Proud dad Paul Clift faced redundancy before joining the UK’s leading ‘on-the-spot’ car repair franchise ChipsAway three years ago. Within 12 months of launching his business, demand had increased so much that he needed to gear up and expand, taking on a second territory and an additional vehicle - enabling his son Robert to help him in building a strong family enterprise. At a time when so many small businesses are suffering and young people are struggling to find jobs, Paul reckons his ChipsAway franchise has provided the perfect solution!

“Robert joined me straight out of school, to help with the business,” Paul explains. “He absolutely loves it and wants to take a bigger role, which is fantastic as demand for our services has continued to grow strongly – in fact, if anything, the financial recession has been good for us – lots of new customers have discovered that a professional quality ChipsAway repair means that their car looks good and lasts longer!”

Robert came on board two years ago, helping Paul to manage his increasing workload, but as the business continued to grow, taking on an extra vehicle was vital in order to provide the flexibility that they both needed, which enabled them to improve their service to customers. “Sometimes due to high demand we weren’t able to get back to our customers within ten days of their enquiry. Now we can reply to customers sooner, get through twice as much work and have the capacity to grow further on our second territory.”

Paul says his redundancy was certainly a cloud with a silver lining. “From day one I had work lined up for about three weeks ahead,” he recalls. “Ever since I have always had a full diary; reputation has spread by word of mouth and currently recommendations account for at least 30% of all new business leads. My ChipsAway business is doing really well and working with Robert is great - we’re both really excited about the future and growing the business even further!”