Card Connection Launches New Management Focused Strategy to Help Franchisees Maximise Profits

By: Card Connection | 0 Shares 60 Reads

August 15, 2008 // Franchising.com // Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection has today announced it has launched a new management focused business strategy to help its franchisees maximise profits.

"Up until now, Card Connection franchisees have distributed our extensive range of quality greeting cards and gifts to retail outlets throughout Britain," confirms Andrew Cutler, franchise director, at Card Connection. "This is a simple business model and has provided an excellent living for our franchisees. However, our most successful franchisees employ a small team of staff to pack and distribute cards from a warehouse, using liveried vans. By taking advantage of the economies of scale achieved by running a larger operation, these businesses have significantly improved their profit margins and therefore, we plan to help our other franchisees by rolling out this strategy country-wide.

"In this way, Card Connection is shifting from being simply a 'distribution' franchise to one where franchisees will be managers of their own mini-businesses," continues Cutler. "However, as Card Connection will continue to provide all the support of a successful and experienced franchisor, this presents some exciting opportunities for those who are looking at purchasing territories in the near future."

Card Connection itself is one of the UK's largest card publishers and is the market leader in the franchised distribution of greeting cards. Using a proven system, franchisees place greeting card ranges in retail outlets on a 'consignment' basis. The award winning merchandising service provided to retailers by local franchisees is second to none and has established the company's excellent reputation especially within the convenience sector. Card Connection supplies numerous national accounts, which include the likes of Welcome Break, Total, Budgens, Londis, Spar and Shell.

Card Connection has limited vacancies for franchisees who are keen to run an expanding business. Successful candidates would ideally have some management experience as, once established, they would be expected to employ a small team, operate a warehouse and have several liveried vans on the road.

Because the franchise networks in the UK and Ireland are complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee. These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £20,000 (+ stock) with earnings potential in excess of £50,000 per annum.

Cutler concludes: "Indications show that our economy is set to become a more challenging place to conduct business. We believe our new management focused strategy combined with the fact that the greeting card sector is essentially a recession-proof industry, will help our franchisees not only to exceed their current profit margins significantly but allow them to grow their businesses at a rate not seen in other industries. That makes a Card Connection franchise a very exciting prospect."

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