Andrew Alleway is Co-founder and MD of Tidy Green Clean and he is passionate about seeing franchising become a business model of choice for thousands more entrepreneurs across the UK.
When I was living and working in New Zealand, my business had 500 plus franchisees and there was nothing particularly unusual about being a franchisee there. Franchising is still relatively new in the UK, and especially Scotland other than people signed up with Dominos or Subway-type food outlet businesses. Franchising is a risk-free way of running a business and here at Tidy Green Clean we believe there are many great reasons to become a franchisee, and here are five to start with.
When you’re a franchisee, you run your own business, you’re an entrepreneur, rather than just someone who takes a salary home every month. There’s a level of investment, of course, but you take on a tried and tested business model and have all the back-up of the parent company. You’re working for yourself and you will achieve a much better rate of pay and an investment that will grow in value should you decide to sell the franchise back.
Being a franchisee means you immediately become your own boss. In our franchising model, cleaners become business owners, responsible for their own client or clients and we guarantee them a certain level of work, so they’ve got huge autonomy and a real chance to grow that business and achieve a satisfying level of personal success.
When you invest in a franchise, you’re provided with or instructed to acquire a certain standard of equipment, resources or kit, depending on the business, to make sure that you deliver the brand quality standards customers expect from that business. There’s no risk to the franchisee having to trial a new vacuum cleaner or cleaning equipment in our business because Tidy Green Clean does all the research and tests all the equipment before we give it to our franchisees. Our franchisees also benefit because we use the same vacuum cleaner everywhere. We use the ‘EasyJet’ model so that we always have enough spares and parts to repair any piece of kit quickly and easily, which also reduces maintenance costs across the whole business. Another good example is that we use environmentally friendly cleaning chemicals, for example, that we know are effective and work phenomenally well and so our franchisees can use these with confidence and pride.
Taking on a franchise means that you are taking on something that is already proven. You should be able to meet other franchisees to check that the business model is successful and you should be able to telephone around and assess whether the brand name is sufficiently known to give you the confidence to start your own version in a new area or with new customers.
Franchisees also get to take advantage of any accreditations their parent franchise companies possess, so for example Tidy Green Clean is ISO-accredited across ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 and so our franchise’s operate to those standards and with those systems and processes already in place.
Becoming a franchisee will mean that you have supply chains already in place, able to supply you with products or services based on the contractual agreements your franchise parent company will already enjoy. In fact, with our franchises, we supply them directly and so that removes a massive headache from them in terms of having to find the right products and equipment to service their clients. They benefit from our ability to distribute all product and equipment to them and we can already estimate how many litres of cleaning chemicals or how many vacuum cleaners per site they will need, based on other franchisee usage.
There any many other reasons to become a franchisee, especially with Tidy Green Clean and I am happy to speak to anyone interested in taking the plunge and finding more about the different franchising opportunities we provide, and also to talk through other franchise opportunities they may be considering. In New Zealand, most people who turn up to provide plumbing, gardening, automotive, electrical or other services at your home or business premises often own their own franchise and wear that responsibility with pride and diligence. That’s what I would like to see happen, first for Tidy Green Clean and then for franchising generally, both in Scotland and throughout the UK.
You can find out more about our franchise opportunities by visiting our franchise page or by downloading our franchise booklet.
