Oxi Fresh Names New President, Splits Off Tech Arm

Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning has named Kris Antolak as president after 17 years with the nearly 500-location franchise, handing him full authority over daily operations and strategy across the U.S. and Canada. Founder and former president Jonathan Barnett is shifting his attention to BE FAST Software, the scheduling and franchise-management platform Oxi Fresh built internally and has now spun out as a standalone business.

A Founder Choosing Software Over the Brand He Built

Barnett built BE FAST Software as an internal scheduling tool in 2010, and it grew into the system Oxi Fresh franchisees rely on for appointment booking, customer service and day-to-day franchise management. Rather than keep running both the franchise and the platform, Barnett is betting the bigger opportunity is selling that technology to other home service franchisors, a market where proprietary, franchise-built software has become a real competitive edge.

What the Split Means for Franchisees

Antolak spent his first years at Oxi Fresh in the call center and later ran franchise development and sales, including owning his own Oxi Fresh locations before becoming vice president in 2014. That operator background matters here: franchisees are inheriting a president who has sold, built and operated the same business model they run, rather than an executive coming in from outside the system.

The Bigger Bet

Separating the software business from brand leadership lets each side move faster: Antolak can focus purely on franchisee growth and operations, while Barnett scales BE FAST Software as a vendor to other franchise systems without being pulled back into carpet cleaning's day-to-day. If BE FAST lands other home service franchisors as clients, Oxi Fresh's internal tool becomes a second revenue line for the same leadership team that built it.