Ecowash franchise has seen phenomenal growth since its launch four years ago. A love of cars has driven the business but co-founder Jim Cornish has animal instinct too.
When was the company founded? March 2004
How many franchisees do you have now? We currently have a team of 46 car washing service franchisees (55 mobile units) in Australia, but this is growing all the time. In terms of overseas, we have operations in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan), Europe (France) and the US.
What are your plans for 2008?
Our plans are in place to continue and build Upon our growth in Australia - 2008 is Shaping up as our biggest year yet and we Are well on target for 80 plus mobile units in Australia by the end of the year. We are also poised for a big year overseas - we are launching Greece in March, Switzerland in April and two more master franchisees are scheduled for the US in May. We are aiming for more than 150 mobile units worldwide by the end of 2008.
What has been the most challenging part of building your franchise? The biggest challenge is efficiently managing and allocating our resources in the face of our rapid global expansion, while at the same time maintaining our streamlined operation, franchisee support infrastructure and relaxed corporate culture. This is also the best part of the business, because as we grow we revisit, develop and refine our systems – so with each step forward we become stronger and the business foundation we offer to our franchisees just gets better and better. Ecowash
mobile car care franchise is like a family and we want to make sure as we expand globally we maintain the principles on which the business was founded – after all, it is these principles that have enabled us to get to where we are today.
How do you spend your spare time? What spare time? Seriously…relaxing with family and friends (yes, this includes our franchisees), but also driving – I love cars! Being a car fanatic is not an essential part of being involved with ecowash mobile
car care franchise but it certainly helps; it is one of the reasons why I love what we do and really appreciate the difference we can make to somebody’s day. This is a very happy business and I’m inspired daily by what we are achieving together as a team.
What did you do before franchising? I was a marketing director (Specialist Channels) for Nestle Purina looking after the Asia, Qceania and Africa regions.
Tell us one thing we don’t know about you. I was originally a veterinary surgeon (because my parents said I need a backup for when I couldn't run a business based cars or car racing).
This article appears courtesy of Franchising Magazine.5-Jun-2008