He was a political science major at TCU, but Michael Browning could not shake the entrepreneurial bug. Fascinated by data trends, he launched healthcare consulting firm Phoebos in 2005. Two years later, he sold it to former Microsoft exec Rowland Hanson.
He switched his focus in 2010, founding Urban Air Adventure Park which now has 230 locations open or under development. After 11 years at the helm, Browning created holding company Unleashed Brands to expand his focus on more youth-targeted enterprises. Emerging from the pandemic, he was motivated to help families regain a sense of normalcy.
“Parents want to give their kids a chance to escape the real world for just a little bit,” Browning says. “We started to develop our investment thesis around that.”
Today, Unleashed Brands has seven companies, including Urban Air, youth gymnastics center The Little Gym, and tutoring service Sylvan Learning. Among all brands, it has 1,200 locations across the country, serves 25 million children a year, and generates $1.1 billion in annual revenue.
A key strategy in driving growth has been keeping the focus on the end users, Browning says. “Understanding who the consumer is and knowing that when the consumer wins, our businesses win, has made it easier to make these acquisitions and have a positive impact on them,” he says.
For Unleashed Brands, the youth of America are at the forefront of all of the companies within the portfolio, but, for Browning, the consumer side of the company is based around the parents. Along with trying to discern what children are most interested in and how to connect them to those interests, Unleashed Brands has to go to parents to see what they want for their children.
“All parents want their kids to learn the basics of science, technology, engineering, and math so that they can go on and have a productive career,” Browning says. “They want to help their kids identify and grow in the skills and the hobbies they’ve been blessed with. We have to be in tune with what our consumers, our parents are telling us their kids need. So, pre-Sylvan we had a ton of parents asking us, ‘Hey, we trust you, because we’re involved in all of your other brands, where can I take my kids to get math and reading help or homework help?’ That put afterschool enrichment on our radar. So it was after school enrichment, swimming lessons, music, and traditional sports. Those were some pillars of focus.”
He is on a quest to add more assets to the portfolio, including enterprises that specialize in swimming, music, fine arts, and sports. But building the billion-dollar franchising business has not come without some legal battles. After acquiring several brands, including The Little Gym and Premier Martial Arts, Browning’s company was sued by dozens of franchise owners who claimed the holding company violated existing franchise agreements. In a statement to D CEO, in regards to The Little Gym cases, the company said, “All but two voluntarily dismissed their cases within two weeks of filing. The remaining two did not win their cases.”
Despite the legal claims, Browning is not tempering his ambitions. “We see a world five years from now where every parent in America is waking up, opening our app, and seeing their kids’ schedule for the week at facilities we own,” he says. “We’re impacting every kid in America.”
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