41. Mike Brugger

Fully Promoted (asi/384000)

2020 Rank: N/A

Title: President

Industry Experience: 27 years

For over a quarter century, Mike Brugger has been the United Franchise Group’s utility player.

He’s supervised operations for its Sign-A-Rama and Venture X brands, as well as handled marketing for their in-store locations and websites. In 2000, he launched the EmbroidMe brand’s flagship store in West Palm Beach, FL, establishing client relationships that are still going strong today.

“When you’re the owner, you have to wear a lot of hats,” Brugger says. “I’ve always been more interested in the production and equipment side, but I had to get comfortable with sales and marketing, making cold calls and knocking on doors. There can’t be anything beneath you.”

In 2017, EmbroidMe rebranded to Fully Promoted, symbolizing the company’s greater focus on promotional products. Overseeing the transition was challenging for Brugger, who took over as president in 2018. To limit customer confusion, especially for franchisees, he made incremental changes, adding the tagline “Are you fully promoted?” to EmbroidMe before changing the name to Fully Promoted powered by EmbroidMe and then eliminating the original name altogether.

“The stores that changed names saw triple the sales,” Brugger says. “When you grow a company from one location to over 300, there’s a lot of pride in something like that.”

Perhaps the main reason that Brugger has cracked the Power 50 list this year is how he’s led Fully Promoted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Top 40 distributor turned to PPE earlier than most, reaping the benefits and ending 2020 with sales up nearly 9%. Even with blank PPE accounting for 22% of those sales, the company maintained 37% margins.

“I credit our team for knowing the industry inside and out,” Brugger says. “We didn’t skip a beat because of partnering with suppliers who could quickly source from overseas. About 75% of our franchise owners had access to those key suppliers. We also changed our marketing plan immediately, adding masks to our brochures and updating our inventory lists at least twice a day.”

This year Fully Promoted has gained 23 new franchise locations, with plans to add 50 more next year, all of which will directly impact top-line sales. After the social distancing and isolation of 2020, the company’s doubling down on its in-person accessibility. “What makes us special is we have locations where you can see products in our large showrooms,” Brugger says. “Our newest campaign – the Fully Promoted Difference – is that we sell real products, we’re real people and we have real results.”