Platinum Wave offers expert consultancy, marketing & recruitment to strengthen your franchise. This article tells our story – who we are, why we love what we do, and how you could benefit from working with us.
Our story begins 10 years ago with a boozy lunch in a noisy pub on Edinburgh’s famous Royal Mile... no wait, let’s back up a bit further.
20 (ish) years ago (in a different bar), two recent university graduates, whilst mulling over uninspiring job offers, decided they would one day combine forces and work for themselves with no-one telling them what to do.
Alarmingly soon after, Suzie McCafferty set up her own business selling refillable ink cartridges, subsequently turning it into a network of 70 franchised stores in 6 countries. Andy McCarroll went to work in music publishing and tried to become a rock star on the weekends.
A lot happened over the next 10 years. Suzie exited her business, bought a Porsche, and took the helm of a large national recruitment agency franchise. Corporate life certainly had its perks after the gruelling 18-hour days as an international franchisor, but it didn’t bring Suzie the same sense of satisfaction, so she sold up again and launched Platinum Wave to help others follow in her footsteps turning great businesses into great franchises.
Andy, meanwhile, had long since decided that Radio 1’s loss was to be marketing’s gain, and was very successfully putting his creative skills to better use helping hundreds of small independent retailers take on the big boys with clever campaigns and smart emerging technologies. The catch up at the aforementioned boozy lunch led the two friends to realise there were now quite a lot of synergies between their working lives – perhaps the time had come team up?
That was 2010. Today, Platinum Wave is a team of nine with a cabinet full of awards and a very impressive client list. Suzie is CEO and principal consultant. Andy head’s up the marketing team, and Steve (former banking high-flyer and successful property entrepreneur) leads our dynamite franchise and executive recruitment team. Our USP as a franchise consultancy firm, is that no matter what you engage us to help you with, you get all of us. We’re not a collective of individuals – we are a team. And we’ve heard it said that Teamwork makes the Dream work...
WHAT DO WE DO?
It’s all about you, actually.
Franchise my business.
A common starting point is helping businesses successfully transition from independent company to national franchise. This is where we find the answers, in order, to these crucially important questions: Can you franchise your business? Should you franchise your business? And, How do you franchise your business?
We start with a feasibility study. We recommend how your franchise proposition should be structured, help you identify potential competitors (for both franchisees and customers), determine appropriate franchise fee structures, and highlight the key legal & operational documents, processes & systems required to franchise. This will help you to structure your franchise start up package, provide advice on brand protection, franchisee training & support programmes, operational processes, systems, supply chains, franchise territory mapping, franchisee profiling, and also produce franchisee and franchisor projections models. And that’s by no means an exhaustive list! As Suzie likes to say, “fail to plan, plan to fail’. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the Operation Manual yet. Or your Franchise Agreement; and yes, it really must be written by a bfa accredited solicitor!
Franchise Recruitment.
There are some serious advantages to having us as a third-party recruitment resource. First, we are experts in both recruitment and marketing – two skills that are expensive to have on your payroll, especially in the early days. Second, recruitment is time consuming and since time is your most valuable resource, we save you a tonne of it. Third, we do this every day for lots of brands across different sectors and we see the broader picture of the industry as a whole – meaning we understand what prospective franchisees are looking for, where they look for it, and what they ultimately invest in.
We know that not every potential franchisee has franchising on their radar, so some won’t be on portals or searching for opportunities on Google. So you (we) need to get creative. You need to be thinking about headhunting, advertising campaigns, PR and having some incredible marketing collateral that tells your business story and the amazing ways it can change their lives.
Steve has two dedicated head-hunters with decades of commercial recruitment experience on his team. This team is trusted by the likes of International mega brands Wendy’s, Ben & Jerry’s and German Doner Kebab to find them the very best candidates - whether it’s Master Franchisees, Area Developers, Multi-Unit Operators or even internal recruits for their franchise teams.
“We found Platinum Wave at just the right time. They created a bespoke solution to provide additional support and resource to our franchise recruitment and lead handling process. They are incredibly professional, diligent and a pleasure to deal with – I can highly recommend involving them at any stage of your franchise growth plans.” Fiona Creswell, Head of Franchise Development, Anytime Fitness.
The extras.
Building franchises and recruiting franchisees is what we do, but it’s not all we do. Suzie is in hot demand as a business mentor. Not surprising when you consider she’s been in the industry for over 20 years and in addition to Platinum Wave, sits as a non-executive director on the board of Right at Home UK, is On-Boarding Director at HERO Brands (owners of brands like German Doner Kebab and Island Poke), Chaired the bfa’s regional forum in Scotland for over 10 years and is now Regional Chair for EWiF. Whether helping you navigate international expansion, or getting the best from your franchisees with our individual or group training programs, Suzie has a wealth of knowledge and credibility that’s hard to match.
The Future.
We’ve not taken our foot off the gas at all during Covid. Like everyone, it brought us our fair share of challenges, but we’ve continued to sell franchises, work on a steady stream of consultancy projects and place people into new roles in franchising.
In 2022 we’ll be taking on new team members in every division to increase our capacity. We’ll also look for ways to grow our Franchise Advisory Board initiative which helped lots of people through tough times in the last year and a half. We’ll continue to strengthen our relationships with those people, brands and organisations like the bfa, EWiF and our friends here at What Franchise, all of whom fly the flag for ethical franchising and help keep the UK franchise industry punching above its weight.
Thanks for taking the time to read about our business – if you think we can your business at all, then we’d love to hear from you!