I am writing to let you know that Azura Group Ltd has been acquired by Franchise Brands plc, an AIM quoted multi-brand franchisor. I wanted to share with you some background to this, the benefits to the business and how Azura will operate within the larger group.
For some time, I have been considering how best to take the business to the next level and I felt that being part of a much larger group would facilitate its development to provide the best possible user experience and customer service. Having founded Azura over 30 years ago, it was obviously a major decision for me personally. However, my team and I have worked closely with Franchise Brands since 2018 developing and customising our core system for them and have got to know them well. Azura will continue to play an important role in their digital journey and given Franchise Brand’s expertise, experience and resources it was a logical evolution of the relationship for them to become owners of the business. Further information on Franchise Brands can be found on their website https://www.franchisebrands.co.uk/
Whilst there has been a change of ownership, rest assured it will be business as usual here at Azura for you and your team. I remain Managing Director of Azura Group and a Board Director. My management team and colleagues that look after you will all remain with the business. We are also growing the team by recruiting new team members. You will be aware of the recent appointment of Mark Scott as Operations Director to assist me in the further development of the business and as we grow, his role will become more important.
Azura will operate on an arms-length basis within Franchise Brands so we will continue to manage the day-to-day business but have access to the group resources and expertise we require. Given that Franchise Brands is also a franchisor, and may operate in a similar sector to current and future customers of Azura, I wanted to reassure you that maintaining customer confidentiality continues to be of paramount importance to Azura. We will implement and maintain additional confidentiality provisions to ensure that only those authorised Azura employees have access to your account and your data will not be shared outside of the Azura team. We are obviously used to managing customer confidentiality given that a number of our customers are in similar sectors, and as a quoted company, Franchise Brands operates to the highest standards of corporate governance.
I am personally looking forward to working with the team at Franchise Brands whose clear expertise and experience in successfully growing high quality businesses will help us greatly in the next stage of our development. We are very excited about building on our success to date as part of a larger, publicly quoted group.
If you would like to discuss this any further, please do not hesitate to make contact and I will happily organise a meeting or a call. Mark and I will be at the bfa conference this week and please do look out for us if you are also attending
Kind regards,
Simon Pullum
Managing Director