Latest news with #Franny
Business Journals
05-08-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Phoenix-Based Franchise Owner Honored with AlphaGraphics' Highest National Award
CHANDLER, AZ — Brandon Bagley, owner of four AlphaGraphics locations in Chandler, Gilbert, and Scottsdale, has been named the recipient of the 2025 Franny Award, the most prestigious recognition in the AlphaGraphics network. The award was presented at the AlphaGraphics Annual Conference in Chicago and celebrates franchisees who exemplify excellence in business performance, leadership, and contributions to the broader system. Awarded annually since 1984, the Franny recognizes one exceptional franchise owner whose business reflects best-in-class operations across key areas — including growth, customer satisfaction, innovation, and community impact. With more than 1,000 franchisees in AlphaGraphics' history, fewer than 50 have received this honor. Brandon's recognition is especially meaningful to the AlphaGraphics leadership team and his fellow franchise owners. More than a strong operator, he is known across the network as a selfless leader — consistently investing his time and energy into mentoring peers, uplifting his team, and building community both inside and outside the business. 'This award is about more than performance metrics — it's about people,' said Ryan Farris, President of AlphaGraphics. 'And that's why Brandon Bagley is so deserving. His relentless focus on his employees, his customers, and his fellow owners has made our entire network better. He leads with humility, gives freely of his time, and sets the standard for what it means to be part of this brand.' Bagley's win also continues a remarkable trend of excellence among Phoenix-area AlphaGraphics owners. Of the 40+ recipients of the Franny Award over four decades, six have come from the Greater Phoenix area — more than any other region in the country. 'The fact that Phoenix owners represent 15% of all Franny winners is no coincidence,' Bagley said. 'It's a testament to the culture of collaboration and high standards we've built here in the Valley. We're not just committed to growing our own businesses — we're equally focused on helping each other, supporting our clients, and strengthening the entire AlphaGraphics Network.' The Phoenix Owners' Group — made up of 10 AlphaGraphics locations across the Valley — represents a powerful local resource for businesses seeking marketing, print, signage, and visual communication services. With five Franny Award winners still actively leading centers in the region, the Greater Phoenix area continues to set the bar for excellence across the AlphaGraphics system.
Chicago Tribune
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Eephus' is a fond farewell to a small-town baseball field in its last inning
'Is this how it's gonna end?' By the time one of the small-town, middle-aged baseball players in director Carson Lund's disarming debut feature 'Eephus' says that line, it's very late, very dark and, for the old baseball field — Soldier's Field by name, a little smaller than Chicago's Soldier Field — it's the final inning before the ballfield is to be razed to make way for a new middle school. Places come; places go. Every human being deals with loss differently. 'Eephus' acknowledges that, but it's a sweet, sidewinding paradox of a sports movie: sentimental in a quietly unsentimental and offhandedly comic fashion. Lund's film confines the movie almost entirely to the nearly departed ballfield, before, during and after its final game. Yet it doesn't feel confining. Enough happens on or near any baseball diamond to get a movie out of it, if the right filmmakers are at the plate. Lund and cinematographer Greg Tango shoot and light 'Eephus' in grandly scaled digital widescreen imagery, in daylight, sunset hours and the cloak of night, and that too is a useful paradox. Not much happens, but every shot is composed like a widescreen mini-epic of downtime and hangtime, without much happening or any earnest revelations to solemnize things. We're hanging with the last remaining players on two amateur league rivals, the Riverdogs (wearing blue) and Adler's Paint (in red). The movie takes its title for the unfashionable floater of a nearly unhittable pitch, long, high and vexing. 