Profile

Winmark Corporation is an American franchisor of five retail businesses that specialize in buying and selling used goods. The company is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Winmark was founded in 1988 as Play It Again Sports Franchise Corporation by Ron Olson and Jeffrey Dahlberg after they purchased the Play It Again Sports franchise rights from Martha Morris. They renamed the company to Grow Biz International Inc. in June 1993. Grow Biz went public in August 1993. In 2000, John Morgan replaced Dahlberg as CEO and renamed the company to Winmark in 2001. Morgan rescued Winmark from the verge of bankruptcy by selling financially failing franchise concepts and stores and replacing the management team. The company's strategy was to move from owning stores itself to having franchisees own all the stores. Winmark Corporation owns five franchise-based retail companies that focus on used goods: Music Go Round , Once Upon a Child , Plato's Closet , Play It Again Sports , and Style Encore . Winmark also owned but subsequently sold four franchise-based retailed companies: Computer Renaissance , Disc Go Round , It's About Game , and ReTool . Its subsidiary Wirth Business Credit is a small-business supplies leasing company.