Franchising: A Tried and Tested Business Model

In all sectors, the three main challenges facing any start-up are

1. identifying a gap in the market,
2. developing the product or service
3. and establishing a price point.

Consequently, when deciding to form a company, many entrepreneurs choose to buy a franchise. Franchising  has many advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

• Start–up Costs – All the associated costs of forming a company like market research, business launch and marketing, are already incurred. The value of all of these will have a positive impact your new business.
• Customer Base –With a franchise, you will get access to demographic information. Additionally, the product or service will have already been demonstrated to work and the business should already have an existing client base.
• Planning and Strategy – An existing franchise should already have some sort of an established business plan and strategy in place. You’ll be able to use this information to inform your own planning and strategy.
• Finance – Raising finance will be easier. Also, often, a franchise comes with financial support.
• Experience – Franchises have history.You can learn a learn from that what to do and how to do it right or what not to do.

Disadvantages

• Finance –  The rights to a franchise can be expensive and a large incremental investment will probably be required upfront.
• Research –  Researching what franchise to buy requires a lot of in depth research which can take a lot of time.
• Inheritance – Many people begin the company formation process from scratch’. Buying an established business, you will inherit the result of previous strategy, practice and potentially even a workforce you did not recruit.

Could a Change in Personal Circumstance be the First Step to Company Formation?

As the economic climate shows no immediate sign of improving, more and more people are under the threat of redundancy, In this post, we consider enterprise after redundancy and changes in personal circumstances both of which, many successful entrepreneurs cite it as the impetus they needed to take the plunge.