Franchising showing strong growth in first months of 2009

Written on the 29 May 2009

Delegates at the FCA’s QLD State Conference, held on Friday 8th May, were told about strong growth in QLD based national franchises.

Delivering a keynote address, PoolWerx CEO John O’Brien reported that sales and profitability for his business were up in the first 4 months of 2009, with sales growth of 19% compared to the last 4 months of 08. O’Brien also delivered a challenging presentation exhorting all franchise systems to look deliberately and creatively at how to entrench and facilitate growth capability in their systems so as to capitalise on the opportunity being presented by the current economic circumstances and those when the economy returns to stronger growth.

Prominent pizza brand Eagle Boys has had double digit growth year on year. Murray Stewart, General Manager – Corporate at Eagle Boys indicated at the QLD Conference that they plan to open 16 new stores nationally in the next 6 weeks and 50 in the course of the rest of the year. “This will take us to about 280 stores by year’s end,” Mr Stewart said.

At the FCA’s South Australian State Conference on May 1st, Chris Malcolm CEO of Clark Rubber told delegates that having anticipated the downturn, they took the steps necessary to tighten operations, took risks at the management level and was pleased to report that they had a record December and that their first quarter 09 had well out stripped sales and profitability from the previous period (08).

“These strong results, and history during prior downturns, show us that franchise systems typically respond more quickly and effectively to changed market conditions, as the dual dynamic of having franchisor and franchisees close to the market and focused on meeting changed consumer expectations produces a synergistic response,” Executive Director of the FCA Steve Wright said.

Source - www.franchise.org.au