Why This Former CEO Decided to Leave Corporate Life Behind and Become a Franchise Owner After the Age of 50

Being in your 50s doesn’t mean you have found your forever career—Mike Mancuso can attest to that. After following a 35-year career path that led to him to the C-suite, Mancuso felt something was missing. He wanted something of his own, something he could take control of, but didn’t have to build from scratch.

This ignited Mancuso’s interest in franchising, and eventually Cartridge World.

“I decided I wanted to have more control over my own destiny,” Mancuso said. “I was doing another turn-around as CEO of a $30 million division of the world’s largest provider of noise and acoustic control products, structures and test facilities in New York and decided it was time to stop traveling and generate more future equity. After looking at several independent concepts, I decided franchising was my best option since I was obviously not bright enough to come up with my own idea,” he joked.

Mancuso has had quite an impressive career, including being a registered professional engineer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from West Virginia University and an MBA from Dowling College in Oakdale, New York. His first job out of college was for the Ohio coal mining division of DuPont as a mining engineer. Since his first job with DuPont, Mancuso has held a number of impressive titles—senior executive, vice president, president and eventually CEO.

After 35 years of resume building, hard work and endless travel, he decided it was time to make a change, so Mancuso hired a franchise broker to help him find a concept that was in line with his new career and financial objectives.

“I told my broker I did not want any franchises in the food, health or learning center spaces,” Mancuso said. “I was looking for low-tech support in the high-tech space and wanted a high-margin product and service with an ongoing annuity component.”

Enter Cartridge World.

Mancuso joined the brand in January 2005, and 15 years later is also a high-performing unit operator and master franchisee in the New England area.

“[At the time], Cartridge World was a new concept with a lot of potential and I knew I would have the ability to develop my own business within the Cartridge World brand—which we ultimately did,” he said. “In Cartridge World’s early days, it was basically just a ‘fill as you wait’ printer cartridge business, but I saw the brand as a much better fit in the B2B realm and focused my business more on value-added services and aggressive selling.”

Thanks to this progressive way of thinking, Mancuso’s Cartridge World location is currently one of the highest-performing Cartridge World businesses in the entire system.

Looking to the future, Mancuso holds high hopes for Cartridge World. “We are currently growing at 20% per year and our plans for future growth are to focus on the entire imaging industry as a whole. Additionally, as always, we plan to focus on providing the best possible service to our customers,” he said.

From what began as an in-store printer cartridge refilling business to the now on-site, all-encompassing printer service solutions for local businesses of all sizes, Cartridge World has managed to take society’s digital progression head-on and revamp its business model to become more tech-forward and future-oriented than ever before. The brand now operates 211 locations across the United States and stands out in the industry thanks to its low cost of entry with a total investment required to open a Cartridge World Executive Office Model franchise ranging from $58,900 to $106,300 including the $40,000 franchise fee.

For more information on franchise opportunities with Cartridge World, please visit https://cartridgeworld.com/franchising/.