One system for a growing network of children's football classes

WeeKicks runs children’s football classes across a network of franchises around London — ongoing weekly sessions for different age groups, the kind of programme that lives or dies on a smooth experience for busy parents. The brand was already growing, with the ambition to keep adding franchises and, in time, to grow beyond the UK. What it needed was an operating system that could keep up.

The brief

A network like WeeKicks has two customers at once. There’s the parent, who wants to find a class, book a trial, pay without friction and stay informed. And there’s the franchisee, who needs to run their own venues day to day without fighting the software — and head office, which needs to see the whole picture across every franchise.

Growing the network meant getting all three working from the same, modern system: easy for parents, simple for franchisees, and transparent for HQ.

The friction

The previous setup was holding the brand back. It was rigid and ageing — built for a different kind of business and slow to adapt to how WeeKicks actually works. A few problems came up again and again:

• A clunky sign-up process. The registration journey was a point of friction for parents — and a network losing customers at the very first step is a network leaving growth on the table.
• Support that made things harder. When something went wrong, getting answers was slow. That’s costly when franchisees are waiting and parents expect a reply.
• No view of the network. Head office lacked the reports needed to actually steer a franchise network — and franchisees were left with questions the system couldn’t answer.
• Not enough variability. Different products, different payment methods, different local setups — the old system wasn’t flexible enough to support how the business was evolving.

For a brand that wants to look — and be — professional as it scales, the system itself had become the bottleneck.

The switch

Switching the engine under a live network, with a large customer base and franchisees depending on it every day, is a genuinely nervous moment. That’s exactly where the relationship mattered most.

The Zooza team stayed responsive throughout, open to feedback and genuinely interested in making the platform work for how WeeKicks operates. As one of our earliest UK franchise partners, WeeKicks gets hands-on partner support — and in the first months we’re closing the technical gaps specific to this kind of business on this market, as part of the partnership rather than as an extra. Direct support for the franchisees is part of it too.

The result was a transition that went smoothly, with no surprises left to chance.

Life on Zooza now

Day to day, the difference is that everything lives in one place. Bookings, payments and the information spread across multiple venues are now in a single system — which means better visibility of the business, and time freed up for the things that actually move it forward.

• A smoother journey for parents. Families book, manage payments and update their own details through the online portal — a better experience for them, and less admin for the team.
• Payments that run themselves. Direct debit via GoCardless keeps mandates and ongoing payment plans tidy for recurring weekly classes.
• The everyday operations, handled. Registrations, trials, pausing, refunds, attendance and parent communication — all in one flow.
• Reporting at every level. Data at head-office and franchise level gives a real-time understanding of the business, with multiple KPIs to see where success is coming from.

What’s next

With the network on a modern, variable system and reporting that works from HQ down to the individual franchise, WeeKicks has the operational foundation to keep growing in the UK — with international expansion on the horizon. The platform is built to adapt to local standards on a global scale, so the next franchise runs as smoothly as the first.

Learn more at weekicks.co.uk.