Chips away, anyone made money from the franchise?
Discussion
If you're thinking of doing it, don't! High franchise fees coupled with VERY short/rubbish training. You'd be best off paying for training somewhere then going it alone. I know a guy who started off with Chipsaway and afterwards carried on using his own name, he now makes a very good living. My boyfriend has a franchise with a dent removal company, and knows about 4/5 chipsaway guys, none of whom are very positive about the company.
I love the fact people are telling you not to yet they haven't ran one themselves and are just going by word of mouth.
See here:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
See here:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
V12Les said:
poo at Paul's said:
Dont do it!
Why? Because if you do, you will associated with that fappin awful TV ad they have out now!
(Having said that I'd hit the MILF in the black dress like the angry fist of God!)
Why? Because if you do, you will associated with that fappin awful TV ad they have out now!
(Having said that I'd hit the MILF in the black dress like the angry fist of God!)
mmmmm....better keep a lookout for her. 
HTH
Edited by rottie102 on Tuesday 13th October 21:14
We started in ChipsAway with one van with two of us working in it in May 2004. We now have three vans and a fixed site, and we're opening a second fixed site early next year.
We're the repairer to the local Merc, Aston and Porsche dealerships, among others.
When our five year renewal came up, we carefully considered if remaining in the network was to our advantage, and decided it absolutely was. Having access to the dominant brand is a tremendous advantage in business. And the license fees are fixed, not a percentage, and they make up a very small portion of our turnover.
We both gave up fairly well-paid full-time jobs to launch the business. Suffice to say that we are financially better-off now. I know there is a recession on - but Q2 and Q3 2009 were our strongest ever.
A Midlands branch with two fixed sites and half-a-dozen employed painters turns over a couple of thousand pounds every day. A West-country one-man, one-van operation doing mostly motor trade work has a £100k+ turnover working on his own.
So, emphatically Yes, in answer to the OP's question, plenty of people have made money from the franchise.
A more complete answer:
Obviously, everyone's experience is different - your mileage may vary and all that. The franchised model is higher-overhead than an independent business one - but you are purchasing something with that money. Franchised failure rates are much lower than other start-ups.
The system, however, can work. Even one success story proves that. The only variables are:
a) the franchisee, and
b) the business decisions they make starting up.
If the franchisee has the right skillset and attitude, can play well with others (a franchised operator needs the skills to manage the relationship with their neighbours and their franchisor), and can turn access to a strong brand into a profit source rather than a cost, then they are likely to make money out of being franchised.
If they select a franchise area where competition and demand support their business, they are making their lives easier. Picking an area to work with the wrong demographic (for example) can be a really bad idea - if an independent trader realises they have done this they can simply work a wider area, but the franchised territory model limits the flexibility of the response to this. Doing your research beforehand is far more important.
And as with any business, financing the start-up correctly is critical. A franchised model has monthly fees so the option to mothball the business completely and reduce costs is limited. A business with access to very limited working capital and/or high repayments on debt taken out to purchase the contract rights is a risk. ChipsAway require all franchisees to declare that they have taken independent, professional advice on how they are financially starting their business - but some potential franchisees think they know better, pick a dangerous financing model, and lie about the advice they've taken. More fool them.
However, if you're the right person, setting up your business the right way, and in the right place, the product is proven, the brand is almost synoymous with the service (witness the threads on this site talking about "chipsaway repairs" or "chipsaway-type repairs", for SMART repairs, never another brand), demand is ongoing, and typical margins are sound.
A slight aside - a recent poll on the SMART repairers web-forum told an interesting story - the vast majority (over 80%) of forum members there either started in the industry through a franchise (whether or not they were still franchised), or had a bodyshop background. Starting up and remaining in business without either previous experience or a franchised model was comparatively very rare.
Hope this is useful, all the best with your research,
Tol
ChipsAway Cambridge, Ely & Newmarket
ETA: The lady in the ChipsAway TV ad, for those asking, is Julie Lowery. Her official site is at http://www.julielowery.com
We're the repairer to the local Merc, Aston and Porsche dealerships, among others.
When our five year renewal came up, we carefully considered if remaining in the network was to our advantage, and decided it absolutely was. Having access to the dominant brand is a tremendous advantage in business. And the license fees are fixed, not a percentage, and they make up a very small portion of our turnover.
We both gave up fairly well-paid full-time jobs to launch the business. Suffice to say that we are financially better-off now. I know there is a recession on - but Q2 and Q3 2009 were our strongest ever.
A Midlands branch with two fixed sites and half-a-dozen employed painters turns over a couple of thousand pounds every day. A West-country one-man, one-van operation doing mostly motor trade work has a £100k+ turnover working on his own.
