Posted:18-August-2025
Naturespace Cambridge franchisees talk about their journey so far
About three months ago, Steve Mann and I (Richard Ambler) decided to embark on our new challenge. Having always wanted to do something together we took the plunge buying into the Naturespace franchise, and so Naturespace Cambridge, providing commercial, sustainable grounds maintenance in the East (Cambridgeshire and surrounding counties), was born.
It’s been 3 months of blood, sweat and tears - literally all three of these, although the tears have mainly been ones caused by laughter I’m pleased to report. So 3 months in, I thought it was worth sharing how we have been getting on.
Can we do it? As two middle age chaps the wrong side of 40 and having spent the majority of our careers in a great corporate environment we wanted to be sure we could do what was required. The transition from largely desk based to actually doing the do has been pretty smooth and our bodies have held up well. Our customers (and their customers) have been giving us great feedback in both what we are doing and how we are doing it. Great service will always be the central tenet of Naturespace Cambridge.
Is it worth it? A key element for us in the first 3 months has been understanding the unit economics of the business. Business plans are all well and good on paper but can never truly reflect reality as they tend to be overly ambitious/optimistic, suffering from that incurable disease of confirmation bias. 3 months in we’ve got a good handle on what the unit economics looks like. Some things are better than expected, some worse but overall it looks encouraging. Importantly, we are starting to understand what level of pay we can support when we start to bring our first employees on board.
Is it scaleable? We have an ambition to build a business well beyond the two of us so working out the scalability is key. There’s certainly plenty of green space to be maintained but equally lots of good providers. So demand certainly seems to be there. As ever business development takes time but we’ve had lots of good intros and conversations, some which have delivered immediate returns, others more speculative, but all positive. Certainly not job done here but enough to give us confidence.
So it’s been a pretty intense first three months. Lots of learning and learns. We’ve been brilliantly supported by Owen Barton and the team at Naturespace but also by friends and families. Here’s to the next 3 months.
Interested and want to know more about Naturespace?
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