Metro Plumb celebrates network success

Metro Plumb has been celebrating the success of its sister company Metro Rod and hopes to follow in its footsteps soon.

Metro Plumb has been celebrating the growth of sister brand Metro Rod and the plumbing franchise is now looking ahead to how it can emulate its success for itself.

In an interview with Proactive Investors, chairman of Franchise Brands Stephen Hemsley discussed the performance of the group’s franchises. He revealed that 83 percent of Metro Rod’s franchisees are currently in growth and that increasing automation across the business’ sales, accountancy and admin systems is helping it to become more efficient. Hemsley said that, in the future, he hopes to “allow franchisees to do more business with the same number of people (or even less), allowing them to invest more of their profits back into growing their business” and create what he calls a “virtuous circle”.

Hemsley expressed his delight that Metro Plumb had settled in well to the group and that the Vision 2023 Strategy for both Metro Rod and Metro Plumb was beginning to pay off nicely. Hemsley also discussed how he hopes to expand the Franchise Brands network soon by acquiring new complementary businesses that will help Metro Rod and Metro Plumb offer a complete service to customers.

“If we can find bolt-on systems [for] Metro Rod, where we expand the range of services, [that’s ideal]. We would like to service commercial customers from water in to waste out, so bolt-on acquisitions will help us achieve this.”

Speaking about Metro Plumb’s other sister franchises, Hemsley said that B2C brands like ChipsAway are generating a very healthy cash flow, putting the group in a better position overall for future acquisitions.

He concluded by saying that the momentum he feels currently exists within Franchise Brands is something that the whole group is confident will continue for the rest of the year and beyond.