Case Study · Bloomin’ Blinds
what it actually takes to move a franchise system
How SIYL ran the Bloomin’ Blinds marketing function for eight months — and what the revenue data shows on the other side.
Client Overview
the number that started this story
In April 2026, Bloomin’ Blinds had their best sales month ever. CEO Kristopher Stuart messaged our team to say he credited SIYL with a meaningful part of that result.
We’re proud of the milestone. But the number that actually tells the story of this engagement is median franchisee revenue, and we’ll get to that.
What We Walked Into
a growing system with a marketing gap
Bloomin’ Blinds is a window covering franchise with locations across the country. When SIYL came on, the brand was growing — new locations, real sales, a CEO who believed in where the system was headed. But the marketing side of the house hadn’t grown with it.
The internal marketing capacity was thin. Not broken, just stretched — too many things to do and not enough people to do them well.
In talking with the corporate team and learning the system, we found friction running underneath all of it. The Bloomin’ Blinds team recognized that franchisees had started to feel like HQ was focused on things that didn’t quite match what they were living every day.
Kris understood that rebuilding that trust and building the marketing infrastructure were the same project — you couldn’t do one without the other.
The Challenge
what was actually broken
Before we built anything, we needed to understand what was actually broken.
- No dedicated marketing department and no one owning the function day-to-day
- Franchisees operating without a shared playbook — every location making different assumptions with different levels of capability
- No shared understanding of what good marketing looks like, leaving franchisees without a benchmark to measure themselves against
- Franchisee trust deficit — a growing gap between what HQ was communicating and what franchisees actually needed on the ground
- The middle of the roster was guessing, and when that franchisee guesses, the whole system feels it
Our Approach
eight months of embedded work
So we built them something to stop guessing with.
the marketing manual
The first thing a franchisee needs is a document that travels — something they can read, reference, and return to. Bloomin’ Blinds did not have that. We built it. A comprehensive franchisee marketing manual covering brand standards, channel strategy, local marketing execution, vendor relationships, and the metrics that matter.
the webinar series
Live education is not replaceable by asynchronous content. We ran a recurring franchisee sales and marketing webinar series — a direct line into the network for training, updates, Q&A, and momentum-building.
the website rollout
We managed a coordinated franchisee website rollout in partnership with Netsertive, Bloomin’ Blinds’ digital vendor. Tight approval timelines, proactive franchisee communication, and managing the complexity of rolling out web infrastructure across a multi-location network without losing franchisee trust in the process.
social media, playbooks & ongoing support
Franchisees needed more than a manual — they needed content they could actually use on Monday morning. We built social media content, campaign playbooks, and templated resources that gave franchisees a running start in their local markets.
localized marketing strategy & brand standards
National brand standards only go so far. We worked with franchisees to develop localized marketing strategies that fit their specific markets — accounting for seasonality, local competition, customer demographics, and the channels that actually move the needle.
How We Work
how we used ai and technology
Our team has been building AI into how we work because it makes the work better and the investment go further for clients. We still believe in the human in the loop — the SIYL team made every strategic call on this engagement, and once the thinking was done, AI closed the distance between decision and finished work.
HTML Dashboard
Built in Claude and used by both the SIYL team and the Bloomin’ Blinds client to track campaign components in real time — built the same week it was scoped rather than waiting on a developer.
Bloomin’ Blinds worked with a small, senior team and got the output of a much larger department.
The Results
the proof
The revenue data came back and it was better than we expected.
The median outpaced the average by 13 percentage points — meaning the franchisees in the middle of the roster grew faster than the ones at the top. The whole floor rose, and the locations that had the most room to grow took the most ground.
SIYL operated as our embedded marketing department — not as a vendor executing tasks, but as the function itself. I truly feel that this team wears a significant part of the responsibility for this success.CEO · Bloomin’ Blinds
The Takeaway
what this means if you run a franchise system
Bloomin’ Blinds understood something that a lot of franchisors are still working out — that the distance between where your median franchisee is and where they could be often comes down to the things a franchisor can actually control.
Bloomin’ Blinds made the decision to fix those things, and they gave SIYL the latitude to do it. That combination — a franchisor willing to invest and a team willing to actually run the function — is what produced a 41% jump in median franchisee revenue in a single year.
That’s replicable. It requires the same two ingredients every time — a franchisor who is serious about the investment and a team who will do more than send a monthly report and call it strategy.
Key Takeaways
what made this work
Infrastructure before campaigns.
The work that moved the median wasn’t a single campaign — it was building the foundation that made consistent execution possible across 65 locations.
Trust and marketing are the same project.
Rebuilding franchisee confidence in HQ wasn’t separate from the marketing work. It was the prerequisite for any of it landing.
The middle of the roster is the whole story.
Median franchisee revenue grew 41% — faster than the average. That gap tells you the system got stronger across the board, not just at the top.
A small, senior team can execute at scale.
With the right AI and automation stack, SIYL delivered the output of a much larger department at a fraction of the cost.
Someone has to hold the brand standard.
Across every franchisee, every vendor, every piece of creative — SIYL was the consistent set of eyes that kept 65 locations from becoming 65 different brands.
so. are you next?
By the time you’re reading a case study, you’ve already done the math. You either recognized your system in this story or you didn’t. If you saw yourself in it, let’s talk.
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