The first entire chain of stores has joined the One Stop franchise scheme, with the nine-store Wilson Retail Limited from Scarborough moving its whole estate from Nisa.
The Wilson family, and their business partners, opened their first store in 2005. Their ninth, a new store in South Cave, near Hull, opens as an instant launch this week, following a conversion from an empty furniture shop.
The other eight stores will undergo a transition to become One Stops, with epos installation kicking off in the first two stores this week, followed by their full refits towards the end of the year.
All stores will be trading as One Stops by early September and will be fully transformed in time for Christmas 2015.
Danny Wilson said: “We’re confident that One Stop Franchise will bring major improvements to our business in terms of the operating and ordering systems, which will save us hours and hours, plus of course better margins.
“And the strength of their customer offer, which has a lot more consistent promotions, will drive higher sales because it suits our customer base perfectly.
“Our focus over the next few months will be to get the shops transitioned and get used to the new ways of working, but having opened almost a store a year for the last eight years, we’re keen to open more when the right opportunity arises.
“We’re convinced that working with the One Stop model will help us to grow our business in a sustainable way, so next year could be another year of expansion.”
Andrew King, One Stop franchise director, added: “It’s great to welcome the Wilsons to One Stop Franchise and it’s a credit to our team that we’ve attracted such ambitious and successful retailers.
“As our first group within franchise, we’re sure that we’ll gain some additional learnings during the transition process, but the partnership is already very strong.”
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