Dublin-based Card Connection franchisee Pat Blake breaks a company record for monthly unit sales!

17 September 2008:  Leading greeting card publisher and franchisor, Card Connection has today announced that Pat Blake, franchisee for Dublin has just achieved the highest level of unit sales in the company’s history.  Sales figures revealed that Pat Blake had sold more than five times the average units for the month of July.

Pat Blake, who was named the winner of Card Connection’s highly prized Franchisee of the Year award this summer, has recently expanded his franchise territory to include both North and South Dublin.

“Pat’s business is really flying,” confirms Andrew Cutler, franchise director, at Card Connection.  “By expanding his area Pat has been able to take advantage of the economies of scale achieved by running a larger operation.  However, this not only relates to higher levels of sales it also means his business has significantly improved its profit margins.

“Card Connection recently launched a new management focused business strategy to help our franchisees maximise profits,” continues Cutler.  “Our most successful franchisees run large territories and usually employ a small team of staff to pack and distribute cards from a warehouse, using liveried vans for distribution.  Therefore, we are encouraging both existing and new franchisees to adopt this way of working and Pat is a great example of how successful the strategy is already proving to be.”

Card Connection itself is one of the UK’s largest card publishers and is the market leader in the franchised distribution of greeting cards.  Using a proven system, franchisees place greeting card ranges in retail outlets on a ‘consignment’ basis.  The award winning merchandising service provided to retailers by local franchisees is second to none and has established the company’s excellent reputation especially within the convenience sector.  Card Connection supplies numerous national accounts, which include the likes of Welcome Break, Total, Budgens, Londis, Spar and Shell.

Card Connection has limited vacancies for franchisees who are keen to run an expanding business.  Successful candidates would ideally have some management experience as, once established, they would be expected to employ a small team, operate a warehouse and have several liveried vans on the road.

Because the franchise networks in the UK and Ireland are complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee.  These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £20,000 (+ stock) with earnings potential in excess of £50,000 per annum.

“The greeting card sector has been described as an essentially ‘recession-proof’ industry,” explains Cutler.  “However, we are not prepared to rest on our laurels and are continuing to use innovative strategies to help our franchisees build and grow their businesses to ensure that they can achieve higher profit margins than ever before.”