Martin Price, a Boca Raton, Florida-based entrepreneur, was preparing to establish a campground lot sales program at Falling Waters, West Virginia, in 1972. The site, on a 2-mile stretch of the Upper Potomac River across from Hagerstown, MD, is roughly an hour west of Baltimore and Washington, DC.
It was scheduled to become the nation’s largest campground resort, with over 3,000 campsites in existence, under construction, and on the drawing board, where RV owners could actually own their own completely upgraded campsite and have it rented for them while not in use.
Price discovered a brand new franchise possibility that was being licensed by Hannah-Barbera Productions while searching for a name and a concept for the project (which, itself, was owned by Screen Gems, then a division of Columbia Pictures).
The franchising opportunity was for a distinctive camping theme that offered campsites for rent. Price, on the other hand, envisioned obtaining the rights to exploit the brand and theme’s recognition and reputation in order to boost the credibility of his lot sales operation. If he succeeds, it will be the first time in the real estate sector that a well-known, recognizable “brand name” is associated with a lot sales campaign. Everyone in the early 1970s was watching Yogi Bear, the beloved TV cartoon character who resided in Jellystone Park and was famous for exclaiming, “Hey Boo-Boo, here come the campers with their pic-a-nic baskets!”. JellystoneCamp.com.
Price’s business, First American Land Corporation, was awarded Hollywood’s very first lot sales franchise for its West Virginia project after considerable haggling with the California movie moguls.
Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Camp Resort is now the number one camping franchise in the United States, according to Entrepreneur Magazine and Franchise Gator, and one of the top franchises in the United States in terms of franchisee satisfaction, according to Franchise Business Review.
About Martin Price
Martin Irving Price was born in 1939 in Holbrook, New York. He worked for the United States Army Security Agency in Germany and Washington, DC from 1959 to 1962, was the campaign manager for Seymour Spellman for Congress in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in 1966, and afterward worked for Air-India in Washington, DC as a Senior Sales Representative. He was Vice President of ARDA, the American Resort Developers Association ARDA.org, in Washington, DC, from 1970 to 1972. He was co-creator, founder, and operator of RCI (Resort Condominiums International), RCI.com, America’s first and still foremost vacation exchange program, and WeBuyHouses.com, in addition to conceiving and launching the Hannah-Barbera, Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park campground lot sales program. Price is now the CEO of Realty Connexion Corporation and FloridaLandBargains.com.
