Successful Specialty Retail Franchise Ranked Amongst Top 40 in Magazine's Catalog of Smartest-Growing Brands.

Hartland, WI Once again heralded as one of the industry's most successful franchises, Batteries Plus Bulbs, the nation's first, largest and fastest growing battery and light bulb franchise, was named a top brand in Franchise Times' 2015 "Fast and Serious" list. Ranked No. 39 out of 331 franchise concepts analyzed, the distinguished industry publication selected Batteries Plus Bulbs due to its rapid year-over-year unit and sales growth and its expansion into new categories such as smartphone and tablet repairs.

"It's an honor to be spotlighted among the top 40 franchises on Franchise Times' Fast and Serious list for the second year in a row. To remain relevant in today's competitive and constantly evolving marketplace, we continue to reinvest in our business to protect our brand position," said Russ Reynolds, CEO of Batteries Plus Bulbs. "Expanding our service offerings to include smartphone and tablet repairs last year was a natural extension of our tech center capabilities and business model, which focuses on breadth, immediacy and service. Both retail and business account customers were already visiting our stores with their mobile devices to get new batteries installed; with device repair services now in place, we're able to provide another solution for people's need for an affordable, reliable and quick experience when other components of their devices need to be fixed."

To choose this year's winners, Franchise Times created a proprietary formula to identify fast, yet smart-growing franchise systems that also have staying power. The formula calculates unit and sales growth over the past three years with more weight given to acceleration within the past two years. It includes:

• Percentage sales growth
• Adding smartphone and tablet repair services to its locations
• Dollar sales growth
• Numerical unit growth

Batteries Plus Bulbs continues to expand its footprint across the country-opening nearly one store per week. In addition to its impressive unit growth, the company hit $452 million in revenue at the end of 2013 when numbers were calculated for this award. The nearly half billion dollar company saw a system-wide sales increase of 8.6% in 2014 and will continue making significant strides in 2015, with plans to open 50 new locations across the country.

Additionally, Batteries Plus Bulbs is focusing on franchise expansion in the New York and Mid-Atlantic areas this year along with opening more new stores in Southern California. To expand franchising opportunities to qualified veterans, Batteries Plus Bulbs recently unveiled the Ownership with Honor program, which will provide over $210,000 in financial support to qualified U.S. military veterans interested in opening a store. The incentive covers about 85 percent of the initial investment. Ownership with Honor incentives will be available for a limited time, although the company will continue to offer a $10,000 discount off its franchise fee to qualified veterans in select markets as part of its commitment to VetFran.

Those interested in applying can visit www.batteriesplus.com.