Ten franchisees leave Brazilian Beauty and set up rival brand Complete Skin & Beauty
A multimillion-dollar Brisbane-based beauty business has suffered a big hit with all of its franchisees cutting ties to set up their own brand.
QLD Business
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All the franchisees from one of Queensland’s biggest beauty companies have left to start their own brand after protracted negotiations.
Ten former Brazilian Beauty franchisees — eight in southeast Queensland and two from interstate — have opened the doors to their own newly created brand, Complete Skin & Beauty.
Complete Skin & Beauty spokesperson Helen Clifton said it was a mutually agreed exit after 18 months of negotiations.
“I have to be careful about what I say but we wanted to take a different direction from the franchisor,” she said.
“There was a legal agreement that allowed us to exit. Often these things end up in dreadful court cases but that didn’t happen and we can now carve our own path.”
The new Complete Skin & Beauty clinics are at Ashgrove, Albany Creek, MacArthur Central in the CBD, Mango Hill, Springfield Central, Mount Gravatt, Fairfield Gardens and Keperra in southeast Queensland and at Woden in the ACT and Bendigo in Victoria.
Brazilian Beauty has not responded after being approached by The Courier-Mail.
The business was founded by Francesca Webster and according to its website before the franchisees exited it had 20 clinics of which 17 were in southeast Queensland.
With the mass exit Brazilian Beauty is left with 10 corporate clinics.
According to the Linkedin account of former general manager Andrew Bryant, who left the company this year, Brazilian Beauty had annual revenue of $12m and employed more than 120 staff.
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Ms Clifton said all of the 10 former franchisees who make up Complete Skin & Beauty sought a “bold new brand structure” that aimed to provide the benefits of being in a large group with the flexibility to better service the local community and drive team member development.
“In addition, to the benefit of brand presence, we have a talented pool of owners which includes accountants, beauty therapists, operations managers, communications specialists and more. Each has committed their area of expertise to the group,” she said.
“By creating this structure we will save on many business overheads as we are sharing resources with each owner committed to different aspects of the brand.”
Ms Clifton said while there will be strong brand consistency, owners will also have the flexibility to choose products and services that better service their local clients or the talent and interests of their team members.
“This is difficult to achieve in a franchise structure where franchisees are unable to break away from head office decision making,” she said.
“So many times our therapists come to us with the most incredible ideas for new products and services. No one knows what our clients need better than them. Now they will have the opportunity to see those ideas come to fruition.
Julie Wright, one of the new directors of Complete Kin & Beauty, is the former chief financial officer of Brazilian Beauty.
