Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue IV, 2015 | Page 14

D OM I N A T O R S
BY DEBBIE SELINSKY

Brand Smitten

A

Dedicated homemaker becomes dominator franchisee

t the age of 39, Becky Finger, a
full-time homemaker and mother
of three from Cincinnati, went
with a friend to visit a Once Upon
A Child store in Columbus, a couple of
hours away. She had seen franchise founder
Lynn Blum on the cover of Entrepreneur
magazine in 1992 and thought her conNAME: Becky Finger
TITLE: President
COMPANY: R & R Resale
NO. OF UNITS: Once Upon A

Child, 9; Plato’s Closet, 7

cept was brilliant.
“Lynn has such a passion for resale
and for recycling, which you didn’t hear
as much about 25 years ago,” says Finger,
now 64 and the owner of nine Once Upon
A Child and seven Plato’s Closet stores.
“Recycling clothes is what she was doing, and that was an added bonus to me.”
Finger, who had never run a business,
was smitten as soon as she visited the Columbus store. “I liked it because it was
clean, organized, and bright. It smelled
fresh, everything was gently used, there
was a great variety of brands, and it was a
family operation, which appealed to me,”

she says. “I liked the idea of franchising
and having a proven model so I didn’t
have to figure everything out. I’m pretty
black-and-white with things. It would
have been reinventing the wheel for me
to open ‘Becky’s Used Clothes.’ I knew
I just had to follow in Lynn’s footsteps.
Of course I learned a lot along the way
and developed my own style.”
She and her partner bought the entire
Cincinnati-Dayton territory, and she’s
never regretted it. Their only competition then was Children’s Orchard and
small mom-and-pop stores.
Finger soon brought her entire family

AGE: 64
FAMILY: Married with 3 grown

children
YEARS IN FRANCHISING: 25
YEARS IN CURRENT POSITION: 2

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MULTI-UNIT FRANCHISEE IS S UE IV, 2015

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