Ultimate Staffing has two franchisees up and running and a third getting ready to launch. (5/03)

But Jeff Dellinger is already cashing in. An executive recruiting veteran, Dellinger launched his Orange County- based Ultimate Staffing Services Franchise in the prime Dallas market just two months ago and is already, he says, "a happy man."

In his first thirty days, Dellinger placed more than 30 temporary hires with several different employers and has landed his first "on-premise" account with Kinko's Corp. to provide it with staff management services.

"I already hit break even," Dellinger said, "and I didn't expect that for six months."

Dellinger's franchise is one of three in Ultimate Staffing's nascent Franchising operation. The company began offering Franchises in exclusive territories throughout the United States last fall, in the midst of the biggest job slump in a decade. So far, two are up and running and a third is slated to open in Cincinnati.

Ultimate Staffing Services LP, a division of Roth Staffing Companies Inc., which specializes in placing temporary personnel with employers that need clerical, administration, call center, logistics and light- industrial staff, is known as a trendsetter in a low-tech, typically staid industry.

Its customized client staffing and Web-based account management systems, have attracted clients such as the Dial Corp., E Entertainment Networks and Mazda North America.

Its strategy of offering its temporary hires or "staffing associates" the same benefits that full-time workers enjoy has won over 25,000 of them nationwide.

Since its founding in Newport Beach in 1994, the company grew from six employees to 305 (148 locally) today in 89 locations nationally (18 locally), not including the new franchises.

With revenues exploding in its first five years from $361,000 to almost $74 million, Ultimate Staffing would jump to the top of Inc. magazine's 500 list in 1999 as the fastest- growing privately held company in the nation.

Founder and CEO Ben Roth helped change the industry by placing a temporary team on site to help a company such as Kinko's manage its temporary workforce.

In 2000 though, "the bloom was off the rose," as Roth put it, when the bottom fell out of the stock market and the economy plunged into recession. The technology and manufacturing sectors were the first to experience deep declines, bringing the staffing industry down along with them.

After experiencing record growth during the 1990s, employment with staffing companies nationwide declined 14 percent by 2001, "one of the staffing industry's toughest years on record," according to the American Staffing Association, an industry trade group.

Ultimate Staffing, which in just two years had doubled its revenue to $151 million in 2000, closed several of its out-of-state locations that had opened up right at the start of the recession. It also cut back staff and had to "figure out ways to operate leaner," Roth said.

But the company, according to Roth's analysis, has fared better than most during the decline, dropping less than some of its national competitors during the past two years.

Specifically, Roth said, sales at Ultimate Staffing, separated out from other divisions of its parent company, were up 3.8 percent over 2001 and are projected to surpass its 2000 peak of $150 million in 2003. For the same period, sales at national competitors like Orange County-based RemedyTemp were down 10.5 percent. Similarly, sales at the Volt Services Group, also based in Orange County, were down 23 percent .

Ultimate has been able to weather the recessionary storm, Roth said, by branching out into new staffing sectors when others, like information technology, dried up.

It extended its reach into the lucrative home mortgage industry, the only bright spot throughout the recession, as well as medical billing and call center services for big industrial clients.

These strategies, Roth said, have enabled the company to achieve nominal growth and increase market share even in a fragile economy.

Franchising was the next logical step in the company's growth, Roth said. Ultimate Staffing had developed a blueprint for success and had reached a size and level of proficiency where its systems and services could be standardized through franchises across the country.

To spearhead the company's franchising efforts, Roth brought in Gerry Rhydderch, a veteran in staffing industry franchising.

Rhydderch began his career in 1976 with pharmacy giant The Medicine Shoppe where he helped pioneer its franchising program. More recently, he is credited with growing RemedyTemp's franchising program from one to 130 franchisees operating 170 offices during his 14-year stint there.

"Obviously, one of the reasons I was attracted to Ultimate Staffing was because Ben's got such a track record," Rhydderch said. "That doesn't happen by accident, it happens by doing the right thing right."

Ultimate's strong financials also attracted Rhydderch - the company carries no debt. Additionally, Roth plows earnings back into the company to ensure sustained and measured growth and to continually refine its products and services.

Strong financials are part of what also attracted Rob Nelson, who three weeks ago opened an Ultimate Staffing franchise in Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta.

Nelson, 44, honed his skills as a turnaround specialist for problem departments at Global Sources, a global trading company based in Hong Kong.

Not interested in franchising at first, Nelson searched for a small company to buy.

"I didn't want to do a ground-floor start-up," he said. "It takes too long." During his search he came across Ultimate Staffing.

"There was something about the way Ultimate presented itself that resonated with me," Nelson said. "What I found was an organization that really was walking their talk, and it's a very different talk to walk."

With the $60 billion staffing industry "poised for growth," according to a recent ASA study, Ultimate franchisees will likely be in a unique position to exploit any hint at an upswing.

Franchisees like Dellinger and Nelson are hoping to take that to the bank.