Age: 47
CV: Director – the Prudential; Sales and Marketing Director – Bupa
Location: Owns three Kall Kwik centres – in Guildford, Woking and Camberley
Bought in: 1999, 2001 and 2004 respectively
Garry Nelson enjoyed running his first Kall Kwik centre so much he bought another two – in only five years.
Now selling one, his enthusiasm for the franchise nevertheless remains undimmed, as FranchiseSales.com discovered.
How do you cope with running three franchises?
Garry: I am now selling one as I have found the third one a franchise too far.
I bought them with a business partner and my best friend, and all the way through owned all three and managed them together. My business partner has decided to leave so I have bought him out.
Given that you bought three, you obviously like the Kall Kwik franchise…
Garry: I do. It is one of the longest and most well-established franchises in the UK, so it has a tried and tested model and you can feel confident that other people have done it and being round the block. That’s one of the issues of buying a relatively new franchise: you end up being a bit of a guinea pig because people don’t know really whether it’s going to work or not.
One of the things with Kall Kwik is that there is a mine of historical information, and although industry has changed – like all industries have changed – in terms of technology, the fundamentals stay the same.
The company has won a few awards hasn’t it?
Garry: Yes. They keep on winning awards, such as the Franchisor of the Year Award. There are certainly more things they do well than the do badly.
My brother is a franchisee of a different company. There are growing pains, which are being felt by the franchisees in the ground.
Kall Kwik has been around for some time. There’s a manual and a process for everything; there’s probably even a manual for using the toilet!
It is also a flexible franchise in the respect that the products, machinery, people, prices and other fundamentals, to a large extent, are mine to decide what I do with. Whereas if I wanted to go down a sophisticated route of pushing data archiving for example – a weird and wonderful product – then that’s my province. And if I want to pay my team twice as much or half as much, or introduce some extra bonuses, then I can.
The only thing I can’t do is deface the brand and the ethics of the brand – but I paid for that, so why would I?
Sounds like you have the best of both worlds…
Garry: Yes. It has its stresses and strains, but all things being considered, even when I have been frustrated with them and kicking them up the backside, I know in my heart of hearts I could do a lot worse – so I do feel comfortable with it.
Why did you leave the corporate world?
Garry: I was made redundant by the Prudential in about 1997, and I couldn’t bring myself, at the age of 40, to go back into that corporate life again.
So how does it compare to owning your own business?
Garry: It couldn’t be more different if you tried. In my previous life I had all the trappings of wealth and power. The only problem was, it wasn’t very real. You are always in the hands of some consultant, bean counter or chief executive who could decide to cut costs.
The main thing about having your own business is that you are master of your own destiny. No one else is responsible for your success or demise, apart from you.
It wouldn’t suit a lot of people, that scenario, because a lot of people would find it very stressful.
What initially attracted you to franchising as opposed to buying or setting up your own business?
Garry: I came away with enough money to invest in my future, but not enough to help me retire. A lot of people come away with figures like that and think: “well I can’t hang up my working boots today, but I do have the money to do something else.”
And people who are looking at doing this – that want to be in business on their own, that want to buy a going concern, and don’t want to build a business from scratch – if they have £100k in the bank and that is all the money they have, they don’t have to sink it into something that is likely to disappear within a year.
Also, if I stuck the sign ‘Garry Nelson’s Printing Emporium’ across the building I am selling and it wasn’t a Kall Kwik, the price would be at least five times less than I am getting selling it as a franchise.
And in terms of the time you have to invest to get a franchise going, we guess it's less draining…
Garry: There’s less trial and error, I guess. I believe it’s important to learn by other people’s mistakes. It’s cheaper! But buying a franchise you are not so much learning from other people’s mistakes, but from the franchisor’s experience.
With any franchise operation in the UK you will always get people that grumble about systems. The real truth is that you have paid for a proven system – so use it, because it works.
So what attracted you to Kall Kwik initially?
Garry: A few things. One, it was a business-to-business operation, not retail. Two, in my corporate life I had actually been a buyer of print and design, and felt that I knew what was good service and bad service.
And three, when we were doing our research, of all of the franchisors that we looked at, it had the longevity, the best track-record, and it had the best, most professional people I encountered. We did a lot of research. We visited 12 franchises, five of which were print franchises. Kall Kwik was head and shoulders above the rest.
It’s obviously worked out for you…
Garry: Yes, it has. Now I’m selling one off after seven years in the business it makes it a little easier. I have some money in my pocket and three does take a lot of work.
I have managers, but I still get involved in developing the large clients, in troubleshooting and doing all the strategic stuff.
So do you feel more or less pressure than when you were working in the corporate world?
Garry: It’s different; I don’t think you can say there’s more or less.
There isn’t the corporate politics, which I found difficult to handle. I’m a very straight-talking person, so at Prudential I was very blunt in the boardroom. But there are times in these organisations in the city where you have to be very sycophantic and I found that very stressful.
Yet some people like the politics. And if they are comfortable with it and would worry about where the next pennies are coming from if they owned a business, then it is not the place to be. But if they want to be the master of their own destiny then you could say there is less pressure, because you don’t have to go home wondering if you said the wrong thing to someone.
When it’s your own business, you have pressure from the bank manager, pressure from your suppliers, and you have to collect money. But it still doesn’t stack up to where you have a bloke who you know doesn’t like you, and who, at the stroke of a pen, can just wipe you out.
Finally, what advice would you give to someone starting out in franchising?
Garry: Before you even start looking at the market, think about what your good at, and what you enjoy doing.
Then, research the market well. Talk to people face-to-face, and make an effort to speak to the franchisors. Look for a proven track record – you should get them to show you a minimum of three years of actual trading figures.
Go and speak to franchisees other than those whose contact details have been given to you by the franchisor. A lot of people don’t like doing that but I think it is a very necessary thing to do.
Enter the arena with your exit route in mind. The most successful franchisees are people that went into franchising with a game plan. Have clear goals, and then get out when they are achieved.
At the end of the day you don’t buy one these things to hand this over to family – it’s not like that. It’s not a family business; really you are renting a company for a period of time.
I would like to add an overarching caveat: the business you go into should give you the opportunity to have fun. If you enjoy what you do, you will be successful. If it’s a dirge, where you are doing the same thing every day – I defy anyone to tell me that that is fun.
The Kall Kwik Franchise Opportunity
Costs:
Franchise Fee: £18,750
Working Capital: £27,000
Total Investment: £170,000
What you get for your money: Initial training, on-site support and ongoing training for the first year. Premises rents are paid separately, and vary depending on location.
What franchisees make: “Average turnover per centre is £440k per annum. I would expect a franchisee to draw an income of around £70k from that. That’s an average net profit.” Caroline Joyce, Franchise Development Manager
For more information on the Kall Kwik franchise opportunity, please visit the brochure page >>
