Drain Doctor Plumbing to franchise across Europe

Drain Doctor Plumbing, a UK based emergency drainage and plumbing franchise, has appointed a new operations manager to aid its European expansion. Francisco JosÉ Ferreira São Vicente has been appointed as operations manager for Portugal to help mirror Drain Doctor's UK success. He will establish the Drain Doctor franchise business model in Portugal to provide guaranteed service 24 hours per day 365 days per year with a fixed price 'menu' and no call-out or out-of-hours charges.

Drain Doctor is a franchise operation with 104 owner operator businesses operating around the UK. Francisco will help Drain Doctor establish a company-owned business in the Algarve region covering Loulé, Faro, Silves, Vilamoura, Portimão, and Lagos. He will manage the Drain Doctor Algarve operation to ensure that the concept is properly established. Francisco will then establish owner-operator franchises in the rest of the country.

Francisco was chosen to be operations manager in Portugal because the Drain Doctor board felt that he had the best attitude and qualifications to build the Drain Doctor brand in Europe.

Jan Mitman, Drain Doctor Director, said: "We are delighted that Francisco is joining Drain Doctor to assist us with the launch of the business in Portugal. He will receive all the support we can give him.

"Once the structure is in place Francisco will employ a group of technicians to cover all aspects of Drain Doctor's service to deal with plumbing, drainage, relining and CCTV. He will initially cover the whole of the Algarve region. When the operation is as successful as we are sure it is going to be he will start franchising the system in the rest of Portugal."

Francisco, who was working in the real estate industry, commented: "The current economic downturn forced me to rethink my options. I saw the advertisement for operations manager in Expresso and decided to apply. The Drain Doctor business model offers a recession proof business.

"The plumbing and drainage systems in Portugal are very similar to those in the UK, but we do not have CCTV and no dig drainage technology in Portugal so this will give us a great competitive advantage. For example, drain lining will allow us to complete repairs without having to dig up our customers' drains."