FANZ Conference

Ree-Anna Chapman, our Operations Manager recently attended the Franchise Association of New Zealand’s National Conference where she was a keynote speaker. She presented a keynote session on “Multi Unit Franchises – Factors Influencing Satisfaction”, and also ran a workshop that was focused on how to get franchisees to support change. Our New Zealand agents, David and Fiona from The Franchise Coach were also active participants in the conference.

The theme for 2011 was “Franchise Adrenalin – Energise Your Franchise”, which given the recent Christchurch earthquakes, provided a timely opportunity to both reflect on and identify ways of re-energizing franchise networks. The conference was held in Rotorua and had over 100 people attend, made up of both franchisors and service providers.

For Ree-Anna the conference provided a number of highlights. Of particular note was a session where a Christchurch based franchisor talked about dealing with unexpected events. Clearly the NZ earthquake’s have created a reality around unexpected events. He shared how it affected them, their franchisees and their network and the different things they did to support them to pull it and them all together.

Ian Robertson from Paper Plus shared a fantastic case study that looked at the brand refresh that they had recently been through in New Zealand. The impact of the refresh has been very positive on both the brand and the resulting franchisee financial results. In some areas, they have even observed significant detrimental impact of their new brand on their competitors. Ian identified that the keys to the success of the project included the initial and in-depth research, having trial stores and ensuring the clear measurement of downstream benefits.

Another highlight was Emma Hill the deputy chairman of Michael Hill talking about their international expansion and the lessons they learnt from that. The need to understand what drives customers in different markets especially those relating to cultural differences and behaviors is critical to the success of international expansion. Emma reiterated the importance of getting the right people on board.

We look forward to participating in next years conference.