Chris Brady, the new franchisee for Newport in South Wales spent the last 15 years working in the logistics industry in a range of jobs from Fleet Manager to more recently agency driving LGV & HGV jobs.

Being in the automotive industry all his life, Chris had seen Autosmart products around at lots of haulage yards in South Wales and was familiar with the “shop-on-wheels” concept.

Chris was keen to earn more money and have more job security, but he never thought that he would have enough capital to invest in his own business.

After a quick call to Head Office, Chris was informed that there are different routes into the business, depending on what capital is available.

Like many other new starters with Autosmart, Chris was able to take advantage of Autosmart’s Easy Start Capital Investment scheme and is now the proud owner of the Newport franchise.

From Newport to Skipton in Yorkshire, Ian Glover, aged 46 was on the look-out for a franchise in his local area and had been checking out businesses on a franchise website.

Ian is a trained engineer and even spent 7 years of his 30 year career in Michigan, USA as an Assistant Production Manager for a carbon company.

He has since worked his way up to Works Manager at an engineering company in Yorkshire. Although he enjoyed his job, he was becoming tired of working long hours; making other people money and wanted to be out and about meeting new people every day. Ian knew that he wanted to be his own boss and the timing was just right for him to research business opportunities.

Being a practical, hands-on sort of guy, Ian concentrated his research on van franchises. After checking out a few franchises, he was most impressed with Autosmart and the service and support provided by Autosmart to its franchisees. Like Chris Brady, Ian took advantage of the Easy Start scheme and is now trading in the Skipton and Bradford area.

Brian Tinnion, aged 55 is the new franchisee in the Gateshead area. Brian has worked in the emergency services for over 30 years, most recently as a Crew Manager for Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service.

After spending so long dealing with extreme emergency situations, Brian is keen to put his planning and organisational skills into running his own successful franchise.

He is, however, no stranger to self-employment, over the course of 14 years, both him and his wife, Jeanette were self-employed retail agents for Esso UK.

Jeanette is very much an integral part of this business too, she attended the Induction course at Head Office with her husband to learn all about the products and plans to take care of the bookkeeping and credit control.