About us

Julie Waites

Julie is one of the most experienced franchise consultants in the UK. She set up The Franchise Company in 1991 and is one of the partners. Since forming The Franchise Company Julie has worked on many successful franchising projects for clients in a broad range of sectors.

She is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and is a guest speaker for the British Franchise Association on workshops for franchisors. She has extensive expertise in the practices and principle of franchisee recruitment and has helped clients to recruit many hundreds (or even thousands) of franchisees.

Ken Rostron

Ken has a wealth of invaluable experience in franchising because he has operated at board level with 3 Franchisor plc companies before joining The Franchise Company in 2001. That ‘hands on’ experience included overseas expansion, re-launching existing brands for recruitment purposes and dealing with franchise agreement disputes.

Ken became a partner in The Franchise Company in 2002 and has worked on a wide range of franchise and license business models including large, blue-chip corporations. Ken has extensive international experience and has helped a large number of clients export their franchise models via master franchising.

Mashud Choudhury

Mashud has been with The Franchise Company since 2000 and has a marketing background with experience of business branding and development. He has worked on a huge number of franchise projects and has extensive experience of franchising with numerous successful franchisors. He has an in-depth understanding of franchising and his franchise projects have included businesses in retailing, renewables, manufacturing, food, cleaning, etc, both in the UK and abroad.

He is currently working with a number of clients to expand their businesses nationally and internationally. More recently he worked with the Institute of Directors, helping them develop their in house operations manual and their international franchise model. Mashud has extensive experience developing complex franchise and business operations manuals and franchisee recruitment systems. His understanding of technology ensures clients can combine strong franchising consultancy with technological solutions.

James Dobson

James has worked with The Franchise Company since 2010, providing digital services to the company and many of its clients in areas such as franchise website development, franchise systems and digital marketing through his agency Outward Digital.

James specialises in helping franchises to be more efficient, streamlined and profitable by developing bespoke websites and applications that are unique to the needs of their business. Further, he understands the importance of creating quality branding and effective digital marketing for building successful franchises, and offers this service to clients.

He also developed FranchiseBase, a platform for both new and established franchises to communicate and recruit more effectively.

Nick Bramley

Nick has over 30 years of experience working in and across the business development, sales and growth environments for clients working in a wide variety of sectors.  He has latterly transferred some of his focus and expertise to working in the franchise sector supporting our franchise skills & training development service.

From using his expertise to support or create franchise growth strategies, from creating highly engaging, in-room or virtual training workshops, to designing small group and 1-2-1 coaching interventions, Nick has already made a big difference to a number of major, award-winning franchises as well as some of the smaller, agile, ambitious ones.  He has also added his expertise and knowledge to a number of new-start franchise clients too. 

Nick is consistently in demand for his creative approach to developing the skills and confidence of individuals, franchisees, central franchisor teams and indeed in support of franchisors themselves.  He is also an engaging and impressive orator with a number of keynote presentations available to share at conferences, franchise team meetings or other gatherings where growth is on the agenda.    

Aimee Hawke

Aimee is our newest recruit to The Franchise Company. She joined our team in 2021 after graduating from Northumbria University with a BA in Geography.

Since joining us Aimee has been assisting our senior consultants working alongside them to complete various projects. 

She also manages our successful First Friday events, which run on the First Friday of every month, featuring industry speakers and Q&As and manages our internal accounting function.

Efrah Atacan

With a background on franchise development and business development services in REMAX Turkey Head Office, Efrah Atacan started her own company in 2009 in business advisory services and brought The Franchise Company brand into Turkey in 2013.

She has more than 10 years of experience on strategic planning, growth, project management and all related consultancy services. She has been providing business advisory services to companies mainly working within franchise environment. She also noticed the lack of expertise and professional approach by franchise consultancy businesses in Turkey, so decided to bring one of the best franchise consultancy companies from UK - The Franchise Company.

She looks to implement UK standard franchise practices throughout Turkey and the Middle East.

Aycan Helvacıoğlu

Aycan Helvacioglu, who completed 22 years in the frame of Erem Medya Group, Medyafors Fair, Expochannel tv, Erem Publishing companies, became a partner of The Franchise Company with Efrah Atacan in 2018. Along with franchise consultancy services, she also works on brand development, brand communication, domestic and international location consultancy with their exclusive portfolio from Middle East and UK, and Master Franchise expansion of local and international brands.

With her motto of ‘what really matters is brand’ she is interested in all type of projects which add value to brands. As a board member of UFRAD (Franchise Association of Turkey) she is involved in many organizations and events both locally and internationally, and she keeps developing projects facilitating local brands to expand globally.