Today, collaboration in business is essential. Due to numerous advantages provided by the emerging technologies—getting employees, franchisees, and professionals to work together in a joint effort is easier than ever before. However, collaborating within the organization is not the ultimate goal. In the franchising industry, businesses get an opportunity to be part of an ever-growing community.
This was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic when the independent businesses had to downsize or make huge sacrifices to stay afloat, while the adjustments looked different for the franchising industry. Due to the advantages such as firm backing, a strong operational model, and a network of people sharing the common values, the franchising industry has distinguished itself from the other industries over the past few years.
Companies such as Fantastic Services have emerged as one of the fastest-growing franchise providers over the past few years. Established during the recession in 2009 with a couple of teams delivering cleaning services in London, Fantastic Services has grown into a multi-service franchisor—providing more than 100 services on three continents over the past decade. Its network of over 530 franchisees covers services from cleaning and gardening to handyman, pest control, and removals in the UK, Australia, and the US.
The Fantastic Philosophy
Through innovation and technology, Fantastic Services is able to provide top-quality, on-demand response to the individual cleaning and maintenance needs. The Fantastic philosophy revolves around the simple idea of delivering great service experience for all customers and Fantastic crews involved. Each day of the week, it sets out to make another 360 degrees circle of happiness by doing whatever it takes to keep everybody satisfied.
Industry-leading Franchise Models
Since its inception, Fantastic Services has changed the way people book property-maintenance services by creating a system that allows them to book a service in less than 30 seconds and automatically allocates the job into the technician’s schedule. Unlike a traditional company trying to keep up with the industry developments, Fantastic Services is a leader and innovator challenging the stagnant franchise model—which sells a franchise package and then disappears until the time to collect the franchise fee.
Aiming to create a business model that works for people from all walks of life, Fantastic Services has developed three franchise opportunities. They offer a Working Franchise—where a franchisee manages a small team and delivers services, and the company handles everything else from marketing and SEO to customer service and even accounting. The second model is the Area Development Franchise—which gives the franchisee exclusive rights to represent the company in a large territory and develop the brand by recruiting and managing the working franchisees. The biggest opportunity is their Master Franchise which allows bringing the Fantastic brand to a whole new country.
Bolstering the Franchisees
Alongside high-end technology, automated accounting, and marketing support provided by its more than 500 in-house experts, Fantastic Services provides its franchisees with training and personal coaching. During 2020, the company improved its online training platform—Fantastic Academy—making it the ultimate tool for working, area development, and master franchisees.
In the last two years, it has also developed an ongoing individual coaching program tailored to each area development franchisee’s personal business goals. All partners work closely with a personal coach and continuously develop their managerial and leadership skills. “We are continually striving for business excellence, attributing our success to identifying future growth. Our flexible franchise opportunities, award-winning technology, and innovative training are key factors to our franchisees’ growth,” says Anton Skarlatov (Co-founder and CEO of Fantastic Services).
A Duo of Fervent Leaders
Anton and Rune Sovndahl (Co-founder and Board Chairman of Fantastic Services) are at the helm of the company’s operations since its inception. As leaders, they are always trying to empower and bring the best out of people. The duo is responsible for the company’s in-house employees, franchisees, all the professionals, and their families. Anton believes that these people were the driving force behind the company’s quick adaption to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
Under the dynamic leadership of the partners, Anton Skarlatov won an award by the AFA for “Franchise Leader of the Year”—along with three awards for support, marketing, and highest-performing franchisee in 2020. The company has also recently grabbed the biggest award for Franchisor of the Year at the Virtual Franchising Awards. Anton, however, reckons that his greatest achievements to date are the success stories of the company’s franchise partners and the happy faces of its customers.
A New Level of Excellence
The COVID-19 outbreak was a hard hit for numerous sectors, particularly for the franchising in common industries such as F&B and retail. While the property maintenance industry was on the rise before COVID-19 was a concern, its hold has only continued to grow. Thus, unlike many other franchise companies, Fantastic Services was unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite scrapping some of the essential developments it was working on, the company’s business was unruffled.
The pandemic led Fantastic Services to a new level of excellence by forcing it to rapidly develop and launch new, more lucrative services that turned out to be a great success. For instance, it developed Antiviral Sanitization and Disinfection service in just a couple of weeks. The company’s zeal for innovation was recognized by the Franchise Innovation Award 2020, where it won the award for Most Innovative Service Introduction.
The Long-term Focus
The Fantastic Services franchise has been joined by hundreds of people from various backgrounds such as—police officers, nurses, lawyers, teachers, retail executives, marketing specialists, etc. All of these professionals join the company with the same goal viz. to build a future of their own.
The company is on a mission to help 1000 people build a million-pound business in the next ten years. It is ready and has all the required factors such as—innovative mindset, cutting-edge technology, a flexible business model, and thorough dedication towards the mission. In the next five years, Fantastic Services aims to have over 200,000 active members in its membership club and 1,000,000 bookings per month. This is all part of its Area Development and Master franchise plan—which keeps its long-term focus synced up with daily decision making across all departments.
Read full issue: The 20 Fastest-Growing Franchise Companies 2021
