EverLine's 860% Growth Story

John Evans, Founder and CEO of EverLine, had done everything a good franchisor does.

His team at EverLine Coatings and Services—a franchise providing parking lot maintenance across Canada and the United States—had written the manuals. They'd documented their processes. They'd created the SOPs that captured how to paint crosswalks, fill potholes, and seal coat parking lots.

And yet, the field visits kept revealing the same pattern.

“In the very beginning of EverLine, especially in the pre-13 location age, it was a bit of the Wild West,” Evans says.

Each location had developed its own way of doing things, improvising solutions to problems that already had documented answers.

“And of course that dilutes the brand and actually perhaps isn't as efficient as it was in the original process,” says Evans.

The franchisees weren't careless. Neither were they ignoring the manuals out of defiance.

The issue was practical: When you're in the field, breaking out a manual when you need to actively get something done is not necessarily the most practical. 

At 13 locations, the variations were manageable. At 125 locations? The brand would fragment into 125 different versions of itself.

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The Compounding Problem

Evans could see the math: “By the nature of scale, the demand for what's required to answer the inquiries compounds if you're going from 13 to 125 locations. You're looking at 10 times the amount of activity.”

Ten times the questions. Ten times the problems. Ten times the variance between what's supposed to happen and what actually happens.

Most franchisors solve this by hiring more support staff. Evans saw a different opportunity: build systems that empower franchisees and their teams to find answers themselves.

I knew that for us to scale, EverLine needed to partner with KnowHow to solve that in-field process challenge that we had.

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Two Resources, One System

Evans didn't abandon the printed manuals. He changed their job description.

The printed manual now explains EverLine's philosophy; the principles and reasoning behind decisions. KnowHow enables the execution of the EverLine way: exactly what to do and how to do it.

“So there are actually two resources that complement one another, and KnowHow is a big part of that process,” Evans explains.

With KnowHow, EverLine built an extensive database of individual processes, all accessible on your phone, in the field. How do you paint this crosswalk? Fix this pothole? Troubleshoot equipment when a cable snaps?

The answers are provided instantly by the “EverLine AI-App” (aka KnowHow).

This changed how work gets done. Before, when a field operator hit a problem, they'd call their franchisee, improvise, or stop working while they searched for an answer. Now they solve it themselves with KnowHow, in the moment.

“What this does for the franchisees is it gives more power to the person to solve the challenges and move forward without the franchisee having to deal with every little thing that happens daily there,” Evans explains.

And when franchisees aren't fielding constant operational questions, they can focus on growing the business.

Evans expanded KnowHow’s use beyond field operations:

We train our franchise owners out of KnowHow, even on things like how to perform an effective marketing program, how to sell an interior line painting job. How do you talk to clients about these objections? So KnowHow is also being utilized as a sales training tool.

The scope is comprehensive: “From cradle to grave for the franchisees, they're able to take this information and help their business scale as a result of that.”

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Seventeen to 125 Locations in 3 Years

EverLine launched in the United States in 2022 with 17 locations. Three years later: 125 locations across North America.

Evans is direct about why this was possible: “We were able to blow past a lot of stages or a lot of challenges that a lot of franchisors have at those points because we started so early with software like [KnowHow].”

Most franchises hit predictable walls at 10, 25, and 50 locations—points where support infrastructure can't keep up with growth. 

But EverLine didn't experience that pattern. The infrastructure they built at 13 locations scaled to 125 without breaking.

The efficiency gains showed up in headcount. EverLine was able to support 10x more locations without building a proportionally larger support team.

But the real advantage was in how quickly best practices could spread. When something works at one location, EverLine creates a KnowHow for it and distributes it instantly. “You've just immediately empowered an entire franchise network through the power of that scale.”

Quality control—the thing that fragments as most franchises grow—became a competitive strength. The full orientation and certification of pavement maintenance technicians happens through KnowHow, ensuring consistency. Without it, Evans says, managing quality control location by location would be nearly impossible, “which is what builds brands.”

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Building for What's Next

Growth created resources for deeper investment.

Evans created a new department—System & Service Dev—dedicated not just to building processes but to thinking about how they're accessed and presented. The language evolved to match how people actually work: “Operations” became “getting work done.” “Sales” became “getting work.”

Evans is clear about why this matters: “I think that's just really simplifying it to make it more layman's terms, because that's just where things are. Makes it simpler, more accessible to everybody, less formal.”

The shift reflects a broader change in how people learn and find information. “The demand for information to be searchable and interacted with is now the new standard. The traditional way of a big, fat book manual is outdated because people just don't learn like that anymore,” Evans says.

This move is in line with EverLine's vision to become the easiest franchise system to operate in a complex industry.

The next milestone is already in sight. “Getting franchisees to an average of a million average unit volume is where you want to be. I think we're going to exceed that.”

How? “The only way we're gonna be able to make that jump is by providing those tools [like KnowHow] and resources for franchisees to teach them how to scale faster than I had to learn,” Evans explains.

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What EverLine Learned About Scale

Evans doesn't hedge his recommendation: “If you're on the fence of getting KnowHow, really there's nothing like just taking the plunge and investing in these types of processes, these methods of having your company digest the processes that you've created.”

The reasoning is straightforward: Systems and processes are developed for a reason. If they're not being followed consistently because they're not accessible, the business won't repeat its success, or it's going to stumble along the way.

He identifies what he believes is the toughest part of franchising: “By far the hardest part of scaling a business is making sure that you're able to execute on a larger scale if you're not the one actively doing it.”

His conclusion:

‍KnowHow is the key to breaking past that challenge and opportunity.

EverLine went from 17 locations to 125 in three years. They maintained quality while growing exponentially. They kept their support team lean while their network expanded. They built infrastructure that turned best practices into competitive advantages.

The Wild West became a system. And the system made their 860% growth possible.