Leading cleaning products franchise, chemex, has the best interests of its fast growing 100 or so franchisees at heart. After researching the fuelcard market, chemex chose abbey Fuelcards as its partner in offering to its franchisees a further option for increasing their profitability.
With fuel costs showing as a significant overhead – each franchisee has an average Fuel-spend of around £3000 per year – the opportunity to reduce this figure and increase the bottom line simply by changing the method of fuel purchase was considered by chemex as simple, good business practice.
More profit at a stroke
The variety of vehicles operated by the franchisees presents no problem to abbey Fuelcards. With three different cards available, each one offering fuel at between 2p and 3p below national average pump prices, the choice available covers all options and shows an immediate reduction in fuel-spend each month. As a bonus abbey produces tailored reports to suit each individual franchisee which in turn reduce the administrative costs adding further to the profitability of the operation.
What’s available?
chemex chose all three of the fuelcards on offer from abbey to meet the differing needs of their franchisees:
- diesel direct, accepted in over 1000 outlets across the UK and offering fixed price(diesel)
- fastfuels, offering both discounted petrol and diesel from approximately 1400 Texaco Service Stations Nationwide
- euroshell, which has outlets on most major trunk roads and covers 1/3 of the UK motorway service areas
As the chemex operation is nationwide the option to have three different fuelcards was crucial in the decision to use abbey Fuelcards. Being accepted at major outlets such as Shell, Esso and Texaco, they allow easy access to fuel regardless of the location of the franchisee.
And yet more advantages
Reduced fuel cost, lower administration costs and personal account management were not the only criteria upon which chemex based its decision. Alwyn Cox, Franchise Development Manager of chemex explains; 'I had used abbey Fuelcards previously and was impressed with the advantages of their product. Some fuelcard operators offer only one type of card. This may not have suited some of our franchisees. Others offer no discount so a further opportunity for increased profit is unavailable. abbey Fuelcards sets the fuel cost for the coming week and advises each franchisee by text, email, and fax on a weekly basis. A further advantage, since the EU ruling on VAT, is that the fuelcard method of fuel purchase is VAT friendly as no cash transaction is involved. In my view the abbey Fuelcard offers our franchisees more profit, less hassle and easier accounting than either cash transactions or other fuelcards.'