Carnoisseur: Retail Franchise Case Study

Carnoisseur was founded in 1981 with the aim of providing car performance and tuning parts and accessories to enthusiasts through a mail order operation. A short while later a handful of shops opened, and as the brand further developed, as of July 2006, 14 UK-wide franchised shops have since opened trading under the Carnoisseur brand name.

The aim of the website was three-fold; firstly, to increase brand awareness in the industry; secondly, to attract further franchisees by educating prospects on the setup requirements; thirdly, to communicate top level information to consumers and to maintain existing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

The Carnoisseur website was designed and built with the potential franchisee and consumer in mind, as recommended in the brief. Since the launch of the website, an ecommerce site (which almost entirely replicates the printed brochure) has followed the same style as the "parent" site. The result of this is that both franchisees and the ecommerce/direct mail business create revenue streams for Carnoisseur.

The website communicates to consumers through sections such as "shop finder" and "customer cars", whilst potential franchisees are given an entire section devoted to setup requirements containing information such as financial requirements, available locations and support covering aspects of training, product supplies, design and planning and finance. All website visitors are able to view regularly updated news in order to promote site stickiness; visitors can also enter their details into a "quick fill" newsletter sign-up form displayed prominently on the home page in order to receive updates and news in their email.

All website content sits within a content management platform - updates made by head-office. Future enhancements to the website will allow each franchisee to update their own sections of the website, in order to further develop the Carnoisseur community and to communicate to regional audiences. Such development will be carried out using the main content management system.

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