The demise of Wylex

2011-06-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

Unfortunatly Wylex, now part of the electrium empire, chose to go down the road of outsourcing manufaucuring to the Middle East, China or anywhere they could get cheap labour at the cost of the British public.
Their Circuit Breakers have been causing fires!
A recall of all MCB's manufactured outside the UK between April 2009 and February 2010 is now in progress, will they ever manage to replace all the defect product, I dont think so its an impossible task.
These products were sold through the contractor chanel that have some controls but the likes of screwfix, B&Q and backstreet DIY shops, no chance! I think we have years of domestic fires ahead of us with the names of Wylex, crabtree, Volex, Sector, Steeple in the news indefinatly unless they work out a way of getting all the inferior product replaced.

Why did ElecLocal fail?

2010-04-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

Eleclocal once again failed last November and went into administration, liquidation, call it what you will, it went bust for a second time in two years. The franchise left 25 franchisees in limbo and relying on someone to step in and save the business, unfortunately that didn't happen and I along with my colleague's £20K+ lighter in the pocket are left to rebrand and find a way forward on our own. A company called Concept Building Solutions or SSG or Service Solutions Network they have many names! did purchase the name from Resolve the administrators and have attempted to resurrect the network however as far as I can gather have only managed to recruit 2 of the original franchise electricians. Not surprised really as I remained on their books for 6 months and in that time did not receive one job, not even a lead.

The previous two companies, Local Services and County Care Environmental failed to make this business model work and I don't see how Concept will be able to achieve sucess for franchisees and generate profitable revenue for them selves. Something has to give. The previous companies bank rolled the business from selling franchise territories, this paid the running costs initially however when franchise sales dry up as they invariably do the management service fee charged to the franchisees is not enough to sustain the business and inevitably it fails. The franchisee is left then with no name/brand, no customers as all the contact details belong to the franchisor, marketing and advertised telephone numbers, websites, email address all are lost.

I urge anyone thinking of embarking on franchising with Eleclocal, Plumblocal or any other franchise organisation to take good legal advice on the vulnerability of your business if the franchiser goes bust, also speak to as many franchisees past and present in the organisation to get a balanced opinion. Eleclocal for example never had more than 34 franhisees at one time, in the 4 years that it was running over 70 franchisees paid their fee and subsequently left having been failed by the franchiser, the churn was high. Search eleclocal and you will always find historic pages with names of past franchisees that I can vouch for all of them will be more than willing to talk to you before you hand over your money!

Why do franchises fail

The demise of Wylex

Why did ElecLocal fail?