Franchise Your Business
| Jim's Skip Bins - Craig Parke |
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In April 1995 I was tired of working retails hours, so I decided to buy a business, where I set my own hours and had a good lifestyle. I purchased a Mowing franchise, and quickly began increasing my customer base, so much so that I sold off customers to new franchisees every 6 months or so. In January 1997, I trialled a new division “Jim's Trees”. I had been doing a bit of tree work with my Mowing franchise, however once we branded a trailer with Jim's Trees and began advertising under that name, the amount of new work was fantastic. I decided to devote my full time efforts into Trees, where the division grew to around 30 franchisees. 
After a year developing Trees in Brisbane, I worked for Jim from 1998 till 2002, developing new divisions such as Antennas and Fencing. The Jim's system is fantastic for a new franchisee looking to develop (franchisee, trainer, regional franchisor, divisional franchisor) or for someone wanting to grow their current business through the franchising model. In 2007, my brother (Andrew is the divisional franchisor for Jim's Antennas) and I decided to launch a new division with Jim's. I sat in the call centre for a few hours and asked the girls what service the customers were calling us for, that we were not offering. The results where that many people were calling for a skip bin, they assumed we provided that service. There were others like furniture removals and pest control, but Skip Bins was the most appealing to me. Having been with Jim's for 13 years at the time and Andrew for 8 years, we knew that the best opportunity for success in both franchise numbers and customers, was by using the Jim's brand. The call centre was already operating, contracts, disclosures, computer programmes were all ready, so we could put a new franchisee on the road within weeks. In 2009, just on two years since we delivered our first skip bin, we now have 35 franchisees and franchisors, with over 30 trucks and 700 bins on the road, in every major city in Australia. Based on figures till September, we are likely to generate over 15,000 new customer leads this year, through a very basic advertising campaign. Most franchisees are flat out for most of the time. Most run out of bins as the weekend approaches and many are buying more and more bins to cope. Income and conversion rates are proven to be higher with a Jim's franchise, so too we believe are the levels of referrals and repeat clients. Jim's Skip Bins work in well with other divisions such as Mowing & Fencing and are already the dominant franchised skip bins business in Australia. We already have interest in Canada, New Zealand and the U.K and hope to reach our 100th franchisee sometime in 2011. |