Unique Franchises: Inside the Sports Tech, Resale, and Winery Businesses Proving Unlikely Categories Can Scale

Small business takeaway:

• Franchising is moving into categories once considered too dependent on individual taste, judgment, or expertise to scale. Shoot 360, a basketball training concept, uses technology to make coaching more consistent and measurable, which help fuels expansion. BaseCamp Franchising brings a disciplined buying, pricing, and operating model to its resale concepts Uptown Cheapskate and Kid to Kid to support growth. Waters Edge Wineries lowers the barrier to winery ownership by outsourcing the wine-production experience from vineyard ownership. The broader lesson: Growth comes from systematizing the parts customers don’t see while protecting the experience they do.

Traditionally, franchising has been built on categories with an obviously replicable sales proposition — burgers, hotel chains, gyms — rather than on businesses that depend on one person’s feel for a product or service: a coach’s eye, a thrifter’s instinct, a winemaker’s palate.

But through technology, standardized operations, and diversified revenue, today’s franchise owners are building the systems to turn categories that were once considered too fragmented, too informal, or too “mom and pop” into scalable enterprises, without losing what makes them feel personal in the first place.

As consumers increasingly favor brands that feel local, sustainable, or community-rooted, founders figuring out how to scale without losing authenticity are finding success.

A former equipment rental executive turned a driveway basketball habit into motion-tracked, video-game-style training now used in NBA practice facilities. Two brothers took the thrift store, long considered too dependent on haphazard inventory and gut-feel pricing to scale, and built it into a $300 million resale system. And a winery franchisor is making it possible for more entrepreneurs to afford opening their own winery.

CO— caught up with executives from all three to find out what it took to turn seemingly fragmented, idiosyncratic categories into a franchisable system and what other entrepreneurs eyeing an “unscalable” business can learn from how they did it.

Shoot 360 turned an inherently personal service, a coach’s read on a player’s shot, into a recurring revenue model to franchise nationally

Craig Moody got the idea for a scalable basketball training business after watching his oldest son and friends play a basketball video game instead of shoot baskets outside in the driveway. “I looked at my wife and I said, ‘If we could make training in a gym like playing basketball in a video game, we’d have it made.’”

As he neared 50, he set out to build technology that used video gamification for basketball training and then expand its reach across the country. Now, his franchise Shoot 360 is fast-growing and the only sports tech franchise ranked on Entrepreneur’s 2026 Franchise 500 list.

The company builds 360-degree video-based basketball training environments for players, coaches, and teams, giving athletes a way to sharpen their skills and teams a way to practice together. Cameras track motion on shots taken, and a proprietary tool called the “Splash Meter” evaluates each shot’s arc, depth, and alignment, measuring it against the system’s benchmark for ideal form, called “The Splash Zone.” That analysis gives players immediate feedback so they can adjust their technique on the spot.

“I was interested in recurring revenue models, like the fitness industry,” Moody said. “We really believe basketball at its best culturally belongs to people from their community. So, we wanted people who care about their community to help the game grow in their community.”

Shoot 360 opened its first franchise at the end of 2019. In the past two years, the company has landed deals with major sports venues and teams, including a fan-facing installation at the Los Angeles Clippers’ arena and a location near the Brooklyn Nets’ Barclays Center in New York City.

Shoot 360 generated over $22 million in revenue in 2025 and is aiming for sales growth of more than 50% in 2026 across its 60-plus locations. Among its investors are former NBA players Trae Young, who played guard for the Atlanta Hawks, and Zaza Pachulia, a former center for the Golden State Warriors.

Early on, opening the first few locations was a way to test the model, he said, and marketing was all grassroots, with little advertising. Moody visited tournaments, coaching clinics, and high school and league games, handing out free workout passes. “It grew by word of mouth,” he said. The business expanded, but adding immersive team‑based shooting competitions was the piece he needed for it to truly take off.

Leaning on his connections in the basketball world to partner with big names in the sport and secure strategic investors were also critical to success, Moody said. Now, Shoot 360 counts Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty, retired NBA Guard Jamal Crawford, and Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm as corporate investors. The more than 30 patents he’s pursued have helped protect the company’s technology as the category attracts more interest.

Shoot 360 is aiming for 90 locations in the United States by the end of 2026, and more internationally, with Moody’s long-term vision at 1,500 global locations.

[Read more: 7 Winning Startups Share the (Adaptable) Secrets to Their Success]

BaseCamp Franchising: Building systems to standardize a thrift and resale industry traditionally run by gut feel

Save for charity stores like Goodwill and The Salvation Army, thrift and resale merchants have long been seen as unstandardizable, a patchwork of independent shops and consignment boutiques with no real dominant national player, where every location’s pricing, sourcing, and feel is dependent on the owner.

