Meet our Franchisees – James Garside – West Yorkshire

Franchisee in the Spotlight

Stockcheck Franchisee

James is one of our newer franchisees, but still joins with over 10 years’ experience working in bars. James first started with bar work as a teen, and after studying Mathematics and Accountancy at University, took this bar experience on to a Management level. After working his way up to being an Area Manager, James decided he needed a new challenge, which would allow him to work for himself, and give a better work/life balance – a Stockcheck Franchise was the natural choice!

From Day 1 working his Stockcheck Franchise James reports

“I was blessed with a high demand for stocktaking services and so began with a very healthy client base.”

Just over a year later, James is happy to have retained the clients he started with, and grown the business to significantly exceed his first year targets. A key skill that James is proud of, is his ability to summarize consultancy advice and detailed stock results, into easily understood action points, which allow his clients to work on simple steps to improve their stock control and overall profitability.

This advice and reporting has saved many clients a lot of money, however one crazy supplier pricing mistake stands out, where a customer was incorrectly charged £10,000 for a 1 litre carton of oat milk! We’re often asked why we manually audit all purchase information, it’s a time consuming process, but we often find price inaccuracies, though not all as large as this!

Regarding working for himself James says

“After being self-employed, I’m not sure I could ever go back to life as an employee – the flexibility is such a perk and I love the variety of seeing different clients and styles of businesses every day.”

He also tells us that as well as boosting his bank balance, operating the franchise has freed up more of his spare time to do the things he loves, with the important people in his life. Job done, as far as we’re concerned! His latest plans for 2024 are to recruit an employee and grow his business to the next level.

At Stockcheck HQ, we’re really proud of the success James is making of his franchise, and we’re glad that he agreed to become one of the faces of Stockcheck when we had our recent website photoshoot. Looking to the future we’re here to help him achieve his goals, and celebrate his great achievements to date. Go James!