Why consider an oven cleaning franchise?

Professional oven cleaning offers an excellent opportunity in a vibrant market, but why look at a franchise? Rik Hellewell, founder and managing director of Ovenu, puts forward some compelling reasons

Let’s start by looking at the definition of ‘starting on my own’. You are on your own, it’s all about you and you alone, you being master of your own destiny.

It will be you who has to dream up an imaginative business name without infringing trademarks. You will also need to design an appealing logo and maybe register your business with HMRC and/ or Companies House. It will be you who needs to source a training course that has a recognised accreditation, such as ISO 9001:2008. Then it will be your responsibility to find products and tools that work effectively.

Responsible
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You have to master the art of what you actually do for the consumer - that’s assuming you got your advertising message right in the first place and secured the order. You are responsible for things that get broken and don’t go according to plan. The buck stops with you. You are on your own. And despite there being millions of web pages out there in cyber land purporting to offer help and support on all topics known to man, ultimately it will be you who has to decide which are fact and which are fantasy. What is correct and what is simply another example of the blind leading the blind? There is nobody to help you - you are judge and jury.

No doubt, this scenario is appealing for people who have all of the skill sets to overcome the challenges mentioned above, but with the information superhighway flowing at full speed these days, surely it’s worth taking the time to press a few buttons, access the internet and determine whether this really is the way you want things to be.

To many, there is the misconception that becoming an integral part of a well established and profitable franchise is a soft option or cop out. It isn’t. Running a successful franchise in your local area requires many attributes, coupled with a strong desire and longing for those elusive profits while trading in tough economic conditions.

So the soft option, therefore, is to do nothing. To remain sheltered under the umbrella of ‘guaranteed employment’, continue being a wage slave and living with that permanently nagging question: I wonder what might have happened if I did that?

Over the last 19 years or so we’ve seen dozens - if not hundreds - of oven cleaners come and go and for a variety of interesting (sometimes comical) reasons. The majority of these casualties wanted to be good oven cleaners. Naturally, they wanted to makes pots of cash by impressing customers on a daily basis. They wanted financial security and a fantastic work/life balance. These are all very fine aspirations, but they all had one failing in common - they had little or no idea about running a profitable and successful business.

Even now, since the launch of the internet, which has brought information and knowledge to the public at large in spades, many go it alone oven cleaners are struggling and, unfortunately, will undoubtedly follow their predecessors into financial obscurity before too long.

Benefitting
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On the other hand, however, and excellently demonstrated last month at the company’s annual get together, Ovenu franchisees are benefitting from belonging to a profitable, professional and vibrant network.

A network of individuals all trading under a massive corporate umbrella and working as a collective where ‘the whole is genuinely larger than the sum of the parts’. The members of the network are still self employed, but are enjoying and profiting from what a network has to offer - be that problem solving by making a quick call, online and offline marketing support or keeping up to speed with the modern ways of doing profitable business. The list is almost endless, but the significant point here is that they are not alone. There is always somebody to help or even just to talk to.

Working for yourself can be extremely lonely, even insular and depressing at times, especially if you don’t have somebody to chat to who understands the trials and tribulations of being your own boss. There’s no insinuation here that franchising brings a Samaritan-esque element to the party, but there are times when it’s good to talk, get together over a beer and meet those like-minded colleagues within a network who share mutual concerns, goals and aspirations.

Our annual conference was a network event of business owners - a huge gathering of franchisees discussing their Ovenu businesses. There was limited - if any - chat about the latest enamel coating of oven interiors or oven door hinges. Instead, there were plenty of franchisees hungry for hints and tips on getting more profitable customers and accelerating the value of their respective businesses.

Integral
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So becoming an integral part of the Ovenu network isn’t simply about being exceptionally good at cleaning ovens. It’s equally about, if not more so, running a profitable oven cleaning business. And in our case, a business that has been running extremely successfully for over 19 years now and, for the last 15 years, teaching and working with franchisees to help them replicate our national and international success at a local level.

Franchising then, although not for everybody and particularly unsuitable for the dyed in the wool entrepreneur, could well be a viable option for those seeking self employed status, but with the added security of having a strong and experienced team behind the scenes.

And for those readers of this publication who may be investigating the oven cleaning sector, perhaps taking a while to do a little browsing could be time well spent, especially when seeking out those franchisors who are full members of the British Franchise Association (and have been for a good while), offer training and support to ISO 9001:2008 standard and have a highly visible network of franchisees throughout the UK and beyond. Here’s an easy way - visit www.ovenufranchise.co.uk.