The Wheel Specialist’s latest franchisees discuss their success

A family of car body shop owners chose to use The Wheel Specialist’s franchise model when they wanted to expand into alloy wheel refurbishment.

Christopher Chubb was managing an automotive business with his brother and father before they became franchisees. He explained:

“We know that when you are running a business on your own, it can take years of hard work to build up customer numbers. But we had heard about The Wheel Specialist’s central website lead generation and CRM system and we knew that would be a far quicker way to gain customers.”

As soon as they established their own franchise unit under The Wheel Specialist’s branding, they saw impressive results:

“We launched as franchisees in July 2019 and it was full-on from day one,” Christopher said. “Leads were coming in even while we were setting up the business. We were getting 14-20 leads a night. Even now it’s 12-15 some nights and about 25 on a weekend.”

Even during lockdown, when the business had to temporarily wind down, customers continued to make bookings. When lockdown ended, the Chubbs had a huge number of appointments. According to Jack Murphy, the car franchise’s Managing Director, other franchisees also took a significant number of bookings over lockdown:

“We saw a massive increase in the public web leads received through the main Wheel Specialist website from May to August and all were distributed to our franchisee network.”

In fact, May saw a 17 percent year-on-year increase in sales leads, and in June, customer interest rose by 72 percent. July and August were also busy months for franchisees, with leads up 49.6 percent and 54.9 percent respectively.

Christopher and his business co-owners have praised The Wheel Specialist’s model. He said:

“I have learnt a lot from them about sales, marketing, work scheduling and how to operate an efficient system to grow your business. Head office is always there to answer your questions, and you can call on the experience of more established franchisees in the network.”

Christopher added:

“The Wheel Specialist franchise worked very well for us. It lived up to its promises from day one and continues to deliver.”