Brand recognition gets express service: always a successful franchise with a failure rate close to zero, Recognition Express aims to capitalise on its hard-won reputation and enviable client book by cross-selling a full range of branding and promotional products.(Recognition Express)

FEW COMPANIES, franchised or otherwise, have a track record of sustained success to match that of Recognition Express. The company has grown from a standing start into a multi-million-pound market leader, and in 23 years of franchising it has never had a failure. That last claim is the subject of some debate at bead office in Hinckley, Leicestershire, because many years ago they did have to ease out a franchisee who didn't pay his dues. There are some who don't count that as failure; those who do say that Recognition Express's success rate is only 99.8 per cent.

Recognition Express makes promotional products--name badges, signs, wall plaques, branded gifts, the multifarious awards that companies use to motivate staff. It can fulfil an order for two items or two million, and its customer list reads like a who's who of blue-chip businesses. It produces literally millions of name badges for British Airways, McDonalds, HSBC, Travelodge, Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Compass, Little Chef, Burger King, the Post Office, the Prison

Service and hundreds more clients. Increasingly. it is diversifying into more sophisticated products as demand dictates and technology allows, and it has a number of successful franchisees turning over more than 1million [pounds sterling].

One of its most successful is Paul Mitchell, owner of Recognition Express (Slough) and …