'Stays in the air forever,' one player complains, adding: 'You get bored watching it.' The plot of 'Eephus' can be taken care of quickly, because there isn't one. We get to know the players a little, simply by overhearing casual, back-and-forth observations and insults and banter. Some of them will truly, madly, deeply miss this place, and playing there. Others, less so; a couple of these men have been hanging on to this tradition, and their time away from other things, family or otherwise, with a certain amount of guilt attached. My favorite character in 'Eephus' is an observer, not a player: Franny, a twitchy charmer and die-hard Soldier's Field regular played by Cliff Blake in a superb casting stroke. Franny's devoted to careful, even obsessive statistical reporting on each new set of innings. He has been for most of his many decades. Setting up his folding table for this final match-up, we see a man in his element. It's merely a bonus when Blake re-creates the most famous line from the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic 'Pride of the Yankees,' taken from Gehrig's moving 1939 pronouncement that he's 'the luckiest man on the face of the earth.' This makes 'Eephus' sound like pure corn, which it isn't. Its wit beams on and off a little, but it's nice and dry. The script, co-written by Michael Basta, Nate Fisher and director Lund, has the simplest of structures and while there are complications and demi-crises, on the field and off, it's all a part of the fabric. The innings come and go, as does the sound of a local radio personality (the movie's set in the 1990s, more or less) voiced by legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. 'Is this how it's gonna end?' The line comes near the end, though early in the movie, one character says the old ballfield will go 'the way of the Hindenburg,' which sounds pretty grandiose. When the end arrives — and I sorely wish the final shot was the terrific image of Franny, filmed from behind, watching the players drive off for the last time — the feelings and memories in progress weigh more than you'd expect. 'Eephus' — 3 stars (out of 4) No MPA rating (some coarse language) How to watch: Premieres March 21 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘What are we going to do about it?': Daughter's question jumpstarts Charlotte nonprofit that gives laptops to underprivileged kids
CHARLOTTE, N.C. () – We take for granted that everyone has a computer. Those of us who have one don't exactly feel like we're living in the 'laptop' of luxury. Pat Millen, one of the , says too many can't afford one. 'The cost of computers, quite honestly, is very expensive,' he told Queen City News. 'The things you can't do if you do not have a computer are pretty important,' said Millen. The nonprofit's goal is to bridge the digital divide between the haves and the have-nots in Charlotte area schools. 'These computers go to underprivileged communities who need computers to end the digital divide,' said Anthony Calloway, who supervises the staff in the lab where donated units are processed. 'Any company that wants to donate us computers, we will take them and refurbish them,' he explained. 'Quality control them to make sure everything on the OS is working properly; the camera works, the headphone works.' E2D receives laptops from corporations ranging from Bank of America to Lowes, but they also accept individual computer donations. The impetus for the effort was 13 years ago when a then 12-year-old posed the question that floored her family. 'So, I went home to my parents, and I asked them the question of how my classmates get their homework done if they don't have a computer in the home,' recalls co-founder Franny Millen. 'And they said, 'They probably go to the library or sometimes they can't get it done.' And I said, 'That's not fair, so what are we going to do about it?'' Her dad could have easily left it there, but the conversation had a lingering impact. 'And if you're a parent, you know that sometimes these things come at you and you hear them, and sometimes they fly right past you,' Pat says. 'Well, that one hit us squarely in the head and my wife and I started talking about digital equity.' Pat eventually gave up his sports marketing career and now works side by side with Franny. E2D gave out about 150 laptops in the first year. In comparison, the tally in 2024 alone was more than 11 thousand. 'And it's there's to have. It's amazing; we get so many thank yous and so many happy smiling faces,' said Calloway. They've delivered more than 55 thousand computers statewide and recently helped Helene victims in Western North Carolina. 'Very soon thereafter, people needed to get back to jobs,' says Pat. 'And too many of them had soggy, wet computers.' 'We were ready to step in when they needed us,' Franny said. Workforce development is an extra benefit of what they do. E2D gives jobs in the lab to high school and college students interested in tech careers. 'We hire them, we train them, and they become superstars,' Pat says. 'But it's been so helpful, and because we have so many corporate partners, they look to us a lot for employees as we move throughout our careers,' said Calloway. To this day, Franny's question 'What are we going to do about it?' is the core of the E2D operating system. Sometimes your kids say the darndest things. In this case, the family took those words and ran with them. 'It blows my mind that this is how far we've come and we're not ready to stop,' she says. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
