The Sunday Business PostSeptember 14, 2014Money Plus Small business 9

British-born entrepreneur John Miles is target-ing working parents with a childcare f r a n c h i s e

offering Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) services for pri-mary school pupils. Miles, who lives in Clonakilty, Co Cork, established Sherpa Kids Ire-land in March to offer before and after-school care services and holiday programmes to primary school children.

Sherpa Kids is a structured programme, incorporating meals, homework, themed activities and playtime on the school premises.

Miles first hit upon the idea for a franchised OSHC pro-gramme for primary school pupils three years ago, based on his own experience living in west Cork.

“A lot of after-school care in more rural communities is

done by family and friends, but with the recession, the workforce has had to become a lot more mobile and there-fore access to family support may become limited with families moving away from their local area,” he said.

The idea re-surfaced in late 2013 when Miles read a news-paper article about the child-care challenges the mothers of school-age children some-times faced when re-entering the workforce.

He came across the Aus-tralian Sherpa Kids franchise after researching the out-of-hours childcare options avail-able on the market.

“I decided that, rather than spending years building a rec-ognisable brand and systems, I would buy one that could hit the ground running,” he said.

Sherpa Kids had its roots in New Zealand, where it was originally set up by South African accountant Dawn Engelbrecht as Safe Kids in Daily Supervision.

Engelbrecht launched the service following her own experience with an OHSC provider who looked after her three children during week-days, alongside five others.

“She realised she was pay-ing 37.5 per cent of their reve-nues, looked at their business model and liked it so much, she bought it,” said Miles. “She then co-founded the Sher-pa Kids International brand with Vicki Prout in Australia in 2011.”

Sherpa Kids Ireland is of-fering franchise packages for €20,000. “For that, we map out a territory with a pupil population of between 2,500 and 3,000,” said Miles.

“If you’re in Dublin, that would be about six schools,

whereas if you’re in west Cork, it’s about 16. You get full train-ing, ongoing support, online systems, and child manage-ment systems.”

The franchise is open to both owner-operators and own-ers who want to recruit pro-gramme coordinators to run the service. Miles is insistent that the childcare service itself be offered only by people who have Fetac Level 5 qualifica-tions in childcare.

“With the basic care pro-gramme, the children will come in at about three o’clock, wash their hands, sit down for something to eat and then, in association with the school, we decide how long they

spend on their homework,” he said.

“We have 80-plus themes that we can run with. So, say this week’s theme is Austra-lia, we will do arts and crafts, cookery, science, technology and games around that, but it only accounts for about 45 minutes of the care.”

“At the end of the themed activity, the children play out-side, weather permitting, and then for the last 20 minutes, we calm them down again so they’re nice and quiet when their mum and dad pick them up.”

Miles is piloting Sherpa Kids in St Joseph’s National School for Girls in Clonakilty and

plans to trial the programme in one or two more schools in the area.

“This will form the corner-stone of our national market-ing plan,” he said. “We have a five-year business plan where we aim to be operating in 26 counties through about 80 franchises.

“If each one reaches its po-tential, we could be support-ing over 10,000 families and employing 2,000 part-time carers.”

A three-hour session after hours at St Joseph’s costs €15, or €5.50 an hour for casual bookings.

However Miles, who has paid €90,000 to bring the franchise to Ireland, said Sher-pa Kids costs would vary in other locations.

Despite his ambitious plans, he is also cautious about over-reaching, and spending too much.

“We are very conscious of growing too quickly and put-ting strains on our resources, customer service and brand recognition, and we have a very stringent stress test framework to ensure this does not happen,” he said.

Miles’s immediate plans are to sign up franchisees in six counties.

“In the start-up phase, it’s all about planning and budgeting carefully – not over-stretching yourself initially and building a large network to support, market and sell your concept, but I have learned not to be afraid of the cost of employing specialists in this early phase of expansion,” he said.

“It is vital, in terms of time management for myself, that I have professionals working with me from accountants to PR people, so that I can focus my efforts on promoting the franchise model.”

Sherpa KidS What it does: Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) franchise Why it works: “We create and deliver customised before and after-school and holiday care services via a fun, structured and engaging programme that focuses on learning outcomes for the children.” – John Miles, founder, Sherpa Kids ireland

Fault-finding app makes for smoother service delivery

By Danielle Ryan

If you’ve ever come across a broken office light, a dodgy printer – or any other op-

erational problem with the buildings or services you use on a daily basis – and would like a quick way to report it to the person responsible, Froblem is an app designed to let you do it.

Developed by design en-gineer Walter O’Grady, the Froblem app is an advanced reporting system that helps organisations to manage their facilities more efficiently by allowing regular users to noti-fy them when problems arise.

“For example, it allows a person to report a missing ring-buoy on a riverbank or a broken office light at their workplace by pressing just a few buttons on their phone,” O’Grady said.

Essentially, it “helps organ-

isations to improve customer service and crowd-source the monitoring of their facilities – and listening to the user is vital to providing a great service”.

