Printing franchise Worldwide Online Printing is aiming to double the size of the business over the next five years after a period of consolidation and a change of ownership.
Printing franchise Worldwide Online Printing is aiming to double the size of the business over the next five years after a period of consolidation and a change of ownership.
The Belmont-based company, which has 76 franchise stores across Australia, was recently acquired by Malaysian investment fund Navis Capital Partners and local management.
Chief executive Mark Manderson, who joined Worldwide just over a year ago, has instituted a four-point restructuring that covers all major aspects of the business.
The changes have been supported by Navis director Mark Dutton, who formerly worked in Perth with Foundation Capital and has joined the Worldwide board.
“I would characterise the past 12 months as consolidating and getting the systems in place so that the network can consistently add 10 to 20 stores and therefore double in size over three to five years,” Mr Dutton said. “You can get to 20 or 30 stores and manage that without too many sophisticated internal systems. You can probably even get to 40 or 50 but then you start to get growing pains.”
Mr Manderson said one of his major strategic goals was to improve production efficiency at the company’s three printing hubs, in Cannington, Sydney and Melbourne.
“It’s one of the few industries around where everything you manufacture is to client specifications and it has to be made within their time frame,” he said.
“We’ve really drummed in the importance of getting customer service right, and starting with production.”
One of the challenges for Worldwide was that centralised printing hubs, which it pioneered, had been established by other groups such as Snap.
Mr Manderson believed Worldwide would maintain its competitive edge because its business model was based on 12 years of experience and development.
“I just look at it as affirmation that we are the right track and we need to maintain our position as the market leader in the hub-and-spoke model,” he told WA Business News.
Mr Manderson said his strategy review had also focused on sales and service.
“It’s about getting the basics right and doing them really well, and meeting the customer promise,” he said. “The next step was about marketing and branding and identi-fying where we were in the market-place, and what were the differentiating factors about Worldwide.”
Another key focus is the franchising system.
“One of the key objectives is to really make sure we have a very strong, professional franchising system,” Mr Manderson said. “If you are in franchising, the systems and the processes are really important.”
Mr Dutton said Worldwide had strengthened its management team by recruiting specialists to handle functions such as IT, training and marketing.
“It’s grown to a point where you can bring those people on for the benefit of the stores and us as the franchisor,” he said.
The company is currently upgrading its training system and looking to get accreditation as a registered training organisation.
Despite all of the changes, Mr Manderson said the business had maintained double digit sales growth following the 28 per cent increase in revenue to $15.5 million in the year to June 2005.
However, he acknowledged growth in new stores had slowed.
“Store numbers this year have been a little slow, but I think that reflects the marketplace. That is the competition in franchising in general.”
He also acknowledged some delays with a major IT project but said this was not a big issue.
“We’re working on a new centre management system. It’s been a little slow but we’ve been developing it in-house so we’ve been making sure we get it right rather than deliver a product that is not what we want,” Mr Manderson said.
Looking ahead, he said the company was aiming to grow in all states, including Western Australia.
“We’ve got more potential. We’ve got sites identified now that we are looking for franchisees for,” Mr Manderson said.
