Brian Scudamore buys a toll free phone number and turns it into one of America’s fastest growing franchises.

Another post on my series of what vanity numbers could be worth.. A perfect 7 digits for a toll free vanity number, 1-800 Got-Junk was founded by Canadian Brian Scudamore in 1989 when he was still in college. While the company operated successfully for years, it wasn’t until they bought an unforgettable Find a toll free phone number that they saw tremendous growth. A year after the company changed it’s name from ‘Rubbish Boys’ to 1-800 Got-Junk, they were franchising to other cities. They are now amongst the fastest growing franchises in America, and have been mentioned on CNBC and the superbowl of product mentions – Oprah.

As more businesses, both online and brick-and-mortar, adopt toll free mnemonics as their brands, the availability of toll free vanity numbers will become increasingly scarce. Which means the resale value of toll free numbers may increase steadily over the next few years. * This is not the opinion of RingCentral or to be construed as investment advice – it is solely my independent prediction based on my years working in the telecom industry and ‘spider sense.’

Call it gut feel. Or in my case, expanding gut feel.

While I’ve mentioned before that it’s getting scarcer and scarcer to find available toll free numbers to purchase cheaply, generally 1-866 and 1-888 numbers are recognized as toll free numbers as well by the general public. IMHO I would prefer 1-800, 1-888 (it’s only 1 digit to remember) then 1-877 (7 is considered lucky numbers in many cultures and religions) and finally 1-866.

BTW, that’s the order (coincidentally?) of the age that each of these toll free vanity numbers were FTC approved, so 888 has been around the longest – since the sixties in fact. Again, just my opinion – but if someone offers me 1-800-Printer for a few hundred bucks – I’m buying!