Learning a success lesson

Jun 30 2009 by jez Davison, Evening Gazette

After two false starts in manufacturing and teaching, James Stairmand is up and running in the world of franchising. JEZ DAVISON reports.

FOR someone who ditched his classroom duties four years ago, James Stairmand is still doing a gold star job of being a teacher.

The Drain Doctor franchisee and former technology tutor at Middlesbrough’s Brackenhoe School is studiously training his four staff how to marry A-grade technical repair work with top-class customer service.

And it seems his staff are practising what he preaches.

The fledgling plumbing and drainage business - still less than two years old - has a customer base stretching the length and breadth of the Tees Valley and has seen a 110% increase on first year revenues of £415,000.

Not that James is putting vanity over sanity; a healthy 25% operating profit allows him to live “comfortably” while reinvesting in state-of-the-art equipment used by his four repair technicians on the road.

Meanwhile, James is out doing what comes to him naturally: marketing a brand which he paid £35,000 for the right to use across Tees Valley.

“In this business, the brand is everything,” he says. “I have no qualms about going into every shop on the high street and handing out leaflets.

“There’s no point working in a business when you should be working on it.”

He’s determined to win around £200,000 of new business per year from private and commercial customers, which each account for around 50% of total revenues. But he has no desire to expand into other geographical areas because “it will probably create more work for less profit”.

For now, local territory is a fertile enough breeding ground for the Teessider who claims he’s lucky to be operating in a “recession-resistant” trade.

“Drains need repairing regardless of the economic climate. People don’t do anything about it until something goes wrong.”

Marske-born James has had his fair share of setbacks on an unorthodox career journey, including redundancy and a stalled career in manufacturing.

The son of two teachers, he excelled at “business studies and making things” at school and yearned for the day he could open his first pay packet.

But with his parents pushing him “to go down the academic route”, he duly gained a National Diploma in Motor Studies from the former Longlands College in Middlesbrough and then an HND in business and finance from Teesside University.

By then he was yearning for the “life-experience of a proper job” and in 1996 he started work in Redcar as a technical assistant for Sovereign Chemical, a supplier of products to the building industry.

But manufacturing soon lost its appeal and he returned to education to embark on a three-year technology education degree at the University of Sunderland.

This was followed by a one-year PGCE which paved the way for a job teaching 11-16 year-old technology students at Brackenhoe School.

But for a second time, James’ career was to take a dramatic twist. When Brackenhoe merged with Coulby Newham School in 2004 to form the £22m King’s Academy, James found himself out of a job and decided to fall back on self-employment and plumbing as a route to income.

Three years later, he spotted a franchising opportunity that would “make the most of my technical skills” and in August 2007 signed up to an industry that generates £0.6bn per year for the North-east economy.

So far the sometimes rocky franchisee/franchisor agreement has been a marriage made in heaven for James, who admits he wouldn’t be inclined to work so hard for a control-freak who micro-managed his every move.

“I’m allowed a fair degree of autonomy - but then I’m making money. People mistakenly think they’re buying a job when they buy a franchise but the onus is on them to get the business in.”

Now he’s aiming to clean up the industry’s perceived grubby image by delivering top quality repair work on drains - which account for around 80% of his trade - and pipework in local homes and offices.

He’ll also boost revenues by offering add-ons such as home emergency cover, which provides a three-hour, 24/7 call-out service for £7.95 a month.

The industry might not wear a clean-cut image but as this Teessider has proved, there’s money to be made from the dirtiest of professions.