So, emphatically Yes, in answer to the OP's question, plenty of people have made money from the franchise.
A more complete answer:
Obviously, everyone's experience is different - your mileage may vary and all that. The franchised model is higher-overhead than an independent business one - but you are purchasing something with that money. Franchised failure rates are much lower than other start-ups.
The system, however, can work. Even one success story proves that. The only variables are:
a) the franchisee, and
b) the business decisions they make starting up.
If the franchisee has the right skillset and attitude, can play well with others (a franchised operator needs the skills to manage the relationship with their neighbours and their franchisor), and can turn access to a strong brand into a profit source rather than a cost, then they are likely to make money out of being franchised.
If they select a franchise area where competition and demand support their business, they are making their lives easier. Picking an area to work with the wrong demographic (for example) can be a really bad idea - if an independent trader realises they have done this they can simply work a wider area, but the franchised territory model limits the flexibility of the response to this. Doing your research beforehand is far more important.
And as with any business, financing the start-up correctly is critical. A franchised model has monthly fees so the option to mothball the business completely and reduce costs is limited. A business with access to very limited working capital and/or high repayments on debt taken out to purchase the contract rights is a risk. ChipsAway require all franchisees to declare that they have taken independent, professional advice on how they are financially starting their business - but some potential franchisees think they know better, pick a dangerous financing model, and lie about the advice they've taken. More fool them.
However, if you're the right person, setting up your business the right way, and in the right place, the product is proven, the brand is almost synoymous with the service (witness the threads on this site talking about "chipsaway repairs" or "chipsaway-type repairs", for SMART repairs, never another brand), demand is ongoing, and typical margins are sound.
A slight aside - a recent poll on the SMART repairers web-forum told an interesting story - the vast majority (over 80%) of forum members there either started in the industry through a franchise (whether or not they were still franchised), or had a bodyshop background. Starting up and remaining in business without either previous experience or a franchised model was comparatively very rare.
Hope this is useful, all the best with your research,
Tol
ChipsAway Cambridge, Ely & Newmarket
ETA: The lady in the ChipsAway TV ad, for those asking, is Julie Lowery. Her official site is at http://www.julielowery.com
Edited by Anatol on Wednesday 14th October 07:26
Anatol said:
Her official site is at http://www.julielowery.com
opening pic 
youtube ad What are they selling and who would buy it?
Or is it all about getting the name out there
The local franchised dealer bodyshop has a good reputation for smart repairs, and rather than doing it on a dusty drive they have a nice environmentally controlled paint paint booth.
saaby93 said:
opening pic youtube ad
What are they selling and who would buy it?
Or is it all about getting the name out there
The local franchised dealer bodyshop has a good reputation for smart repairs, and rather than doing it on a dusty drive they have a nice environmentally controlled paint paint booth.
It's both a brand awareness campaign, and to drive enquiries. The style was designed to be deliberately a little provocative because it's (according to those with vastly more knowledge of TV marketing than I) far better that people talk about your ad, for whatever reason, than forget about it. The ad is *also* on YouTube, but it's main medium is a spread of 20 TV channels. youtube ad What are they selling and who would buy it?
Or is it all about getting the name out there
The local franchised dealer bodyshop has a good reputation for smart repairs, and rather than doing it on a dusty drive they have a nice environmentally controlled paint paint booth.
Oh, and we have a controlled environment booth that we use on repairs that would benefit from it, as do several other ChipsAway branches. (Despite that facility, last time I did a price comparison with a local full-service bodyshop, our invoice total was just under a quarter of their quote for the same work.) Almost all SMART repairs will be hand finished, which isn't viable on larger repairs. A hand flatted and polished repair completed in an uncontrolled environment is actually likely to have a better finish and fewer nibs than an out-of-the-gun finish repair done in a booth.
As always, results depend on the skill of the technician.
HTH
Tol
Anatol said:
saaby93 said:
opening pic youtube ad
What are they selling and who would buy it?
Or is it all about getting the name out there
The local franchised dealer bodyshop has a good reputation for smart repairs, and rather than doing it on a dusty drive they have a nice environmentally controlled paint paint booth.
It's both a brand awareness campaign, and to drive enquiries. The style was designed to be deliberately a little provocative because it's (according to those with vastly more knowledge of TV marketing than I) far better that people talk about your ad, for whatever reason, than forget about it. The ad is *also* on YouTube, but it's main medium is a spread of 20 TV channels. youtube ad What are they selling and who would buy it?
Or is it all about getting the name out there
The local franchised dealer bodyshop has a good reputation for smart repairs, and rather than doing it on a dusty drive they have a nice environmentally controlled paint paint booth.
