The past 18 months has witnessed fantastic growth for one home services franchise.
The on-going pandemic continues to boost certain sectors of the economy, none more so than home improvements and property services in general. In some regions, this has led to an increase in demand by more than 70%, with leading franchise Fantastic Services one of the beneficiaries.
According to Rune Sovndahl, chief executive and co-founder of Fantastic Services, demand has soared in a number of areas, including the Thames Valley. While Oxford has witnessed a 71% growth quarter-on-quarter, Reading has expanded by one-fifth. In the south-west, Bristol has grown by 67%, with cleaning, gardening and other property services attracting the greatest demand.
Rune explains: “Covid-19 has changed the business landscape across the UK, with many people and businesses struggling to recover. However, demand for property maintenance has boomed and several of our area developer franchisees, particularly in Oxford, Bristol and Reading, have enjoyed tremendous expansion.
“Across the entire country, we have launched 20 new areas during the past twelve months. We have seen a real spike in entrepreneurs keen to open franchises with us, rather than starting a new business completely on their own. This makes sense in that new franchisees enjoy the benefits of running their own business, while being protected from a lot of costs, risks and uncertainty.
“We also conducted a recent survey and discovered that approximately 3.5 million Brits have opened a second business since the beginning of lockdown. This trend is particularly prominent among millennials aged between 24 and 34. This obviously lends itself very well with the Fantastic Services business model and there is real demand to join our network.”
Fantastic Services was ranked 29th in the HSBC-sponsored top 100 Elite Franchise list of UK franchises for 2021, and only recently Rune Sovndahl announced that he wanted to create 1,000 millionaire franchisees over the next decade.
One husband and wife team which experienced a boom during lockdown was Julian and Lucy Fernando who operate franchises in Reading, Slough and Hemel Hempstead. In 2020, Team Fernando was Fantastic Services‘ most successful Area Developers, with an annual turnover that was 10 times greater than in the previous year.
They now have a network of six working franchisees and Lucy says: “Since launching, things couldn’t have gone better. There is both a real demand for our services, and also a demand from tradespeople and technicians keen to join our network. We have invested in technology and the Fantastic Services‘ app enables franchisees to see jobs in real-time. It will calculate the fastest route to their next customer, and it allows us to keep track of how everyone’s performing.”
Fantastic Services was launched in 2009 and now have more than 530 franchisees, stretching across three continents. The company specialise in cleaning, gardening, handyman, pest control, removals and other property services. Fantastic Services is a one-stop shop for over 100 services and is used by both domestic customers and commercial clients alike.
In the UK, the company deliver 100-plus services to over 50,000 clients each month, with operations overseen by HQ which employs more than 500 people. All franchisees follow a proven business model.
