Nigel Toplis
right to take on something new and he found Recognition Express, a franchise operating in a similar sector, was looking for somebody to step in and take the reins. “The owner of the business at the time had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and he wanted someone to come and take over the company,” he says. When Toplis finally entered the role in 2003, Recognition Express had a strong network of nearly 20 franchisees but he could see opportunities for the brand that extended far beyond its narrow focus on badge making. “We re-engineered the business completely,” he says. “We’ve gone from 95% badge making and being a manufacturer to now very much being a marketing-and-sales-led, customercentric business in three major sectors: badges, promotional products and business clothing.” And as this refined model began to bring Recognition Express increasing levels of success, Toplis started to acquire other brands that he felt had a similar ethos. “We bought into ComputerXplorers, which is an education franchise,” he says. “Then in 2011, Kall Kwik was going into administration so we bought it and brought it back into the fold; it was like a return to destiny.” And for Toplis, it hasn’t been hard to identify the right kinds of brands to add to the portfolio. Early on he ruled out franchises in sectors like food service and care – reasoning it takes a very special skill set to secure success in those verticals. But there is a common thread that runs through the franchises he has bought into, even recent acquisition techclean, which he picked up in July 2016. “People will say to me that our brands are all disparate but they’re actually all business-to-business; they may be selling different products and services but actually the ethos behind them remains the same,” Toplis says. “Business is about people: it’s about communication and building that rapport.” United under the banner of The Bardon Group – which takes its name from the home of its Leicestershire headquarters – these brands have evolved as much as Recognition Express before them, particularly in the area of the kinds of franchisees they seek. “When you’re starting off in franchising, you tend to recruit people who have money: it’s as crude as that,” says Toplis. “You have no other way of making the assessment.” Fortunately with time, The Bardon Group has become more selective about the franchisees it welcomes on board, focusing on quality rather than quantity. “What I want is good people: I want people who are going to follow the
Franchising is about the relationship between franchisor and franchisee: it’s about nothing else system, be participative and work with other franchisees,” he says. “We don’t make a bunch of money by appointing a franchisee: we make much more if that franchisee is lasting and ever-growing.” Inevitably, the training provided for The Bardon Group franchisees can vary significantly from brand to brand but there are still some common factors, regardless of the franchise that a franchisee buys into. “There’s always some training at head office, some that involves existing franchisees and a marketing launch programme,” says Toplis. The head-office training could range anywhere from one to six days and after that newcomers will spend some time with existing members of the network learning about specific elements of the business, whether that’s sales, operations or more hands-on skills training. Finally the marketing launch could take anywhere from six to 15 months but one thing all of the marketing programmes share is that the cost is included in the franchise fee. “Primarily the reason for that is we know how important it is to market the business and we know if we make it part of the initial marketing fee, it will get done,” says Toplis. Given Toplis’s dedication both to franchisees and the wider community, it won’t be much of a surprise to hear that in 2008 he was invited to become the chairman of the bfa for two years, something he feels was a real honour and that taught him a great deal about the ins and outs of the organisation. “The bfa is an interesting animal,” he says. “It is the guardian of British franchising, the head quarters of the accreditation service and works very hard on the international scene with European, American and Australian counterparts.” However, Toplis doesn’t feel that the responsibility for championing the industry’s interests lies on the association’s shoulders alone and he believes there are certain things that the community itself can do more of. “It’s a shame that people who were very senior in franchising but now work outside of the industry are not used more as ambassadors to spread the word,” he says. “We do very little with universities, colleges and schools. And frankly we could be doing a lot more to engage government both at a national and a local level.” This is partly why Toplis has dedicated so much of his time to acting as an evangelist for the industry, not only OCTOBER 2017 | elitefranchise
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