Oven-care couple clean up in industry awards
06-February-2023
A couple on a mission to make Portsmouth’s ovens the cleanest in Britain have won a major industry award.
Dean and Amy Wilson’s life of grime with Ovenclean Portsmouth has paid off with an impressive win in the Great British Franchisee Awards – one of the highest honour in the franchising world.
“We want to be the biggest franchise Ovenclean have,” says Dean, “and we’re fairly sure we’re the biggest oven-cleaning operation locally.
“We’d like to grow it further, and I know it’s feasible as there’s such a fantastic demand for the service. Ideally, we’d hope to add an extra van to our operation every two years.”
Annabel Wilson, Franchise Support Manager for the Ovenclean network, says Dean and Amy always go above and beyond to keep customers happy.
“This is evident in their amazing 1,300-plus Checkatrade reviews, not to mention all their Google and Trustpilot reviews,” she says.
“We’re especially pleased to see them grow and develop their business around family life – enabling them to achieve the balance they really wanted from running their own business, which is obviously so important.”
Dean says the couple took out a five-year loan to finance the business but paid it back in half the time.
“We were making a profit within the first year,” he says. “We quickly got up to three cleans a day, and then my brother joined the team around 18 months in.
“We’ve recently had to stop taking on new customers as we can’t fulfil the demand from our regular clients.
“Keeping up with customer demand can be a challenge – especially around key times of the year.
“I’ve grown the business steadily though and now we’re up to three vans and able to service a lot more customers.
“Although we owned our own business in Spain before joining Ovenclean, being a franchisee and growing the business into a multi-van operation meant we had to learn to manage multiple diaries.
“If we haven’t got high standards, we haven’t got a business, so we love achieving a wow factor for our customers.
“I’m a mentor and help to train new starters as and when they join the network. I’ve probably trained in the region of 10 so far, and thoroughly enjoy it.
“It’s great to watch their confidence grow and see them thrive in their new business.”
Like Amy, Dean is keen to give credit where it’s due.
“We’re a family-run business and wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful if it weren’t for the boys who work for us,” he says.
“Mark, my brother, has worked for us for eight years and George, my nephew, has been working for us for five years.
“They’ve been instrumental in everything that’s led to us winning this much-coveted award.”
• The Great British Franchisee Awards are run by whichfranchise, supported by Lloyds Bank, BDO, Worldpay from FIS, AMO Consulting and Chantry Group