ONE WEEK before Gill Thomas was due to launch her franchise business offering
music classes to preschool children, she got a shock.
She had chosen to call it Musical Minors and had assumed that the name had
been registered as a trademark by her lawyers. Then she discovered that
another franchise business had already applied to trademark a similar name,
so she could not secure it for her business.
“The trademark checks that I believed had been undertaken had not been,” she
said, “but at no time was I told there was a problem until a week before we
launched.”
Thomas was forced to change the name of her business to Jo Jingles, a move
that cost her £25,000 and caused a delay of four months.
“At the time it was horrendous because we had to ditch T-shirts, promotional
material, advertising, the whole lot,” she said.
Born in Sidcup, Kent, and brought up in Macclesfield, Cheshire, with two older
sisters, Thomas was introduced to music by her father, a distribution
manager for a newspaper company, who was passionate about classical music.
“There was always music in the house,” she said.
She left school at 18 to study geography at Hull University and then joined
the graduate-trainee management course at Mars confectionery. She moved on
to Kay shoes and worked her way up to national sales manager. When she had
her first child at 32, however, Thomas realised she would need to make some
changes to her life.
In her first week back to work after maternity leave she was sent to Boston in
America for 10 days. “I really didn’t feel that the job I had was going to
be conducive to having a family,” she said. “There was an awful lot of
travel involved and I really didn’t want to be spending huge amounts of time
away.”
However, having had such a fulfilling career, she didn’t want to become a
full-time mother. Her solution was to start a local music class for children
aged under five. She called it Musical Minors and ran it in village halls.
“There was absolutely nothing in Beaconsfield for very young children to do,”
she said. “I felt there was a real need for something stimulating and fun
that parents and children could do together.”
Thomas ran the classes for three years and they were so popular that she
decided to explore the possibility of turning Musical Minors into a
nation-wide franchise.
So she took a year out to find out everything she could about starting up a
franchise business, talking to the British Franchise Association and looking
into why music was so important for preschool children.
She began by organising two pilot schemes run by people who had already worked
for her doing classes. Then in 1996, after surviving the setback of having
to change the name, she launched the business as a franchise, initially
offering packages for £5,500.
To begin with, interest was slow, with five or six franchisees signing up in a
year. “It took a while to get off the ground because, like most franchises,
the early stage is convincing people when you haven’t got a huge track
record,” said Thomas.
“Then as the business grows, and more franchisees join, people can see the
success that they have had in terms of their financial accounts and
performance.”
At this point the business hit a growth spurt, with 25 people joining in one
year alone.
She said: “It was tremendous because it really developed a momentum of its
own. At the time there was a lot of research coming out about how good music
was for youngsters.”
The business hit another challenge when Thomas realised that demand from older
children was falling because those aged three to five were going to
nurseries and preschool groups.
Fortunately, the solution was simple - to add on classes for babies, and to
approach nurseries and offer to run sessions in them.
Even the need to change the company name has turned out to be a blessing in
disguise, as it provided Thomas with a character the franchisees could use
in their classes.
She said: “I am a great believer in turning negatives into positives. The
great thing was that, by changing the name, the character Jo Jingles was
born, and the character has gone on to be very much part of our success. The
children adore him and they hug him every class we go to.”
Jo Jingles now has 105 franchisees in Britain and Ireland and this year will
have a turnover of £3.5m.
Aged 50 and married with two children, Thomas, who still owns 100% of the
business, said the secret of her success was that “I have a tremendous
belief in what we are doing”.
She added: “If you can’t be passionate about the work you are involved in, if
you can’t sell it, then you can’t really expect anyone else to care about it.
“I also have a very determined character, which probably helps. Failure was
never part of my plan.”
Thomas has this advice for budding entrepreneurs: “Whatever you decide you
want to do, research your market thoroughly and make sure there is an
opportunity for you. Believe in what you are doing, then be prepared to work
at it.”
She said that for her, finding something that enabled her to combine work life
with home life had been the ultimate reward.
“I have loved it because it has given me the opportunity to combine my family
life with something that I love and passionately believe in. Money is not my
prime motivator. It is the quality of my family life and my work-life
balance that are the most important things.”
