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VENTURE LEAMINGTON SPA, BIRMINGHAM AND LEICESTER

05 February 2019

Chris Barber who is the franchisee in Leamington Spa, opened a second studio on the outskirts of Birmingham city centre in June 2017, and added a third to his portfolio opening in Leicester in February 2019

Having traded in Leamington for nearly 10 years, Chris saw the opportunity of opening a second studio adjacent to his Leamington Spa territory.

“2016 and 2015 had been good years in Venture Leamington Spa and I wanted to expand the business, and it seemed the right time to look at a second studio and Birmingham made sense both from a location perspective and the size of the potential market. With the experience that I had gained from running a Venture studio, working hard and following the model I knew the financial returns from Leamington could be replicated in a second studio.

The franchise fee that I pay to Venture is more than covered by the number of customer appointments that I receive through their central marketing function and the resultant sales, so I have always taken the view that the rest of the services and support that I receive from the franchise basically costs me nothing.

Obviously opening a second studio whilst running a current business was hard work, but one of the reasons that I took this decision was that my team in Leamington Spa are extremely experienced.

We did a lot of work with Venture’s support on the initial marketing of the Birmingham studio, and have run a number of successful digital customer acquisition strategies with the Venture marketing team”

In its first full year in 2018, the Birmingham studio exceeded its business plan target achieving sales of £500K.

With both Leamington Spa and Birmingham producing strong financial results, Chris took the decision to open a third studio in Leicester.

“I wanted to use the experience of opening Birmingham, and open another studio in the Midlands that would benefit from the marketing that we were already doing in the area. Again, like Birmingham the Leicester territory was a fairly obvious choice”.

Venture Leicester opened in February 2019.

 


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