10 Reasons To Buy A Franchise

Tim Harris, chief executive of Franchise Brands, outlines the top 10 advantages of owning your own franchise

Deciding to invest in a franchise is a life changing decision and requires extensive thought, research and consideration before you take the plunge.

There’s an array of benefits to joining a franchise, making it a popular decision with people who decide to set up their own business.

Claim the rewards of your own work

Do you ever feel like you’re not being credited enough for your hard work in your current career?

With a franchise, you’re selfemployed, so any effort you put into running your own business will impact you directly, rather than benefiting someone else. With your own franchise business, the more you put in, the more you get out, which to most will feel far more rewarding and empowering.

Flexible working

A franchise business allows you to take control of your life, giving you the freedom and independence to organise your own work schedule to suit your lifestyle - one of the main benefits of running a Barking Mad franchise, for example.

Or perhaps you’re prepared to work the odd weekend, so you’re able to have more time off later in the year. All this is possible with a franchise opportunity - you have no one to answer to but yourself.

Risk avoidance

You will also benefit from a proven business model and there will be systems that are set in place to follow.

The good news is that all these systems will be tried and tested by the franchisor, which will have a wealth of experience and expertise.

For example, Franchise Brands has many years’ worth of experience and a combined network of over 400 franchisees across four brands. Therefore, we know exactly what works when helping franchisees to launch and expand their businesses locally.

If you follow your franchisor’s systems correctly, it’s highly unlikely that your franchise business will be unsuccessful.

Receive ongoing support

There’s no doubt that setting up your own business can be a daunting and stressful process. If you invest in a franchise, you will receive ongoing operational and emotional support from your franchisor, including assistance with admin, insurance, legal documents, finance and marketing.

One of our newest brands, Metro Rod, is currently recruiting and investing heavily in supporting franchisees at a local level, while at Franchise Brands we have a department solely dedicated to supporting new and existing franchisees, which you simply wouldn’t get if you were to go it alone.

Training and support programmes

The majority of franchisors offer training and support programmes to educate you on how to run your business successfully. Each of our brands has a tried and tested training period, which is an essential part of any new franchisee’s journey.

For example, Ovenclean provides an initial two weeks’ intensive training course, ongoing business mentoring from an experienced franchisee and regular sales and marketing courses thereafter in order to keep franchisees up to date with the latest technology and industry changes.

Access to a protected territory

You will be given an exclusive and protected service area to operate, run and market your business.

As a franchisor, we spend a considerable amount of time in the initial stages working out the territory that will work best - taking demographics and geography into consideration to ensure a new territory is occupied by the franchise’s typical customer base.

Economies of scale

Being part of a reputable franchise enables you to take advantage of sometimes substantial economies of scale, due to the franchisor being able to secure better rates because of bulk ordering, which you aren’t able to achieve as a one-man band.

This in turn obviously saves you money and helps those all important profit margins.

Greater access to finance

You may find it easier to secure finance for a franchise opportunity, as banks are usually more willing for you to take out a loan, due to the fact that franchising has a much higher success rate than going it alone.

Marketing support and access to marketing materials

Even if you’re an expert in producing compelling content, attractive marketing materials and engaging social media campaigns, you won’t have the time to produce new material from scratch on a regular basis, while trying to get a new business up to speed. Many franchisors recruit marketing teams that are experts in creating positive publicity on both a national and local basis.

Franchise Brands has a dedicated marketing team who concentrate solely on managing all its brands’ digital marketing, TV advertising, content creation, PR and much more.

Although investing in a franchise has many advantages, it’s not for everyone. So we strongly encourage you to think long and hard about your decision beforehand and find out as much information as possible from the prospective franchisor and other experienced franchisees.

Franchising may make running your business easier, but it doesn’t make it easy - hard work and self motivation are essential to making it a success.

Benefit from a reputable brand name

If your business is backed by a strong brand name, you won’t need to spend time, energy and money trying to raise your business profile, like you would when setting up your own business.

Customers are more likely to be drawn to a strong brand name because it’s viewed as more reliable, trustworthy and customers know what to expect.

For example, ChipsAway, one of Franchise Brands’ companies, may be more appealing than a local car body shop, because ChipsAway is the UK’s leading car paintwork repair specialist - with 11 times the brand awareness of its closest competitor.