Great Clips franchisees fuel the Great Clips 300 Saturday, September 4

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August 20, 2010 // Franchising.com // The Great Clips franchise and NASCAR's Nationwide Series form a high-octane team under the lights Saturday, September 4, Labor Day weekend at the Atlanta Motor Speedway for the Great Clips 300.

"Atlanta-area franchisee, Greg Thomas, is our point person," said Rob Goggins, vice president of franchise development for Great Clips, Inc. "Greg, with the support of the Atlanta co-op, helped secure the naming rights and mobilized all our franchisees throughout the Southeast to participate."

"Franchisees and corporate are working together to make this a success for all parties. I think that says a lot about who we are as a franchise system," said Thomas. "My salons—15 at current count—have enjoyed impressive growth rates since we opened eight years ago. Events like the Great Clips 300 continue to be good for business and great for the communities we serve."

Greg is the Official Starter for the race waving the green flag to get proceedings underway. Another Atlanta-area franchisee, Betsy Clinton, is the co-Grand Marshal. Betsy will be assisted by a group of children from the Children's Miracle Network, one of our national partners.

"This is our 10th year with NASCAR and having a front row seat on the race is a great honor," says Clinton, who will sit in the pace car in front of 125,000 race patrons for several laps over the 1.54-mile quad-oval track. "We're excited to partner with the Children's Miracle Network and locally with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta that serves children who are enduring difficult circumstances.

We look forward to many more years of involvement with Atlanta Motor Speedway and NASCAR to really maximize our Great Clips mission in community involvement, whether it is offering our outstanding services in the salon or our support at the races!"

Great Clips is one of the top three companies to title sponsor Nationwide Series races this year. The brand is included in all the national media promoting the Saturday night race, and our logo will appear on the infield and commercials will air on TV for Nationwide and Sprint Cup races throughout the weekend. For the Great Clips 300, franchisees are taking an active role including promoting it in the marketplace and merchandising it in their salons.

"Our typical franchisees invest in Great Clips in order to transition out of corporate America," added Goggins. "The business model allows individuals to keep their day jobs while building their salon businesses on the side. Successful franchisees usually come from the middle- and upper-level executive ranks of industry. They possess strong management, leadership, communications and people skills. And they don't cut hair. They are CEOs of their Great Clips franchise, managing people and expanding their businesses."

"Putting this together has been fun," added franchisee Thomas. "We're giving away 20,000 free tickets to our customers and they are loving it, too. It's the cheapest Labor Day activity a family can have. That's the community involvement and the power of the world's largest hair salon brand."

In December, AllBusiness.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, released its 2010 Franchise AllStar 300 listing and once again ranked the Great Clips franchise opportunity as the top hair salon business franchise opportunity.

About Great Clips

Great Clips is the world's largest hair salon brand with more than 2,800 salons conveniently located in high-visibility strip malls in almost 140 markets. Great Clips consistently ranks among Entrepreneur magazine's Franchise 500Ò. Entrepreneur also ranks Great Clips as one of its "Fastest Growing" and one of "America's Top Global Franchises" for 2009. Franchise Times magazine ranked Great Clips 90th in system-wide sales by in its annual Top 200 listing of worldwide franchise chains.

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