Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection has announced new franchisees Gayan Weerakkody and his wife Anjana have been able to grow their franchise by 9% since taking over the Oxford territory in May earlier this year.
Gayan explains: “The greeting card franchise was well-run by the old franchisees for more than 20 years, so really there wasn’t a great deal of room for improvement in all the processes needed to supply the existing retail customer base! However, we have been able to grow the business by approaching it with fresh eyes and attention to detail. We try to see things from a customer’s point of view and realised if we supply small villages and everyone in the area receives the same birthday card, very soon they will start shopping elsewhere! Therefore, tailoring displays by offering different ranges of greetings cards has been the key to our success so far.
“We also like to keep things simple!” continues Gayan. “The process is straight forward: as franchisees we deliver greetings cards to retailers on a regular basis and return to merchandise displays with new lines every four to six weeks or so. This ensures displays are always looking appealing and as a result we make more sales. The retailers only pay for what is sold so are always happy to see us – there is no hard sell involved!
“So far we have been able to secure several new retail accounts through recommendation from existing retail clients,” confirms Gayan. “I hope this confirms we are on the right lines and doing a great job in supplying our retail customers with greetings cards. We are very happy that we have joined Card Connection as this has given us the chance to become self-employed running our own, already successful, franchised business.”
Card Connection is part of UK Greetings, which is a subsidiary of American Greetings Inc., one of the largest greeting card publishers in the world and has limited vacancies for franchisees that are keen to run an expanding business. Since the franchise network in the UK is complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee. These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £12,500 + Stock + Card Connection fee with earnings potential in excess of £50k per annum.