Franchise Profile

Arlind Marku, Owner of Monkey Puzzle Bromley and New Cross

As a network of 65 franchised childcare settings, we are now the 3^rd largest nursery group in the UK. All our nurseries are independently owned but with a shared recognisable design, business model and established reputation. However, our business owners are not so similar, they come from diverse professional backgrounds, they have unique business motivations and their individual journeys as Monkey Puzzle franchisees are matchless. With this in mind, we are thrilled to start sharing these stories with the network.

Meet Arlind Marku, who opened his first Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery in Bromley 4 years ago and has achieved incredible success.

“I graduated in 2007 from Middlesex University with a BA Hons in Business and Italian. I then started working in the city as an account manager, selling precious metal. It was a job that I truly enjoyed and it taught me a lot, however, my father has always been successfully self-employed and this inspired me to start thinking about setting up my own business.

I always wanted to teach and was looking at doing a PGCE, but in 2013 my wife and I started to plan our family and looked at some nurseries in our local area. We noticed that every good nursery had a long waiting list and after identifying the local demand for child care along with my continued desire to teach, my wife and I settled on the idea to open our own day nursery.

Not having experience in this sector, I accepted that I couldn’t set up a nursery on my own. I met a few providers before coming across Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries and after learning about their franchise model and success rates I knew they were the right company to go with.

The set up and first year were quite challenging, but I had a huge amount of guidance and hands-on support from the Monkey Puzzle team and by the end they helped to deliver the positive outcome.

Since the day I committed to Monkey Puzzle Day Nurseries I have felt part of the family and never had any second thoughts. We now have two children of our own who attend our Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery in Bromley.”

After the success of Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Bromley, Arlind’s ambition grew and he pushed on to open a second Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery in New Cross.

“Opening a second nursery with Monkey Puzzle was a no brainer. I had already been very successful with Bromley so expanding was an easy choice. Setting up the second nursery was so much easier and I learnt from the mistakes and successes on the first project. In February, it was our 4^th anniversary in Bromley and I hope we can continue building on our success”

So, what have been the highlights for Arlind?

“There are many positive factors to being a business owner but the highlights of running a nursery for me is seeing children develop and their parents’ trust in our care.

We focus on creating a family feel at our nurseries. We do try to adapt to our local needs and Head Office are very supportive with this. On the anniversary of our first year we had our Ofsted inspection in Bromley and we were rated, Good. We launched a massive campaign on social media to promote this success and within few weeks we started to work with a waiting list.

Being a business owner is both challenging and rewarding in equal measure. However, seeing your business growing and going from strength to strength is a feeling that is very hard to describe.”