New Retail Franchise Founder Wins Award

From Franchising: "The 23 year old founder of mini motocross business, braaap, has been named runner up in the Junior Chamber International Creative Young Entrepreneur Award, recently announced in Osaka, Japan.

At the age of 16, Smith started braaap out of his parent's garage. At 18 he travelled to China to find his own suppliers and manufacturers and began importing to Australia to sell. The business makes and imports about 2,000 custom motocross bikes a year.

The company now has four stores across Victoria and Tasmania including one retail franchise operation.

"I've got a five year expansion map in place to open around 50 franchise stores across Australia, with the help of [franchising specialist] DC Strategy. I've begun negotiations to enter the US market in early 2011," Smith said.

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Soaring sales for Retail Franchise

The Athlete’s Foot, Australia favourite sports retail franchise opportunity, proudly announced that the total sales last financial year reached $186.1 million. This is a growth of 11.6% compared to the year before.

The like-for-like sales grew with 8.3%. The business opportunity’s profits grew on the back of its network’s sales performance. The figures were released by RCG Corporation, The Athlete's Foot parent company. The Athlete’s Foot owns 143 franchised stores across New Zealand and Australia, and is constantly on the lookout for new franchisees.

"We are delighted with the performance of The Athlete's Foot. The business continues to deliver consistently outstanding results, in contrast to the significant volatility being experienced by the wider retail sector," said Ivan Hammerschlag, the company’s chairman.

Hammerschlag added: "We also continue to be very pleased with the performance of our new larger format stores. This format has now become the standard presentation for all new stores and we are working hard to convert existing stores the new format as quickly as possible."

Retail Franchise’s sales are still booming

For retail business opportunity The Athlete’s Foot 2010 is proving to be a very successful year already, having so far experienced a sales growth of 9.7 per cent.

The footwear franchise, which currently owns 142 units, expects this month’s growth will be almost the same as in May last year: 25%. The main reason for this is the stimulus payments made by the Rudd government.

According to Ivan Hammerschlag, chairman of The Athlete's Foot, the business opportunity's growth can be attributed to its continued investment in the brand, the exceptionally large number of referrals it gets from podiatrists, chiropractors, sports clubs and schools and most importantly, its commitment to providing excellent customer service.

"We're just focusing on serving our customers better and giving a high level of service. When you walk into an Athlete's Foot you'll always find people on their knees doing up shoelaces, which is quite extraordinary in today's day and age," the chairman explained.