Congratulations to Our 2025 Conference Award Winners!
We’re thrilled to extend a massive congratulations to all of our incredible award winners from Conference 2025! Your hard work, enthusiasm, and dedication have truly set the standard for excellence in throughout our network.
Here are your winners...
Franchisee of the Year 2025
Congratulations to Ellie Cawdell at Puddle Ducks York, Hull & East Yorkshire, Puddle Ducks Cambridge, and Puddle Ducks Edinburgh , the winner of the 2025 Franchisee of the Year Award!
The award was selected by our Immerse streams, who had this to say:
"Our FOY has excelled in every Immerse stream. She has smashed her MPS and customer growth targets last year and expanded into a number of areas. In one new area, her business grew to just under 400 customers during the first year. She has a thirst for so much growth. She has regularly promoted Puddle Ducks on TV and the radio.
According to one of her team members despite a growing team, she is always at the end of the phone for her team , providing motivation and support in both a professional and personal capacity. Her passion for Puddle Ducks is infectious and she truly leads her team from the front, ensuring
everyone has a positive work life balance and regularly attending classes to stay in touch with customers. A positive work life balance appears to be something she personally achieves too.
The staff and customers love her and she can often be heard drumming up business in the playground whilst on the school run. Her easy and approachable manner, sets her apart and she manages to create a family environment for customers and staff. She is hard working and dedicated, regularly making a 4 hour journey, to provide additional training and to launch new classes and pools.
Her drive to build customer numbers and diversify, comes from her deep set belief that the Puddle Ducks offering is truly the best on the market and this can be evidenced by the easy rapport she builds with customers, as well as finding ways to ensure every child- regardless of their needs- is able to join our lessons. There is no challenge too large for her to take on and she does it all with a smile.
We are all delighted that she is receiving this recognition again and look forward to what the next 12 months brings.
Congratulations to Ellie on being the Puddle Ducks 2025 Franchisee of the year. (for the second time!)"
Supports the Network 2025
Congratulations to Sarah Austin at Puddle Ducks Bristol & Bath, the winner of the 2025 Supports the Network Award!
The award was determined based on nominations from franchisees across the network. Here's what some of them had to say when nominating Sarah:
"I would like to nominate Sarah Austin. Sarah is unstintingly positive, and is always offering responses to questions raised or concerns shared. Her support for the network is unwavering, and with her recent Business Bookclub idea and her input in our marketing group, Sarah has proved herself to be a very supportive and integral part of the network. Aside form this, on a personal level, I have been so grateful for Sarah’s advice and support on a one-to-one basis. Her wealth of experience, and generosity in sharing this, has been extremely helpful and encouraging for me."
"Sarah is just amazing and just oozes passion for Puddle Ducks. She is always there to support anyone with anything they need. She is so approachable and understanding and just an all round fabulous franchisee. Recently Sarah set up and facilitated a teams meeting about Aquanatal which was really beneficial to all involved. She has great presence on the Franchise forum, offering great advice and suggesting really useful ways to develop ourselves. If I lived in Bristol and wasn't a Franchisee I would LOVE to work for Sarah! "
"Sarah always makes time for others, shares her ideas, has an open mindset and is an absolute inspiration and a pleasure to be around."
Demonstrates Brand Excellence 2025
Congratulations to Charlie Goodenough at Puddle Ducks Gloucestershire, the winner of the 2025 Demonstrates Brand Excellence Award!
The award was selected by Ruth Nelson, who had this to say:
"The winner of this award is a real trailblazer when it comes to the marketing done locally. She always thinks about the bigger picture and uses the national activity to think of ways of enhancing awareness in her area. Always willing to try new things.
Her and her team are doing a really excellent job of being present locally, with charity initiatives and a water safety talk programme that is now embedded in the community with endorsement by the local authority. Charlie’s franchise has achieved positive customer growth every quarter since June 2023 – an impressive feat in the economic climate.
