Katherine – our Eastbourne, Wealden and Lewes Family Grapevine Franchisee

Katherine has been a franchisee for over 3 years

My background is in the travel industry. I spent 20 years working in tour operating for various companies, both large (British Airways Holidays) and small (a US specialist called Jetways) amongst others. I continued to work part-time, albeit in a fairly high pressure job, when my children were small but always knew that I would prefer to work part-time and for myself.

Eventually I resigned from British Airways and started to work on various travel industry projects on a freelance basis which did give me more time with the children. However I was becoming increasingly bored by travel. All the bits that I liked had been massively changed by the advent of the internet. I liked designing packages, pricing them, copy writing and brochure production. The internet changed all that; pricing became simply mathematics (something I’m not very good at!) and brochures lost their importance to be replaced by database management.

I couldn’t decide what to do. My long term, part time contract in the travel industry was being cut back and I needed to find something else to do which was flexible. I still wanted to be able to do the school run, go to sports day, help with homework etc. but hated the idea of not working.

Quite by chance the Mid Sussex Family Grapevine was recommended to me as a great place to advertise to families. I placed an ad for a quite different business and it was only then that I had a look at the web site and realised that there were lots of Grapevines and furthermore you could buy a territory and operate it as your own business.

After that it was all very quick. The local territories were all taken so with the help of one of the Directors we put together an area which incorporated the area of East Sussex in which I grew up. I researched this area and two others pretty thoroughly before taking it on: the number of households with families, how many nursery schools there were, what competitive magazines there were, whether there were plenty of children’s activities going on.

All the indicators were positive. Yes, of course, there were competitors, but nobody covered the whole area and there was nothing as comprehensive as the Family Grapevine. I also called a number of potential advertisers to get their thoughts on the Family Grapevine compared to their current advertising media. Again it all sounded pretty positive. The indicators for the other areas were much more mixed. I settled for Eastbourne and Wealden and got to work!

It took almost exactly four months from start to finish to get the first edition out.

I discovered that I loved the design of the ads and the layout of the magazine. I have absolutely no artistic ability at all but I don’t really think that matters too much. I simply put together a huge library of magazines, brochures, free papers etc and used them for ideas, both good and bad. My travel brochure background also helped here as I had a fair idea of what was easy to read, how to select pictures and basic design concepts.
I found learning the DTP programme that is recommended (Adobe Indesign) was not too difficult. I invested in the ‘Classroom in a Book’ (cheap on ebay) and worked through that, which, together with the Adobe help manual has given me most of the tools I need.

Like everyone I was concerned about the selling. It wasn’t something I had ever done before, apart from the odd day spent on a trade stand, and I was concerned that I wouldn’t enjoy spending day after day on the phone selling. Actually it wasn’t that bad. The sales pitch is easy – would you like a free listing and by the way how about advertising? That’s about as heavy as it gets. I’ve done ten editions now and I have only once been told that I’m about as welcome as mud on the carpet. Everybody else has been unfailingly polite and positive.

Distribution is not difficult so much as time consuming, particularly as I live half an hour from the nearest point of my territory. I imagine if you live locally it’s a breeze. I make it difficult for myself by being too mean to pay for parking so I run the gauntlet of traffic wardens and white van man in the loading bays.

I also find the chasing for money hard. Most advertisers pay up quickly, before each edition is printed. Some don’t and you have to chase endlessly to get your money. I long for the day when I simply don’t need to accept advertisements from slow payers.

In summary, I am delighted with my investment in the Family Grapevine. I have had a lot of support from Head Office as well as Gill in Mid Sussex. I have purchased part of another area and added it to my existing Grapevine – more work but the ‘fit’ is very good. Advertising revenue has increased about 700% over the four years that I have been with the Family Grapevine and I have made an operating profit on each edition. I work flat out for about 7 weeks for each edition and then my time is really flexible. The downtime tends to coincide with the school holidays which is great.