The Wheel Specialist franchise offers opportunities for growth

What Franchise speaks to Ginny Murphy, managing director of The Wheel Specialist, about the company’s franchise opportunity

Who is The Wheel Specialist?
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The Wheel Specialist is the UK’s premier alloy wheel refurbishment expert and the only national brand with a nationwide presence operating from fixed premises.

After more than 40 years at the forefront of paint application and powder coating, recognising the unprecedented national demand for alloy wheel refurbishment, The Wheel Specialist began to offer a franchised business opportunity. It now boasts 16 branches across the length and breadth of the UK, with more planned openings later in the year.

The Wheel Specialist has been delivering this unique franchise opportunity for the past five years, offering a proven business model that can provide a rapid speed to market.

What does The Wheel Specialist offer?
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The market for alloy wheel refurbishment continues to grow annually, with statistics showing there are now over 120 million alloy wheels on our roads. Our franchisees benefit from our bespoke customer relationship management system, which gives them instant access to that market. The system allows customers to generate an instant automated quote online 24/7, which is then automatically allocated to the nearest branch for follow up. In the past year our CRM system has issued in excess of £15 million worth of quotes.

The system is driven by an extensive online marketing campaign that allows us to harness the benefits of all the various online media sites to ensure search engine optimisation. Earlier this year the success of our online marketing was recognised when we were selected as finalists for the Franchise Marketing Awards 2012, an achievement we are extremely proud of.

All franchisees benefit from an initial bespoke training course dealing with all different aspects of the business, ranging from technical to sales and marketing. Once you are up and running, we continue to assist you, with our experienced and devoted franchise support team there to guide you as required.

Why is The Wheel Specialist different to work with?
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The Wheel Specialist operates as an ethical franchisor and you will benefit from having your own totally exclusive territory. We have a close working relationship with all our franchisees and continuously work on their behalf. This benefits you in all areas of your business. For example, we have a number of preferred suppliers that are sourced to give our franchise network preferential rates.

We are pioneers at what we do. Our franchise model is borne from a long established business that is proven to work, which allows us to constantly review and refine our processes and procedures for continued success, advised by our industry leading research and development team.

The Wheel Specialist is the only such franchise to operate from fixed premises. This allows the franchisee increased earning potential that is unable to be matched by a mobile unit. It also enables us to offer a same day service while maintaining consistently high standards, something which is echoed in the glowing testimonials we receive on a daily basis.

What does the future hold for The Wheel Specialist?
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Our aim is to grow our network at a controlled rate for the benefit of our existing franchisees and we continue to research new ideas as we do. Despite the present economic climate, we are seeing growing interest in our opportunity as brand awareness increases.

We will have opened five new branches this calendar year and our Aberdeen branch, which has just completed its first full year of trading, has returned the best start-up year figures ever seen within our network. We are also experiencing more enquiries from people looking at our franchise as an alternative investment opportunity.