Helping New Arrivals Get Up to Speed : Personal service: A mother-daughter team is making Bright Beginnings the first neighborhood-welcome business in the nation to franchise.

Since moving to a new home this summer, Timothy and Karen Bauer have been so busy with their jobs that they have barely had time to take a drive through the neighborhood, let alone find a good dentist.

So when an agent from Bright Beginnings, an Irvine welcoming service, phoned to set up an appointment, the Tustin couple invited her over. The agent told them about local civic and cultural events and suggested some good restaurants and a dentist.

Bauer said the visit has saved them a lot of time trying to find things on their own.

“It was great; we used a lot of their services,” he said.

Bright Beginnings is a Welcome Wagon-style greeter. Company representatives make appointments to visit the homes of newly arrived residents in a community to tell them about the area and local businesses. The company works with local businesses, which offer discount coupons, gifts or other lures to residents and pay Bright Beginnings $2 for each visit its representatives make. The service is free to residents.

The service, which is run by Betsy Collins and her daughter, Melanie Hodgson, operates in seven Orange County cities and is about to franchise into neighboring counties, making it the first welcoming service in the nation to franchise, Collins says.

HeeSun Gerhardt, who has purchased the first franchise, in the Torrance/Palos Verdes area, worked as an executive with a computer services firm for seven years. She wanted to spend more time with her 2-year-old son, so she quit to stay home, but soon felt idle.

“This is perfect,” she said, “Because I get to be a mom, and I get to exercise all these other aspects of my life, like meeting people, using my head and being creative.”

Janet Little, another franchisee, had 18 years’ experience in banking when she and her family moved to Lake Elsinore from Michigan 1 1/2 years ago. But when she went job-hunting, local banks offered her only entry-level jobs. Her own frustration turned to deeper concern for her family’s security when her husband’s employer, McDonnell Douglas Corp., announced plans last month to lay off thousands of employees.

She said the Bright Beginnings franchise, which she recently started, should bolster her family’s finances and allow her to do work she enjoys.

“I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had time to miss anybody in Michigan,” said Little, who hopes to earn at least $50,000 annually with the business.

Bright Beginnings officials won’t speculate on how much its franchisees might earn. They do say that the home representatives who work part time for franchisees are paid about $10 a visit and average 40 visits per month. The company has representatives working in Tustin, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Orange.

Franchises cost $11,000 each. For their money, the franchisees get marketing rights to one or two cities, a custom computer software program, business cards and supplies to create coupons or graphics material for business sponsors.

Franchisees also agree to pay 10% of their monthly gross income to Bright Beginnings, plus another 2% for advertising.

Collins and Hodgson hope to sell 10 franchises this year and generate $175,000 in franchise fees and royalties.

Using $2,000 she acquired by cashing in an insurance policy, Collins, 51, started the company from her Huntington Beach home in 1986. At the time, the mother of four children was recently divorced, and her only previous job experience had been as a Welcome Wagon representative.

“A lot of people thought I was so cute playing at a business,” Collins said about her first years in business. She speaks in a soft drawl and apologizes for a messy filing cabinet in her office as if it were a wet towel on the bathroom floor.

Her 30-year-old daughter, Melanie, concedes that she also didn’t take her mother’s business that seriously until she “looked at the numbers.” She left her job as a technical writer to join her mother’s business in 1987.

Bright Beginnings has grown to employ 17 people part time and six full time. Another of Collins’ daughters, Paige, 19, began working for the company this summer.

Collins and Hodgson have a close relationship, and their business skills seem to complement each other well. Collins knows the early history of the business; Hodgson knows computer software. Collins knows the customers; Hodgson can cite chapter and verse on franchising.

“Probably one of the greatest benefits of my life is to have a daughter who is also my best friend,” Collins said in recent cable television program on which she and other entrepreneurs appeared.

The company differs from other greeting services, its owners say, by working more closely with sponsor businesses in developing promotions and offering exclusive territories to different types of firms, such as florists or dry cleaners.

Franchisee Gerhardt plans to use her fluency in Japanese as well as English to reach the Japanese population in the Torrance and Palos Verdes area.

Soon, Bright Beginnings plans to expand beyond new homeowners and target small-business people who may be in need of service referrals. The company plans to start the business-to-business service within six months, Hodgson said.

Like her own mother, Hodgson is a single mother. Her 7-year-old daughter, Nicole, attends Montessori school in the morning and helps her mom at work in the afternoon.

“She wants to know where her paycheck is,” Hodgson joked. “We were just talking about starting to groom her to join us.”