Carpets and hospitals out, franchises in

A pair of out-of-work Gulf Coast executives discovered salvation in cell phones and chocolate.

In separate and unrelated moves, each executive, Bob Hughston, formerly with Mohawk Carpets, and Jim Ayersman, previously with the HCA hospital chain, will take a chance on franchise-based entrepreneurship.

Hughston is on the mobile phone side. He opened a Wireless Zone store in Venice last month, the first of what he hopes could be five stores in the next two years. Middletown, Conn.-based Wireless Zone is one of the 35 fastest-growing franchises in the country, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. It sells a wide variety of Verizon Wireless products, though Verizon doesn't own the firm.

There are currently 450 Wireless Zone stories nationwide, including 35 in Florida. There are several in Tampa, and there are three Charlotte County stores. Hughston is the first to open one in the Sarasota-Manatee area.

“I had never known you could buy a franchise and team up with Verizon like that,” says Hughston, who has spent at least $100,000 in startup costs so far.

Hughston worked for Mohawk in Orlando and Sarasota. He considered a UPS store and several other franchise options after he left Mohawk, but ultimately decided on Wireless Zone. “Everyone carries a cell phone,” Hughston tells Coffee Talk. “It's a necessary commodity now.”

Chocolate, meanwhile, might not be a traditional commodity. But for Ayersman, it became the answer to his next career move in March, when Englewood Community Hospital in south Sarasota County eliminated his chief financial officer position. Ayersman worked for Arthur Andersen before HCA, which owns Englewood Community Hospital.

Like Hughston, Ayersman looked at several franchise options. He settled on Fannie May, a Canton, Ohio-based chain of chocolate stores prominent in the Midwest. And just like the Wireless Zone, there are several Fannie May stores on the Gulf Coast, but none in Sarasota-Bradenton.

Ayersman plans to open three stores in the area by 2013. He has invested $175,000 so far, and the first store is scheduled to open in November in a strip mall off U.S. 41, a few miles south of downtown Sarasota.

“It's nerve-wracking, but it's also exciting,” says Ayersman. “Part of the accounting background is you are so risk-averse. I've never done anything like this.”