Joe Sweeny, Card Connection’s franchisee for the West of Ireland has been named the winner of the leading greeting card and publisher’s highly prized Franchisee of the Year award for the fifth time, for achieving the highest level of sales of greeting cards across the company’s team of approximately 85 franchisees.  Joe who joined Card Connection nine years ago has steadily built his franchise operation and now distributes greeting cards to central and west Ireland.

 

“Joe Sweeney and his team, deliver Card Connection greeting cards to almost 400 retail outlets with a buying population of just over a million people,”  explains Andrew Cutler, sales and franchise director of Card Connection.  “Yet again Joe has proved that his hard work in expanding his business has paid dividends.”

 

Joe currently operates from 1800sq feet of warehousing with five vans and a team of five of people on the road plus two part time pickers/ packers based in his warehouse. 

 

A number of other franchisees’ achievements were recognised at the Card Connection’s annual conference in Stratford-Upon-Avon including Gabriel McGeown from Armagh and South Tyrone who won the ‘Best Newcomer’ award.   Best Improvers went to Andy and Vicki Thompson from Sunderland and Durham who since joining Card Connection in 2004, have doubled the size of their franchise, while Wakefield franchisee, Martin Sweeney was recognised with the Heidi Sulley commemorative cup - a special award for tenacity and team spirit. 

 

Card Connection has limited vacancies for franchisees who are keen to run an expanding business.  Successful candidates would ideally have some management experience as, once established, they would be expected to employ a small team, operate a warehouse and have several liveried vans on the road.   Card Connection franchisees have recently also started to supply retail outlets with the popular Voltz energy shot drink.

 

Because the franchise networks in the UK and Ireland are complete, the available opportunities now consist of acquiring an already-established territory from an existing franchisee.  These vary in price according to their level of development, but start at £20,000 (+ stock) with earnings potential in excess of £50,000 per annum.