How I expanded my business by rescuing a franchise

Garry Fryer is the chief executive of courier and freight franchise InXpress, which acts as a type of one-stop shop for the freight needs of SMEs. The business is turning over about $3.5 million.

But in its early days, Fryer took a big risk – he took over a franchise from a separate company. It may have expanded the business a little too quickly but, as Fryer says, he was able to manage the process and come out on top.

So how is InXpress going at the moment?

We’re going in the right direction. We have 15 franchisees in the system; we’ve got additional franchisees in New South Wales and Queensland.

But we’re a little different to freight companies in that we’re dealing with SMEs, and we’re just doing a major push and getting our name out there right now. Our niche is the one-stop shop, and that’s servicing us well.

Last year you were turning over about $3.5 million – any update on that for this year?

It’s budgeted to be more than that, not dramatically more, but still more.

So talk about this situation you had, when you brought on this new franchise.

So by way of background, the franchisor is actually a British-based company, and the heritage of the company actually goes back over 20 years, but the Australian model itself was supposed to be a franchise from day one as soon as we got the paperwork sorted out.

I’d been running my own business for quite some time, but this was the first time I had worked with a franchise entity where I had owned the master.

So this other franchise’s master had gone bust, and you went in to take it, is that right?

So there were circumstances that came up, and I just had to decide to either take them or leave them. In the early days, it was just me and office admin in the office getting everything sorted out.

But an opportunity came across where someone in the industry had an enormous amount of business to bring with them and, at that time, it was an opportunity for a first franchise that I just didn’t want to let go.

They were exactly in line with what I was after, someone with international franchising experience, and it all rolled together. They were able to bring some business to the table, and it was just a perfect storm.