The collaboration between her franchise and HQ works really well and given the volume of activity from this franchise, we have asked this person to be one of our RightMarket champions. This award goes to Charlie Goodenough."
Focused on Growth 2025
Congratulations to Lizzie Moore at Puddle Ducks North Hampshire & Reading, the winner of the 2025 Focused on Growth Award!
The award was selected by Vicki Calder, who had this to say:
"This franchisee has grown customer numbers by a huge 133% since taking on the franchise less than 2 years ago.
She has really focused all the team on customer retention increasing this from circa 20% to just over 50% recently.
New pool time was initially hard to come by, and she had a few setbacks but persevered and is now in a new pool, she thought she would never get in.
She launched Swim Academy in the territory for the first time, and it now constitutes just under 21% of her customer base and is focused on increasing this.
She has grown her team and given more communication and responsibility to existing team members, all contributing towards the success of her franchise."
Leads a Strong Team 2025
Congratulations to Nicola Codd at Puddle Ducks Doncaster & South Humberside, the winner of the 2025 Leads a Strong Team Award!
The award was selected by Sarah Greaterix, who had this to say:
"This franchisee has had an excellent 12 months with really helping to shape our future customer service teams. She was the first franchisee to recruit a ‘sales’ team member as part of her customer service team and as a result helped write a new recruitment pack for the network to use.
She has focussed on enquiries and conversion and has seen a real step change in her team driving a 7% growth in conversion in the last 12 months.
Her team actively participate in network webinars contributing lots of great ideas which benefits the wider network.
As a leader she has really focussed on her personal development. She continues to have coaching which challenges her to look at things differently and push her team to work in new ways. She reads lots of business books, is developing her LinkedIn database and is always striving to try something new."
Maintains Strong Finances 2025
Congratulations to Natalie Archer at Puddle Ducks East Surrey, the winner of the 2025 Maintains Strong Finances Award!
The award was selected by Steve Adams, who had this to say:
"Natalie Archer has clearly demonstrated great financial management of her business. She consistently achieves high gross and net profits, which are essential for long-term sustainability and growth of the business.
It is even more remarkable that she managed to continue this performance in the face of a series of challenges last year, including the total closure of a key pool.
Natalie is an inspiration to the whole network in terms of controlling her costs, keeping financial control, and ultimately getting a great return on her investment in the Puddle Ducks brand."
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/puddle-ducks_puddleducks-award-quality-activity-7331687468880072704-8wE1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAEgmJ7QB-TzIRh9uHO-Sjlm-7MrN3VGp4Jo
Consistently Delivers Quality 2025
Congratulations to Jay Nash and Chris Nash at Puddle Ducks Chester, Wirral & North Wales, the winners of the 2025 Consistently Delivers Quality Award!
The award was selected by Ali Beckman, who had this to say
Consistently Delivers Quality: The winner of our immerse stream this year has embraced changes to the way we would like training to be delivered going forward. They have engaged with the Aquatics team on career progression routes for their team, working hard to ensure there are opportunities for personal development and growth. They have set up an ATC, delivered courses, and started the process for becoming the first ATC with their own Franchise Tutor who isn’t already part of the HQ team. With a Franchise Accreditor already in post, it won’t be long before this franchise is fully self-sufficient in terms of recruitment, training and accreditation, to help reduce costs and training times. They also proposed a different way of working with a private school to take on the responsibility of delivering lessons, challenging our thinking and allowing us to create a case study based on the work they had put in. They are enthusiastic, always contributing to webinars and technical meetings and they are in constant contact with the Aquatics team to explore ways to help them to constantly improve on compliance and standards. In addition, they are willing to share teachers with other franchises and to engage with that franchise to agree assignments and ensure compliance and observations are up to date. Our immerse stream winners this year are Jay and Chris Nash."
Congratulations to everyone! We can't wait to see you next year at Conference 2026!