• The two pet care brands are now their own entity, separate from Franchise Group. FRG announced plans to offload Pet Supplies Plus and Wag N Wash last summer.
• The change follows FRG's financial restructuring after it filed for bankruptcy in 2024.
Pet Supplies Plus and Wag N’ Wash have separated from Franchise Group, the brands’ former franchisor.
Franchise Group was once a publicly traded company that at different times owned Wag N Wash, Pet Supplies Plus, Sylvan Learning, Liberty Tax, The Vitamin Shoppe, Buddy’s Home Furnishings and American Freight. It bought Pet Supplies Plus in 2021 and, in 2022, PSP bought Wag N Wash, a pet grooming concept. Franchise Group acquired The Vitamin Shoppe in 2019 for $208 million and went public later that year.
In 2023, a group of investors comprising senior leadership at FRG took the company private in a deal valued at $2.6 billion.
Last summer, FRG completed its financial restructuring process after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024. Upon exiting the bankruptcy process, Pet Supplies Plus, Wag N Wash and Buddy’s Home Furnishings were operated under an umbrella company called Fusion Parent.
FRG began shutting down its American Freight operations in November 2024.
Private equity firms Kingswood Capital Management and Performance Investment Partners bought The Vitamin Shoppe for $195 million last May. Upon the acquisition, former Vitamin Shoppe CEO Sharon Leite took over her former role. The brand no longer advertises franchise opportunities on its website.
In December, Pet Supplies Plus and Wag N Wash officially separated from Franchise Group. The transition was done through securitization financing with a low, fixed-rate debt, according to a news release on the matter.
“Those other companies that [FRG] bought, for one reason or another, failed to perform. The debt that they put on the books became too much of a burden,” said Chris Rowland, the CEO of Pet Supplies Plus since 2014. “The exception to that was PSP. We performed throughout their hold and continued to perform through their bankruptcy.”
Rowland said FRG’s bankruptcy didn’t heavily impact operations at Pet Supplies Plus.
“It was business as usual with a little bit of a distraction,” he said. “The plan was always upon exit, we would become our own entity with our own debt and be completely separate from FRG or any other holdings that were part of FRG.”
In 2024, Pet Supplies Plus reported system sales of $1.86 billion with 727 stores, for a system sales increase of 2.2 percent. That’s an average unit volume of about $2.5 million.
The growth results last year were similar to that of 2024.
“We saw our business continue to grow in 2025, low single digits,” he said. “We’re happy with the performance, especially given some of the distractions that came because of the bankruptcy and, frankly, some of the work that we had to do around the bankruptcy separation and what I would call non-value-added activities that took us away from our day job.”
The cost to open a Pet Supplies Plus franchise ranges from $536,520 to $1.96 million, according to the brand’s franchise disclosurement document.
The cost to open a Wag N Wash franchise ranges from $520,520 to $1.36 million, according to its FDD. The average unit volume for 11 stores open the entirety of 2024 was $1.3 million. It ended that year with 29 locations.
FRG’s bankruptcy impacts major Buddy’s franchisee
In December a 47-unit Buddy’s Home Furnishings franchisee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas.
In Buddy Mac Holdings’ bankruptcy filing, CEO William Ian MacDonald noted that Franchise Group’s bankruptcy last year “presented many challenges” for his company, “which have significantly contributed to” the need to file for bankruptcy protection.
Buddy Mac had problems stocking inventory after Franchise Group’s bankruptcy, according to court documents. The franchisee had its own agreements with suppliers, independent of Franchise Group’s supplier contracts, but the bankruptcy “cast a cloud over” Buddy’s Home Furnishings.
According to the bankruptcy filing, Buddy Mac Holdings has between 1,000 and 5,000 creditors. The franchisee reported between $10 million and $50 million in assets and liabilities. Buddy Mac owes more than $1 million each to Buddy’s Newco in Orlando, Florida, and O’Rourke Sales Company in Columbus, Ohio.
Buddy Mac at one point owned 84 stores in eight states, MacDonald said in the bankruptcy filing. In 2022 and 2023, Buddy Mac’s sales were more than $73 million and $74 million, respectively.
The franchisee requested emergency relief in the amount of $132,258 to pay wages and maintain employee benefit programs. The court granted the motion, according to court documents. The court authorized the franchisee to use cash collateral to keep its stores running.