Oh, and we have a controlled environment booth that we use on repairs that would benefit from it, as do several other ChipsAway branches. (Despite that facility, last time I did a price comparison with a local full-service bodyshop, our invoice total was just under a quarter of their quote for the same work.) Almost all SMART repairs will be hand finished, which isn't viable on larger repairs. A hand flatted and polished repair completed in an uncontrolled environment is actually likely to have a better finish and fewer nibs than an out-of-the-gun finish repair done in a booth.
As always, results depend on the skill of the technician.
HTH
Tol
Anatol said:
As always, results depend on the skill of the technician.
The strange thing about the advert with the scratch is that, in the experience of a mate, the chipsaway guy would refuse to do it, as it's in the middle of a panel and likely to show afterwards (good on the guy for knowing his limits and saying so). What they seem to prefer is edges, wheel arches etc. Chipsaway or bodyshop it's also an idea to find out what system the car used and who is using that system for their repairs.
On the other hand if you want the scratch taken out, the guy thinks he can do it, its quick and easy no fuss
Awful is a judgment call, but confusing is an unusal complaint. It's a 30 second message, and the story portrayed, the text on screen and the info in the voiceover is pitched at a level that should make sense to any native English-speaker with a verbal communication and reading age consistent with being able to own and drive a car (no offence intended to the poster who found it confusing!).
Tol
Tol
saaby93 said:
(good on the guy for knowing his limits and saying so)
Absolutely. No-one is going to have the same skill level after doing something full-time for many years that they did when they started. We have in the network technicians who are in their first week of getting paid for doing this, and others who had 35 years in bodyshops before becoming a ChipsAway operator, and many years in ChipsAway too.In any skilled trade, results will vary - they will vary in a single bodyshop from one painter to the next, too.
The system is absolutely up to repairs of the type shown in the ad, though an operator in the early months of being in business would be steered away from that type of repair by their training, the operations manual, and their mentor franchisee. For an experienced tech, it would be a bread and butter job, and take less than half a day.
Tol
Anatol said:
We started in ChipsAway with one van with two of us working in it in May 2004. We now have three vans and a fixed site, and we're opening a second fixed site early next year.
We're the repairer to the local Merc, Aston and Porsche dealerships, among others.
When our five year renewal came up, we carefully considered if remaining in the network was to our advantage, and decided it absolutely was. Having access to the dominant brand is a tremendous advantage in business. And the license fees are fixed, not a percentage, and they make up a very small portion of our turnover.
We both gave up fairly well-paid full-time jobs to launch the business. Suffice to say that we are financially better-off now. I know there is a recession on - but Q2 and Q3 2009 were our strongest ever.
A Midlands branch with two fixed sites and half-a-dozen employed painters turns over a couple of thousand pounds every day. A West-country one-man, one-van operation doing mostly motor trade work has a £100k+ turnover working on his own.
So, emphatically Yes, in answer to the OP's question, plenty of people have made money from the franchise.
A more complete answer:
Obviously, everyone's experience is different - your mileage may vary and all that. The franchised model is higher-overhead than an independent business one - but you are purchasing something with that money. Franchised failure rates are much lower than other start-ups.
The system, however, can work. Even one success story proves that. The only variables are:
a) the franchisee, and
b) the business decisions they make starting up.
If the franchisee has the right skillset and attitude, can play well with others (a franchised operator needs the skills to manage the relationship with their neighbours and their franchisor), and can turn access to a strong brand into a profit source rather than a cost, then they are likely to make money out of being franchised.
If they select a franchise area where competition and demand support their business, they are making their lives easier. Picking an area to work with the wrong demographic (for example) can be a really bad idea - if an independent trader realises they have done this they can simply work a wider area, but the franchised territory model limits the flexibility of the response to this. Doing your research beforehand is far more important.
And as with any business, financing the start-up correctly is critical. A franchised model has monthly fees so the option to mothball the business completely and reduce costs is limited. A business with access to very limited working capital and/or high repayments on debt taken out to purchase the contract rights is a risk. ChipsAway require all franchisees to declare that they have taken independent, professional advice on how they are financially starting their business - but some potential franchisees think they know better, pick a dangerous financing model, and lie about the advice they've taken. More fool them.
However, if you're the right person, setting up your business the right way, and in the right place, the product is proven, the brand is almost synoymous with the service (witness the threads on this site talking about "chipsaway repairs" or "chipsaway-type repairs", for SMART repairs, never another brand), demand is ongoing, and typical margins are sound.
A slight aside - a recent poll on the SMART repairers web-forum told an interesting story - the vast majority (over 80%) of forum members there either started in the industry through a franchise (whether or not they were still franchised), or had a bodyshop background. Starting up and remaining in business without either previous experience or a franchised model was comparatively very rare.
