Introducing Louise Harris, Head of Strategic Partnerships

Louise Harris is the easyStorage Head of Strategic Partnerships, responsible for key operational partnerships.

This means she is primarily looking after easyStorage franchisees and their centralised suppliers – from both warehousing and packaging supplies through to the accountancy system suppliers and relationships with both banks and business planners.

Louise joined easyStorage just over a year ago. She is directly responsible to Nigel Dawson,Franchise Director and Co-Founder, easyStorage – last seen on this blog sporting a hairy faced smile for Movember.

Louise’s background is ex-airline (KLM) which saw her living in places as diverse as the Netherlands and Kenya. It gave her a strong sales and customer service approach, which served her well when she established the Wilkins Chimney Sweep Franchise.

Franchising, property and customer service are in her blood. Her very first job was with a relocation company, and she eventually became a franchisee for specialist relocation outfit, Medics on the Move. She saw first hand the franchisee experience, and realised that it could easily be applied to the high quality chimney sweeping service that her husband was offering. Before they knew it, they had become a husband and wife team, before selling the thriving, successfu lfranchise in 2018.

Louise loves the learning curve she’s been on at easyStorage. She has moved from a relatively small company to a large one, and is constantly learning about new areas of the business. She loves the ‘easy’ brand, and its intention of shaking up the storage market to offer more customer choice and bring it to a wider audience.

Louise recruits and ‘on-boards’ the franchisees, which has been extra challenging with the COVID restrictions. Whilst the businesses lend themselves well to managing COVID risks, it’s hard to book spaces for meeting or run training courses. Nonetheless, her plans for 2021 include focussing more on recruiting easyStorage franchisees for the areas that don’t have them, particularly in the North of England.

With such a wide brief, she is rarely to be found at her desk, much to the dismay of her small white and grey cat, who does ‘cold shoulder’ to perfection when she’s been away. She and her husband have three adult children between them, of whom theyare very proud, and who have now started their own families. Her sister and her two nephews are scattered across the UK and turn up regularly to stay, making every effort to disturb this human dynamo’s regime - and generally failing!

Louise’s organisational and negotiation skills are pretty phenomenal. Her people skills and ability to get things done make her a pleasure to work with – our franchisees are lucky to have her!

If you’re interested in finding out more about joining easyStorage as a franchisee, and how to book a place on a Discovery Day, we have a page on this site to help: https://www.easystorage.com/franchise

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