How to Expand Your Business Though Franchising 2014 | Page 13

“

...start off with a local...or a regional market, and then
once you have established your footprint in that market, evaluate whether or not you want to take the next
step into another market, another region, or nationally.”

Franchising
is scalable.

O

ne of the greatest
benefits of franchising is
“scalability”. A questions
that many prospective franchisors
consider and ask is “whether or
not my business is big enough to
franchise” and “what if I don’t want
to get too large”? This question has
been raised by many participants
in this conference. One individual
who asked this question explained
to me that they are very profitable,
they have been around for a
number of years, and while they
are interested in franchising, they
don’t want to expand nationwide.
He just wanted to expand within a
region. So how does this play into a
franchise analysis? Can franchising
be local or regional? The answer
is, definitely yes. In fact, this
scenario (i.e. a successful business
owner who wants to expand locally
or just regionally) is very good
8 • THE INTERNICOLA LAW FIRM, P.C.

and very suitable for franchising.
When people focus on franchising
or when companies are promoting
how to franchise your business, the
conversation almost always turns to,
“you could be a national company
with hundreds of units,” but that’s
not really what franchising is all
about. Sure your franchise growth
may very well be national, but always
consider that franchising is very
scalable, and when I say scalable,
what I am referring to is that you
should start off with a local market
or a regional market, and then once
you have established your footprint
in that market, evaluate whether or
not you want to take the next step
into another market, another region,
or nationally.

There are very successful franchises
that are out there - under the radar
- because they are small: Six, ten,

twenty, fifty units. For those small
franchisors, many are very happy
with their system and many of them
do not want to expand any further.
They have very tight controls on
quality, and they are preserving
profitability.
So consider that
franchising is scalable, and you don’t
need to be big franchise system to
be a successful franchise system.
Consistent with the scalability
standpoint, with franchising, big
is not necessarily better. When
franchising is done correctly, when
you set the right infrastructure,
franchising is scalable, and this
means that you can create a system
that revolves around your products,
your services, and your selected
markets. It is your choice and
your franchise system should be
developed accordingly.

SCALABILITY