Fonehouse MD Clive Bayley on getting into mobile phone retail and franchising…
“I got into mobile phones when I came back from the United States because I’ve always been in marketing. I’ve had some really successful products, like the screwball glass, which is a glass with a straw around it which you probably had as a kid.
“We had distribution deals to sell those all over the world. I’ve worked with some of the biggest retailers in the US with our own shops, fashion businesses, housewares, novelties, publishing…
“The thing about mobile phones is everyone needs one and you have everything on it. It’s a great product and I like retail.
“Getting into franchising is good because what I’ve learnt about retail I can pass onto other people and we can do great out of it and hopefully have some fun on the way.”
The franchise team is made up of people who have already been working in the business, such as area managers, shop managers...
On helping out in the community…
“We’ll find a charity or school or take some other action in the community and we’ll tie in with them to do something in our store. Giving back to local community is obviously a worthwhile thing and it’s not bad for business either.
“It’s not easy to do a charitable campaign if you run a chain of national stores as it takes a lot of organising. What we say to our partners is here’s a template, why don’t you do this or this? Because they’re local and they have the time to do it, whereas for us to try and do that from head office won’t work.”
On helping franchisees to set up…
“We’ll have a 100 stores by the end of next year, maybe more. But it takes time finding the store, meeting the compliance, getting them open…
“But we can help people find a store, do the survey, do the shop fit, so we’re getting our act together a bit better. When we roll out our own stores we tend to do it quickly, but when we work with partners they tend to want to do it at their pace. We respect that and say find the store, be comfortable, then let’s plan how we open it.”
On expanding through franchising…
“We’ve had the systems for many years because we’ve got our own retail stores. The experience we’ve built up is all there, so getting the systems in and getting them rolling is not so difficult.
“The franchise team we’ve developed over the last two years is doing well. It’s made up of people who’ve already been working in our business – they’ve been area managers, shop managers... We’ve taken the good guys to teach the franchisees how to do this, so it’s working well.”
