The franchise flag-bearer Nigel Toplis

Spend much time in the company of Nigel Toplis, managing director of The Bardon Group, the multi-brand franchise company that owns Recognition Express, ComputerXplorers, Kall Kwik and techclean, and you’ll quickly notice how fiercely he fights for the interests of franchising. “We have around 20,000 business people out there that are franchisees,” he says. “And yet if you were to ask politicians about franchising, they would look at you agog: you can’t get government at any level to take you seriously.” Quoting recent bfa figures reporting that 95% of franchises succeed while four out of five startups fail, Toplis feels the amount of energy and capital the government sinks into supporting startups is insane, especially when there exists a model that could offer far better returns for the economy as a whole. “I’m not saying franchising is perfect,” he says. “But by god you’ve got something that bloody works. Make use of it.”

Given his experience in the sector, it’s hardly surprising Toplis is such an ardent supporter of the industry’s interests. Born, raised and educated in Singapore, he moved to the UK in 1976 and, after completing a higher national diploma in business studies, he took a job at Allied Breweries in Burton on Trent. “In the 1980s, the brewery companies were looking to create pubs that would attract certain types of people, so some would have food, some would have children’s areas, some would have loud music,” says Toplis. “I became a bit of an expert in doing the demographic profiling for that.” After helping to create different style of pubs around the country, in 1982 Toplis was moved into the food and catering brand that was created when Allied Breweries merged with J. Lyons & Co, the restaurant, food manufacturing and hotel conglomerate. This saw him setting up brasseries, cafes and even a tapas operation. “You could go to Spain, find out what they do, come back here and set something up,” Toplis says. “It was fabulous: we even had Fay Maschler come down and do a review.”

Following this, in 1984, Toplis was headhunted by Ladbrokes to help the gambling company develop new styles of betting shop. “It was still very much governed by legal restrictions in those days but it was starting to open up a little bit,” he says. Not only did Toplis play a role in creating new shops but he also went on to help it run lots of its premium lines such as football-information service ClubCall and a horoscopes line with astrologer Russell Grant. During one meeting around the Grand National, he was also part of the team that came up with a new type of bet that was guaranteed to get punters itching to get down the bookies. “Basically what it allowed us to do was guarantee a £1m payout,” he says. “Now back in the 1980s, obviously a £1m was a lot of wedge.”

Without a doubt, these experiences have given Toplis a real appreciation of how businesses can benefit from encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset among employees. “While Allied Breweries and Ladbrokes were huge conglomerates, in the day they were very go ahead companies,” he says. “They always allowed you to make a decision if you thought it was right for the business and they were fairly open to entrepreneurial ideas.” Being given so much agency at a relatively tender age is certainly something that has stuck with Toplis and this is a spirit he has attempted to enshrine in all of his endeavours since. “Neither company was afraid to give young people their head,” he says. “And I’ve tried to adopt mentality within the companies we’ve got here, bringing young people through and saying ‘listen, at the end of the day, this will be your business so you’ve got to want to run it’.”

Despite this openness to innovation, in 1993 Ladbrokes decided it was time to divest some of the operations Toplis had been working on to focus more on core operations. “I tried to buy it but my boss beat me to it and so therefore I left,” he says. “It’s just one of those things: you can only make one bid, can’t you?”