up taking first place out of 150 entries in the Rothschild Entrepreneurship Competition at the University of Miami, where Soliman attended.

"That, of course, gave us more confidence and gave us the concept a lot more credibility in our minds," said Friedman.

After graduation, he and Soliman returned to D.C. for corporate jobs. But cubicle-life didn't stir any passion in the recent grads. So they dusted off their business plan. They took four months to fine-tune it. They launched College Hunks Hauling Junk in June 2005 with one green-and-orange truck. Within their first year, they added four more trucks to work the Greater Washington market.

Most of the business' clients are married professional women between 45 and 65 years old, Friedman said. "In most cases, the husband is a pack-rat," he said, "and the female is the decision-maker and wants to clear stuff out of the basement and garage" to make space or to prepare for home improvements.

College Hunks is also growing its commercial customers, which include property managers, home remodeling contractors and realtors.

In its first year, sales hit $525,000. By the second year, they had doubled to $1.1 million, Friedman said. A portion of the revenue goes to College Bound, a D.C. nonprofit that prepares public high school students for college.

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