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Your Puddle Ducks Franchise

What will I do?

Good question. What will your day-to-day be like? Well, that all depends on whether you train to be a Puddle Ducks Baby & Pre-school teacher or not. We offer the flexibility to new franchisees, whether they are buying a virgin territory or an existing Puddle Ducks business; they can either decide to train as a teacher themselves or they can recruit a teacher, ready for launch. There are advantages to both and we have successful franchisees who have chosen each route. If you do decide to train as a teacher, your end goal is still the same as if you don’t; you need to be planning ahead, thinking about building your team and being on dry land as soon as possible so you can spend your time growing the business.

As a Franchise Owner, your main tasks will be:

  • Sourcing pools (and in time even building or managing your own pool)
  • Recruiting and managing a team of teachers, trained to the highest standards the industry has to offer
  • Finding customers
  • Recruiting and managing a customer care and marketing team
  • Business planning and financial management; working with the tools and management information provided to you by Duck HQ (Shark, Xero, Website) and with the Franchise Support, Marketing, Retail and Pool Build experts at Duck HQ to realise the potential of your franchise

  • In numbers, you could be teaching 1,200 children to swim every week across 16 pools and managing a team of 20 teachers from your own office. This is just an example of the size of business that many of our established franchisees run. And not only that, but they are enjoying a work-life balance afforded to them by hard work in the beginning.

    Our franchisees come from a wide variety of backgrounds but they had common goals. Many of them were corporate professionals (solicitors, accountants, senior managers) who needed to replace if not improve their salaries but also wanted to change their work-life balance (in many cases influenced by the birth of children and a change in priorities). A Puddle Ducks franchise allows you to achieve all of this and more.

    • Providing an essential life skill to babies and children
    • Working flexibly around your family
    • Realising profits in excess of £100,000 (as many of our established franchisees do)
    • As a business owner, you will realise your ambition of being your own boss but with the support of a multi-award winning network

  • As any small business owner will testify, there are many challenges along the way. We would never underestimate the hard work involved, especially in the first 2-4 years; recruiting a reliable team and finding pool time being amongst the biggest challenges you will face. However, with one of the best franchisee to FTE HQ staff ratios (0.5 FTE per franchisee), a Puddle Ducks franchise provides you with peace of mind and the knowledge that you are never alone.

  • Our state-of-the-art, proven business model is supported by a team of experts at Head Office as well as our network of franchisees who all bring their own skills and specialisms to the table. We provide you with all the tools you need to have full, up-to-the-minute visibility of your business and the training to use all of these tools to their full potential. In addition to the business support you will benefit from:

    • Innovations driven by the whole network both in our world-class swimming programme and our operations
    • Being a part of a nationally recognised, trusted brand, loved by everyone who touches it
    • A fully integrated IT system called Shark (linked to Xero accounting software and our website). This helps you manage your whole operation from pool time and customer records to accounting and management information, allowing you to make informed business decisions
    • Marketing support including a responsive website, social media support and national initiatives such as our pioneering TV campaign plus we manage many digital marketing campaigns on your behalf
    • Face-to-face meetings several times a year including Annual Conference, Summer School, Regional Franchise Meetings, Regional Marketing Meetings, Regional Technical Meetings, Annual Technical Visits and Business Health Checks

All of this is underpinned by our mission to teach every child to love and respect the water and to swim beautifully. It’s a business that you will love to wake up for.


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