Cover Story


From Shipyard toZipYard


The ZipYard is a tailoring business that specialises in expert clothing alterations and repairs


INVESTMENT LEVEL: FROM £38,500 F


ranchising gives people the opportunity to work for themselves but not by themselves. It also acts as a springboard into markets and alleviates the laborious aspects of disrupting them, which is probably one of the most daunting prospects of going at it alone. Nigel Toplis, managing director of The


Bardon Group, said: “Where you have a good franchise system, you really have a marriage, whereby you have a proven


business system, collateral, support and training from the franchisor, and you have the dynamism, the ambition, the drive and the skillset of the franchisee. “Put them together and you really have a husband and wife; two people with two distinct set of skills, but one combined objective.” The ZipYard is one such success


story. After a botched tailoring job, two entrepreneurs saw a gap in the market and used an empty shop opposite Belfast shipyard to set up their own business,


14 | BusinessFranchise.com | September 2016


which duly inspired the name. From there they decided to franchise the concept in Northern Ireland, then master licence in Republic of Ireland, before the Bardon Group took on the master licence to trade in England, Scotland and Wales. The ZipYard has an ‘open kitchen’


approach, in that the store is open plan and workers are seen in action, rather than confined in a back room. There is also fitting rooms on site and an automated processing service, where garments are tracked by barcode throughout the


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