Franchise Spotlight: Computer
After more than a decade working for illustrious clients in the capital, Yorkshire-born Chris Bartoszewicz decided to relaunch his career in his hometown by buying a franchise.
After more than a decade working for illustrious clients in the capital, Yorkshire-born Chris Bartoszewicz decided to relaunch his career in his hometown by buying a franchise.
After 12 years working in print and design in London, providing creative solutions for clients such as Virgin Megastores, Ted Baker and IPC Magazines, Chris headed back to Yorkshire to maximise his other great skill – maintaining computers – and run a Pitman Computer franchise.
FS: What made you decide to relocate?
Chris Bartozewicz: I’m a Yorkshire lad through and through. I bought a house but still commuted to London every day.
It was about the time I started getting itchy feet to move back up to Leeds. It was a hell of a slog for a year and a half.
Why did you opt for a franchise?
I’d wanted to have a trade in my own local area. I know a lot of people in the area, lived here all my life. This seemed a really good opportunity.
I’d been repairing my own computers at home for the best part of 20 years. I had an interest in them.
Why was the Pitman franchise so appealing?
The beauty of Pitman was that it was very affordable, a figure you could generate from a loan or a bit of savings without having to go full on and get a business loan.
Explain the advantages of this type of franchise?
You can run it from home, generating revenue from minute one.
You’ve got a readymade marketplace. Everyone has friends and relatives needing their computer fixing.
What makes the Pitman franchise successful?
It’s sophisticated.
Anyone who calls from my area or outlying areas where there isn’t an engineer automatically drops to me. If it doesn’t then it will drop to head office who will feed it to the closest engineer.
If we go away for a week we can divert our calls to head office. We can always be secure in the knowledge that someone is professionally answering the phones.
Head office populates our diaries while we’re away so we come back to a full diary.
The marketing and the branding is really good. There’s a really powerful system we have called 360, which is a big database that centrally stores all our contacts and appointments.
What is your working week like?
Generally 8am till 8pm. That’s what I allow because I do have to do some evening work because people have jobs.
If a friend phones up and wants to play a game of golf on Friday afternoon, I’m reassured that three nights in a row before I’d worked until 8 at night, so I won’t feel guilty about taking the Friday afternoon off.
Any advice for aspiring franchisees?
It involves a hell of a lot of hard work.
Look at all the facts and figures at the very beginning when choosing a franchise. Read the small print.
Check out the Pitman Computer Support franchise on FranchiseSales.co.uk