Crain's Manchester Business

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Crain's 40 under 40

Sharron Davis, 39

Director

Kingsmaid

Biggest accomplishment: Setting up Kingsmaid and developing it as a franchisable business model

Current goal: To fill the remaining 80 UK franchise territories

Sharron Davis is an old hand in the franchise business, having been a franchisee for Thorntons, Birthdays and Hallmark Cards, before moving up the food chain to franchise her own domestic cleaning business.

Since setting up Kingsmaid in Stockport in 2003 with one part-time cleaner, Davis and her husband have grown the business into one with annual turnover of £2.2m — more than double that achieved in the prior year — and 15 franchisees.

As well as owning the business, Davis, who dropped out of a social work course at Huddersfield University in the early 1990s in order to join her husband in the card business, also operates four franchises herself in Greater Manchester and Cheshire. These employ about 50 cleaners and had turnover of £750,000 in 2007. Sitting on both sides of the fence as a franchisor and a franchisee means that Davis and her husband are able to lead by example. “If a franchisee comes to us with a problem, we will have encountered everything they have encountered,” she said.

The next challenge for Davis, who started out working for the social services department at Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, is to add more franchises in a bid to take a bigger share of the UK’s £2bn domestic cleaning market.