"About eight years ago, my dad retired and left the business to my brother and me," says Cassels. "We increased sales 100 percent. We had 60 employees and we were doing roughly 48 million in sales a year. We were out to buy three of our competitors, but word got out and all of a sudden people started knocking on our door asking if we were interested in being sold."
Like true entrepreneurs, Cassels and his brother were emphatic: the business was not for sale. Then they got an offer they couldn't refuse. A Houston company offered to buy their business and bring it public. The Cassels brothers would receive stock options and five-year contracts. They sold.
The company jumped from 60 employees to 800 practically overnight-and Cassels wasn't happy with the direction the new owners were taking. "For all my life I thought I was going to take over the family business. I grew up with it; that's all I knew," he says. "It was very hard to be an employee. I've never been an employee and I didn't take to that well. I voice my opinions-sometimes too much."
So Cassels started searching for new opportunities. One presented itself on the golf course. His father has been playing golf for years with Dick Witt, a Gingiss Formalwear Franchise (http://www.gingiss.com) owner in Dallas. It just so happened that Witt had been looking for three years to sell his franchise and retire. He just couldn't find the right candidate. When Witt and the younger Cassels met, the connection was instantaneous.
"We just hit it off really well," says Cassels. "I think I have a lot of the same visions he had when he was my age." Soon after their first meeting, Cassels was able to rescind his contract with the aerospace company and purchase Witt's Gingiss chain.
Witt had spent 29 years building a $700 million-a-year, 11-chain franchises operation. All of his 45 employees had been with him for more than 12 years. Cassels wanted to keep them all on and planned to build the operation. He's already in negotiations for four new locations. He'd like to have them up and running within a year.
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