Clive Beeston and Keith Walton have recently launched their own oven cleaning businesses under the Oven Wizards brand name in Chelmsford and Romford.

Clive, who has taken the Chelmsford Territory, was looking for a change from salaried employment and wanted to become self-employed. He decided he wanted to go into Franchising, because of the support and help he would get. Clive was particularly interested in mobile businesses and narrowed his search down to mobile coffee businesses and oven cleaning businesses.

He met with a couple of oven cleaning companies, before arranging to meet up with John Graham and Mark Abbott from Oven Wizards in August 2013.

Clive said “I warmed to their honest and frank approach. They answered all the questions I could throw at them. I then went off to speak with several of the existing Oven Wizards Franchisees who all gave really good feedback, particularly in the area of on-going support that is provided.”

“My launch event with John and Mark, at a large superstore just outside Chelmsford, went extremely well indeed, giving me over 3 weeks of work. This got me off to a great start. Oven Wizards have definitely delivered what they said they would and with the help and support of the other Franchisees this gives me the confidence to go on and build my new business on a firm foundation.”

As Keith had been self -employed previously, the thought of running his own business did not frighten him.

He said “I still needed to ensure that any franchise I purchased had the opportunity for growth to enable me to maintain the standard of living for my family, whilst freeing up time to ensure I was able to go to school plays, rugby matches etc.”

Keith went on to say “I decided I needed a niche area that would enable me to use my customer facing skills, but was not seasonal or so niche that my charges would be prohibitive. Once I had decided on Oven cleaning, choosing Oven Wizards was a no brainer as they have been running since 2004, with a great degree of success. John Graham and Mark Abbott, the Franchise owners, had already done the hard work of setting up training, arranging contacts for the supplies, advertising and stationery, etc., including everything needed for the first 3 months of trading was included in the franchise cost”

Keith said “We launched my new Oven Wizards business at a local Sainsbury’s store, and attracted over 30 bookings on the day, including 2 clients who chased me down the car park as we were loading up the van at the end of the day .Help is always available, with both John and Mark remaining in contact with advice on how to optimise opportunities and fine tuning the website to ensure we are reaching our target market, and thus giving us the maximum opportunity to succeed.”

John Graham said “From the first time we met Clive and Keith we knew they would make great additions to the Oven Wizards team, particularly because of their great passion for customer service”

Keith will be operating his Oven Wizards, oven cleaning business from his home in Romford and completes a group of Oven Wizards, all working their own Territories in the Essex area.

Clive finished off by saying “It’s great to see the Oven Wizards business is not standing still, new joiners, like myself, are regularly coming on board and they have recently invested in developments in the website to ensure it is supporting the Franchisees around the country as we seek to build our businesses and find new customers”