UK-born Turkish Cypriot Mehmet Moustafa, a former dry cleaner and estate agent, is putting his business management skills to the test by starting his own plumbing business.

Mehmet has taken on the London North West franchise for Drain Doctor Plumbing offering emergency plumbing and drainage repairs in Barnet, Enfield and the surrounding areas.

Mehmet brings a wealth of business experience with him. He is a dry cleaner by profession and spent 20 years running a family owned dry cleaning business in the Turkish Cypriot community in North London. During that time he also built up a property portfolio.

“After working for so long in the dry cleaning industry I felt I needed a change so decided to leave and get a ‘civilised job’. I worked for a while in an estate agency to build up experience then used my property development experience to set up my own estate agency in partnership with someone. When the partnership broke up I went back into the retail business running a coffee shop.

“Because I didn’t find this fulfilling or challenging I started to look around at franchising opportunities in different areas of business and settled on Drain Doctor.”

Drain Doctor has a proven system and I relish being part of a winning team. I wanted to make the change ahead of potential hard times and realised franchising offers a much better chance of success than individual enterprise. Drain Doctor offers a recession-proof opportunity.

“I can be an independent operator running my own business but with all the back-up that comes with being part of a national organisation. I aim to give businesses and householders in North London the ‘dazzling’ level of service in plumbing and drainage which Drain Doctor provides across the rest of the country.

“My customers get fixed-price, no obligation quotes, a complete guarantee on all our work, and a full 24 hour per day seven day per week service with no call out charges – so people pay the same price for work at any time of day or night. What’s more, my plumbers turn up at the agreed time!”

Because he has purchased an existing franchise Mehmet will work with an existing Drain Doctor technician to learn the job but after three to four weeks he plans to leave the plumbing to the professionals and concentrate on telesales and marketing.

Mehmet’s cousin Yiltan is to run the neighbouring Drain Doctor franchise so the pair intend to pool some resources and share office premises in Barnet although their technicians will cover different areas.

Launched in the United Kingdom in 1993, Drain Doctor Plumbing quickly grew to become the country's largest emergency plumbing and drain repair service. It now provides a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year service across the country with each franchise area such as North London run as an independent business.