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What’s Safer: Buying a Franchise or Starting Your Own Business?

Written by: Sebastien Page

Article Overview: Have you always wanted to own and operate your own business? Given that there’s a high failure rate for independent, non-franchise businesses, you might want to consider buying a franchise instead.

What’s Safer: Buying a Franchise or Starting Your Own Business?

Have you always wanted to own and operate your own business? Given that there’s a high failure rate for independent, non-franchise businesses, you might want to consider buying a franchise instead. After all, franchising provides a proven system coupled with the support of a larger organization – invaluable pluses for first-time and therefore inexperienced business owners.

A few key advantages singular to buying a franchise include instant brand awareness and credibility, administrative and/or technical support, quicker return on investment, strong management, franchisor-provided training, and a franchisee network devoted to supporting fellow franchisees.

Franchisees are generally supported every step of the way from a variety of people vested in their success. For example, fellow franchisees often compliment their comrades’ marketing programs – multiple franchisees tend to benefit from a single fellow franchisee’s promotional event or commercial, and an independent business owner’s interest can help franchisees open additional outlets.

Without the support of an established marketing team and resources, independent business owners have to compete with the brand-recognition and advertising weight wielded by franchises. It may be difficult, as an independent business owner, to get your name out there, let alone establish yourself. You may have to put all your energy into operations and be forced to neglect other aspects of running your business. For example, you will be trying to figure out the basics, such as who will drive your sales campaign and bring in customers.

Sure, there’s more creative autonomy involved in owning an independent business rather than a franchise, but is this worth the risk of possibly being unable to make it in cut-throat but lucrative markets such as the food service, hospitality and/or retail industries? That’s up to you to decide.

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Article Tags: brand awareness, brand recognition, buying a franchise, cut throat, failure rate, franchise businesses, franchisee, franchisees, franchisor, independent business owner, independent business owners, lucrative markets, marketing programs, marketing team, pluses, retail industries, sales campaign, service hospitality, strong management, worth the risk



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Re: Hello from a San Diego-based marketer - Welcome Aaron! Whats the next stage for your business? Ben
Re: New, young entrepreneur - Congrats H20ismyLife! Do you have a website so we can see any of your work? Whats the next step for you?
Re: Enticing Franchises - Top 9 List - All Franchise listed above are in millions of dollars. Do you have the list of Franchise in thousands
Re: Info for would be franchisers... - [quote="Sebastien":1d29sdv1]Like Franchise Times, Franchise Update is a very practical magazine. There is no blah blah, just straight facts that anyone in the franchise community can relate to. I just want to mention that all these magazines are NOT franchisee oriented. I mean these magazines are for franchise professionals. If you're looking to buy a franchise, you won't find much information in there. To answer your question, getting published in Franchise Times was fairly easy. I don't want to brag too much but I think I am known in the franchise industry. I was the marketing guy at Franchise.com for a few years before joining my new company, the World Franchising Network. So people know me and I have a very good relationship with Nancy Weingartner, the Managing Editor at Franchise Times. I was talking with her at the last Franchise Expo South in Miami and she mentioned she'd like me to be profiled. I was like "ok, sure!". I like this franchise executive profile thing in Franchise Times as it is rarely BS. People are usually really natural in there.[/quote:1d29sdv1] Thanks for the follow up Sebastien! And I can't say that I'm surprised that networking with the right people and managing your relationships with them properly are the keys to being published. I guess the old adage holds true of "it's not who you know, but who knows you" that's important.
how much for a franchise fee? - Dear Colleague There is no easy answer to this question. Things to consider: [list=] The sizeof the Franchise Clent base Expected Turnover Intellectual Property costs (recoup) Number of Franchises Number of employees Original Set up costs Franchise admin costs An example: A franchise that I was involved in setting was to a simple "lawn mowing/home repair" franchise. The Franchise included national/local advertising - preparation of client lists - general admin - central accounting etc The Franchise involved 300-500 clients - and an annual turnover of about $300,000 . The annual franchise fee was $30,000. Hope that this gives you some idea Take care Ian[/list]


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