To franchise the category as the secondhand apparel market in the U.S. continues to grow at a fast clip, BaseCamp Franchising — the parent company of teen and children’s resale chains Uptown Cheapskate and Kid to Kid — combined proprietary pricing and point-of-sale technology with a dedicated store launch team while creating a “boutique treasure hunt” feel that keeps customers coming back.

Brothers Tyler and Zach Gordon have grown the resale brands into a $300 million franchise system, with over 300 stores across 32 U.S. states, plus locations in Portugal and Spain. They hope to triple their business over the next 10 years, approaching, if not exceeding, 1,000 stores worldwide.

“It’s a space where there’s so much opportunity and also a business where you can feel really good about what you’re doing at the end of the day,” said Gordon.

The brothers leaned into the brands’ concept of accepting and selling on-trend secondhand clothing, with stores like Goodwill not seen as competitors. One of the first things the Gordon brothers set out to address was the widespread assumption that secondhand stores are unkempt, he said. Word-of-mouth, Gordon added, remains the single most effective way to shift that perception. He noted that strong Google reviews play a key role in turning first-time shoppers into repeat thrift customers.

Meanwhile, the Gordons assembled a dedicated team of more than 10 people spanning operations, marketing, technology, and finance, focused solely on getting new stores open. And they’ve stayed disciplined to the fundamentals of franchising, according to Gordon: identifying and recruiting the right franchisees, helping them move efficiently from signing on to a successful grand opening, and supporting existing franchisees once they’re up and running.

That structured approach is paying off: New stores have performed roughly twice as well over the past year and a half as they did before the team was put in place. Systemwide, total sales across all stores (store count multiplied by average sales per store) were under $200 million when the Gordons took over. That figure surpassed $300 million last year, a 50% increase over three years, and it’s on pace to grow more than 20% again this year.

BaseCamp added 20 new stores last year and expects to reach 30 in 2026. Growing competition from online resale platforms like Poshmark and Depop doesn’t concern Gordon. “My goal is to make the pie as big as possible,” he said. “For a lot of younger generations, secondhand is now cool — they want to show off their individuality, they want you to ask them where they got this and how much they paid for it so they can tell you $2. I really struggle to see how that trend reverses after you discard the stigma.”

[Read more: How BaseCamp Is Turning the Hot Apparel Resale Market into a Franchise Model]

Waters Edge Wineries simplified winemaking into a franchisable system

Ken Lineberger built a successful wine-related franchise business that makes it possible for entrepreneurs to open their own winery for under $500,000, an endeavor that traditionally could cost millions of dollars to launch.

The first Waters Edge Wineries opened in 2004 in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Lineberger developed a franchise model that allows for wineries to operate without the vineyards attached to them. Water’s Edge wineries don’t grow or crush grapes. Rather, the processes are outsourced globally, and wines are made on-site with crushed grapes.

The franchise, which also serves bistro-style food, now has over 20 locations nationwide. It uses a real estate search tool to help franchisees find the best available location in their community by assessing traffic patterns and looking for retail locations in urban centers ranging from 2,500 to 4,000 square feet with a patio.

Angela Zuba, a restaurateur and vintner who owns one of the franchises, Waters Edge Winery & Bistro Kalispell, built her successful business with five interlocking revenue lines — wine, a restaurant, catering, a wine club, and events. The diversified revenue streams have helped her grow annual revenue to around $700,000, of which 70% is from wine sales and 30% from all other lines of business.

“We have done well from Day 1 despite launching during the pandemic,” said Zuba, who noted she methodically built each stream one by one and moved on to launch and grow another line of business once sales were on a healthy pace.

What draws customers in, she said, is the blend of old-world winemaking techniques with a laid-back Montana setting. Visitors can stop by to sample wines, dine at the bistro, or pick up bottles that can be labeled to order. For those who want more, there’s a wine club to join, and the space is available for corporate gatherings, celebrations, and weddings. Zuba also brings wine education to consumers directly, hosting in-home tastings where she walks guests through pairing wine with food.

Building a strong team across each part of the business has also driven growth, she noted. Giving staff and managers ownership and room to bring their ideas to each line of business has made a significant difference, she said.

“I make it a point to reward them for their efforts in helping to grow sales by celebrating them publicly on social media or through team events like whitewater rafting trips,” Zuba said. “It’s a great way to inspire the team and boost employee loyalty.”

It’s a model that Waters Edge Wineries is betting other franchisees can replicate: Let the company handle the complexity of winemaking and let each owner decide how far to stretch everything built around it.

[Read more: Franchises Leverage Diverse Revenue Streams to Rev Up Sales and Weather Ups and Downs]

—With reporting by Lori Ioannou.

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