Hope this is useful, all the best with your research,
Tol
ChipsAway Cambridge, Ely & Newmarket
Very informative indeed. I did my research thoroughly on ChipsAway when considering taking a franchise route. For a start, there are 350 franchisees in opertion since every last time i asked. When making an enquiry as to how many franchisees there are in operation the number will remain the same whether you ask this today tomorrow next month, in 2008 or 2009 (ask for yourself). When i asked one of the trainers at the Chips Training Head Quarters how many people they train per month on average, his answer was 10. So every month 10 must be failing?? I went around numerous areas and talked to Chipsaway franchisees, and not one of them had a good thing to say about it. One franchisee told me in his training group there was 12 start ups in 2008 and he is the only one left in business after 2 years. Another told me that there was 8 in his training group, now there is only 2 left including him, after 14 months. When I took an in depth look into the franchise, the model itself is great, but not as a main earner, only as an add on. Smart repairs are small to medium sized repairs. If you did only smart repairs your business wouldn’t survive, unless your in partnership with a body shop. We're the repairer to the local Merc, Aston and Porsche dealerships, among others.
When our five year renewal came up, we carefully considered if remaining in the network was to our advantage, and decided it absolutely was. Having access to the dominant brand is a tremendous advantage in business. And the license fees are fixed, not a percentage, and they make up a very small portion of our turnover.
We both gave up fairly well-paid full-time jobs to launch the business. Suffice to say that we are financially better-off now. I know there is a recession on - but Q2 and Q3 2009 were our strongest ever.
A Midlands branch with two fixed sites and half-a-dozen employed painters turns over a couple of thousand pounds every day. A West-country one-man, one-van operation doing mostly motor trade work has a £100k+ turnover working on his own.
So, emphatically Yes, in answer to the OP's question, plenty of people have made money from the franchise.
A more complete answer:
Obviously, everyone's experience is different - your mileage may vary and all that. The franchised model is higher-overhead than an independent business one - but you are purchasing something with that money. Franchised failure rates are much lower than other start-ups.
The system, however, can work. Even one success story proves that. The only variables are:
a) the franchisee, and
b) the business decisions they make starting up.
If the franchisee has the right skillset and attitude, can play well with others (a franchised operator needs the skills to manage the relationship with their neighbours and their franchisor), and can turn access to a strong brand into a profit source rather than a cost, then they are likely to make money out of being franchised.
If they select a franchise area where competition and demand support their business, they are making their lives easier. Picking an area to work with the wrong demographic (for example) can be a really bad idea - if an independent trader realises they have done this they can simply work a wider area, but the franchised territory model limits the flexibility of the response to this. Doing your research beforehand is far more important.
And as with any business, financing the start-up correctly is critical. A franchised model has monthly fees so the option to mothball the business completely and reduce costs is limited. A business with access to very limited working capital and/or high repayments on debt taken out to purchase the contract rights is a risk. ChipsAway require all franchisees to declare that they have taken independent, professional advice on how they are financially starting their business - but some potential franchisees think they know better, pick a dangerous financing model, and lie about the advice they've taken. More fool them.
However, if you're the right person, setting up your business the right way, and in the right place, the product is proven, the brand is almost synoymous with the service (witness the threads on this site talking about "chipsaway repairs" or "chipsaway-type repairs", for SMART repairs, never another brand), demand is ongoing, and typical margins are sound.
A slight aside - a recent poll on the SMART repairers web-forum told an interesting story - the vast majority (over 80%) of forum members there either started in the industry through a franchise (whether or not they were still franchised), or had a bodyshop background. Starting up and remaining in business without either previous experience or a franchised model was comparatively very rare.
Hope this is useful, all the best with your research,
Tol
ChipsAway Cambridge, Ely & Newmarket
There are a handful number of Chipsaway franchisees that are doing well. These are the ones that you see in the chipsaway adverts in magazines giving accounts of their experiences. What they don’t tell you is that their main business isn’t Chipsaway, and that their success story isn’t soley based on chipsaway. By keeping this quiet they get some PR good advertisement in the mag for free, maybe some loyalty discount on purchasing products from Chipsaway and other incentives, like becoming a business developer. What the busy or successful chipsaway franchisees should be saying is, yes Chipsaway has been a good add on to our valeting and MOT business, or has helped us with our car care centre, maybe if it wasn’t for the miracle dent puller we use (which isn’t part of the Chipsaway franchise model) we wouldn’t be this busy. The business developers who help new franchisees start up and launch, are existing Franchisees, “not employed” by chipsaway, but get paid £1500approx by chipsaway for a weekend helping at promotions. Trade franchise’s are no longer available because the early Franchisees got them, and they are the money makers, anything new is retail.
ETA
Removed under N&S rules.
Edited by Big Al. on Tuesday 1st June 19:56
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