Froblem has been in the making for years, O’Grady said, but it was during his re-search into developing smart building technology as part of his PhD at University Col-lege Cork that the idea really grew legs.

“I realised that the trend to-wards energy efficiency and building optimisation was forgetting about the user,” he said.

“Buildings are for people — and sure, buildings were becoming more efficient ac-cording to regulations but no one was asking if the user was happy.

“I decided to help people get involved in the operation of the buildings or services they use daily. There’s a place for sophisticated sensors and software systems but the hu-man sensor is the most so-phisticated sensor we have. If you really want to know if something is working or not, ask the person using it.”

The pricing model for Froblem is based on an initial set-up cost to get the neces-sary data from the building, facility or service into the software system.

After that, there’s a sub-scription fee to receive reports from users, with the price varying based on the size of the facility or service to be monitored.

To date, Froblem has been funded primarily by O’Grady, with an additional infusion of

cash from UCC’s Ignite busi-ness start-up programme.

The company also received a €5,000 innovation vouch-er from Enterprise Ireland to go towards product develop-ment.

As one of the company’s earliest supporters, UCC also allowed O’Grady to pilot the Froblem system in one of their campus buildings.

“We owe them a lot for that because it generated our first sale,” O’Grady said. “Our first customer heard about what we were doing through UCC and asked us to develop it for him.”

With the business now be-ginning to generate revenue and showing growth poten-tial, O’Grady is in discussions with some private investors to further develop the prod-uct and bring in new, bigger customers.

“The great thing about Froblem is that it can be used anywhere – it has a broad industry and geographical

scope. I’d like to develop it into something global that really helps people improve their world,” O’Grady said.

Froblem currently employs two part-time software devel-opers who turned O’Grady’s raw prototype into the com-mercial grade system it is today.

“We predict that we will ex-pand to a team of about ten within the next two years,” he said.

For would-be entrepre-neurs unsure of how to take their first steps into the busi-ness world, O’Grady has some advice: “Just start. Simple as that. There’s no right or wrong place to start, so it doesn’t matter where you begin. When you take the first step, you’ll figure out how to take the next one.”

This story first appeared on The Daily Business Post, our online news service. For more start-up profiles and up-to-the-minute business news, see businesspost.ie

FrobleM What it does: an app that allows people to report faults with buildings and services directly to the organisations responsible. Why it works: “It allows a person to report a missing ring-buoy on a riverbank or a broken office light at their workplace, by pressing just a few buttons on their phone.” – Walter o’Grady, founder, Froblem

Alan Andrews established Coffee Culture in July 2009 to offer consultan-

cy services. The company offers consultancy services for the design and construc-tion of new cafes, alongside operational support and management advice. It also runs a barista training acad-emy in Dublin, and supplies wholesale coffee nation-wide.

Why did you set up your business?I love coffee and the lifestyle of the cafe industry. Coffee Culture allows me to work with all of my favourite pastimes: coffee, design and engendering passion in peo-ple though education.how did you fund the business initially? Personal finance for the most part, and a small loan from my mum and dad Dympna and Seamus. What was the best advice you got?Garry Ryan at Rycom told me to “keep it premium”. Our services are suited both to cafe chains and inde-pendent outlets. We have worked with businesses large and small, including Delish Cafes in Limerick, Wicklow’s Blessington Bookstore and Box of Frogs in Bantry, Co Cork. Other clients include Dublin City Council, Noah & Co in Liffey Valley, and Ardkeen Quality Foodstores in Waterford.What was the most important lesson you learned starting out? To manage costs and to fo-cus on quality. Linking the supply of wholesale coffee,

barista training, and design-and-build services seemed like a natural evolution for me and the business, and an opportunity to create a one-stop-shop for cafe owners and foodservice businesses.What was your biggest ‘make or break’ moment? My appointment as national coordinator for the Spe-ciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) in Ireland gave me a great sense of recognition for my commit-ment to coffee quality, pro-moting passion in baristas, and my desire to develop an inclusive barista community here.if you had it to do all over again, what would you change?I waited too long to visit coffee farms. My first visit was to Guatemala and it was an amazing education, which gave me a completely rounded understanding of coffee.

We have been involved in facilitating barista training and education courses in Tehran in Iran, and we will return again this year to work closely with baristas and young entrepreneurs looking to get into the cafe industry there.

We are also exploring export opportunities for our wholesale coffee in Britain and other European coun-tries. at what point were you sure that your business would make it past start-up stage?There were two. The first was growing business by 40 per cent year-on-year in the middle of a recession, and the second was when a competitor offered to buy me out.

Start-up stories How I startedLessons in Entrepreneurship

British-born entrepreneur John Miles is importing a childcare franchise model from the far side of the world

By elaine O’Regan

Walter o’Grady, founder of Froblem

alan andrews, chief executive, Coffee Culture

John Miles, founder, Sherpa Kids: offering before and after-school care to primary school children Emma Jervis

Helping to meet the childcare challenge