Franchisor Mark Langford reveals a big vision is his secret to success with the Gametraders franchise.

What made you turn to franchising?

In 1992 I started a real estate practice in Cairns and joined the Professionals Real Estate group, I enjoyed the fellowship and liked being part of a culture of likeminded people. When I sold the business I moved back to Adelaide and started Gametraders.

Having been in a franchise I wanted to start my own franchise and when the Gametraders concept became successful the obvious thing to do was to franchise the business. Today we have 47 stores across Australia.

How are you marketing yourself and your business?

Now that we have 47 stores we have quite a good annual budget of close to a million dollars; in the early days we would subsidise the advertising fund with any spare funds we could find as the more awareness you can create the better it is for the business.

Image is very important to potential franchisees so we have quite a impressive head office incorporating our instore branding and big screens TVs playing our instore DVDs promoting our brand and new game releases.

A few years ago we re-branded our stores as our focus is to open in major shopping centres across Australia, we are very focused on building a true retail brand.

How do you benchmark your performance?

We monitor the sales of our stores each month and immediately know from the ratios if the business model is working as it should. We have had a few cases were the business model fundamentals are out of kilter and providing the franchisee is open to suggestion and advice, we can turn around a poorly performing store very quickly.

What is the secret to your success?

ItÕs more than just hard work; you must think big and have a vision of where you see your business in the future. You must begin with the end in mind and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Succeeding in business is a lifelong commitment that requires a never give up mindset.