Kitchen Facelifts are the Dream Business for Trevor & Anne
Trevor Conduit, Dream Doors franchisee for Nottingham has sold £290,000 of kitchen facelifts in the first half of this year. He discusses his reasons for joining and his experiences so far…
“I had a number of specific requirements when looking for a franchise. It had to be available locally and give me the opportunity to work with my wife, Anne. I wanted to deal with people as I’d been used to working in a business to business environment and it had to be lucrative enough to replace a very good salary”
“At 52 years old I wanted to hit the ground running and, after seeing an advertisement in Daltons Weekly, I was taken by the concept. The Dream Doors formula of replacing old kitchen doors with bespoke new ones, for a fraction of the cost and with much less hassle than a complete re-fit, was something that I’d have done in my own home. On top of that, it had a USP (Unique Selling Point) that I could justifiably sell.”
“The information we received in the post established Dream Doors as a ‘real player’ with a robust business and franchise concept. We checked out the company with our accountant and decided we had to visit Head Office in Gosport”
“The personality and sheer determination to succeed that came across from Dream Doors Managing Director, Troy Tappenden, was enough to convince us and, from that first meeting, we decided this was a business we could both do.”
“We met our Franchise Manager in the summer and looked at the budget of another franchisee, seeing what other people’s expectations were, before putting together a detailed 3 year business plan. We are working to this now and the target is to replace my salary in year 1 and years 2 and 3 will exceed the money earned in the corporate arena. The number of sales and interest in the business so far has been exceptional and I fully expect us to outstrip expectations in years 2 and 3. The total funding of £70,000, required to buy the franchise and set up our showroom, has matched everything we were told by Head Office. In such a cash-rich business as this, taking cash up front and the balance in approximately 8 weeks mean we have budgeted to see a positive cash flow in 6 months.”
“We had budgeted to start in January, having signed the franchise agreement in September 2006. We found premises in October and spent most of our first 3 months fitting the showroom out. We started advertising in November so we would have 6 weeks leading up to the New Year to get our name out there. Not expecting to get any business from this, we were surprised to take 5 jobs before we had opened our showroom!”
“The support we have received from Dream Doors has been fantastic, with great training and field support on hand to help – and they really know their stuff. The initial training at Head Office is superb and complimented by excellent on site training to put everything into practice. Our Franchise Manager helped design our showroom, knowing what would and what wouldn’t work. He set up all of our software so we were well prepared to trade and used the internal monitoring, ordering and accounting systems immediately.”
“The back up from Head Office is excellent and we get all the administrative support we need. The Management Team in place are impressive, full of passion and experience and Dream Doors will only get stronger and stronger.”
“The Dream Doors annual conference was also extremel
y beneficial in that we could meet a number of other franchisees, both new and experienced, and share ideas. Every minute spent there was valuable and we were impressed by the enthusiasm still demonstrated by the older franchisees. Those first 3 months, leading up to 2007 really got us geed up for our official launch”
“We are very happy and confident in our selling, that we are not competing or under selling our product and service. Everything about the franchise works as it is written in the manual and, in your early days, this is important while you learn the business. We already have plans to develop, taking on our son and eventually additional showrooms within our territory.”
