Franchising Library

Franchising Your Business

Is Your Business Ready to Franchise?

For those with the right foundation in place, the dream of franchising can absolutely become a reality. A well-built franchise system can expand rapidly into new regions, build a nationally recognized brand, and significantly grow the bottom line.
Five Attributes of Great Franchise Systems

For many years we’ve advised and observed the world’s leading franchise brands, and without these five qualities, in our considerable experience, even the best business concept will not achieve greatness as a franchise system, and will often fail.
Are You Ready to Franchise Your Business? Threshold Analysis Part One

Your goal is to ensure that your franchise system has the ability to consistently and sustainably replicate your brand standards from location to location.

Developing a Franchise System

The Five Tenets of a Successful Franchise System

These Five Tenets are not abstract ideals – they are operational imperatives. A system that performs well on four of them will eventually fail when the fifth is missing – and the entire system pays the price.
Are You Ready to Franchise Your Business? Threshold Analysis Part One

Your goal is to ensure that your franchise system has the ability to consistently and sustainably replicate your brand standards from location to location.
Franchisability Criteria: Threshold Analysis, Part Two

The criteria used in determining franchisability should be appropriate for your industry and business, and will generally fall into these interrelated and interdependent major buckets.

Operations Training and Support

Your Unit Managers Are Making or Breaking Your Franchise System

The question isn’t whether you can afford a manager training program focused on communication skills: it’s whether you can afford *not* to have one. The common “soft skills” gap delivers hard cuts on the bottom line.
The Proper Roles and Responsibilities of the Field Consultant in Franchising

Field Consultants are central to the success of the franchisor-franchisee relationship, yet their role is often misunderstood. When properly qualified, trained, empowered, and deployed with intent, the Field Consultant is not an enforcer – their role is strategic.
To Train or Not to Train

Successful franchisors understand they cannot fully eliminate the risk of co-employment liability in franchise training. This article explains ways to minimize that risk, including filtering decisions about training programs and content based on their impact on brand execution.

Documenting Your Business for Franchising

What Is a Franchise Operations Manual?

A franchise operations manual is the DNA of a franchise system – the foundation that governs franchise unit performance, procedures, and conduct. The manual sets out in detail the specifications, standards, and procedures with which franchisees must comply in order to operate their franchised businesses and consistently deliver on the franchisor’s brand promise.
Managing Labor Risk: Avoid joint employer and vicarious liability

We recommend scrubbing franchise manual libraries, training programs, and agreements to remove unnecessary controls. Our goal is to put the franchise relationship back into proper balance between brand standards versus control.
Four Best Practices in Franchise Manuals Wording

The current climate around joint employment issues should serve as a wake-up call to review your franchise operations manuals now with these best practices in mind. After these key writing tactics have been applied, future updates will be much easier.

Franchisee Recruiting

Reimagining Franchise Expos: They Can Still Be Part of a Multichannel Recruitment Strategy

Expos can add value when integrated thoughtfully into a broader, multichannel recruitment strategy. The key lies in recalibrating expectations and reimagining how to extract value from the expo experience.
Interconnected: The relationship between franchisee recruitment and support

Franchisee recruitment and franchisee support form the backbone of a successful franchise system. They influence and reinforce each other in a symbiotic relationship that can make or break a franchise system’s success.
Creating the Profile of Your Ideal Franchisee

For franchisors, the key to successfully marketing their franchise opportunity begins with being able to create a profile of their ideal franchisee. This profile makes it easier to create a message that will reach and interest your target candidates, and to select media that will reach your target audience.

International Franchising

Taking your Franchise Global: Familiarity Breeds Assumptions

In international franchising, assumptions are the most expensive thing you can pack in your suitcase. The power of a brand rests in its culture – making changes to it comes with real and sometimes irreversible risks.
Coming to America: International Franchise Brands Land on U.S. Shores

For every international franchise success story, countless brands have struggled or failed to gain traction. Understanding the factors that separate success from failure is essential for U.S. expansion.
A Guide for U.S. Franchisors Entering the Canadian Market

Although some view Canada as a mere extension of the U.S. domestic market, there are some notable differences in Canadian business practices, and the Canadian legal framework for franchising.

Marketing and Branding

Retail Theater for Franchising: Antidote to the Discounting Trap

When every franchise is discounting, discounting stops differentiating. Worse, discounting trains consumers to wait for deals, teaches them that your product is worth less than you claim, and compresses franchisee margins to a point where reinvestment becomes difficult and morale becomes fragile.
Retail Theater: Crafting an Immersive Shopping Experience in Franchising

The success of Retail Theater rests on how well you physically convey your brand’s story and the culture of your business, from even before the moment a customer steps through the door. Atmosphere, staff, product/service presentation, and packaging must all be orchestrated into a curated performance.
Adding a New Product or Service to Your Franchise System

George’s focus on franchise-system growth, instead of franchise-unit performance, makes him more typical than many in franchising would like to admit.

Franchise Relations

MSA Worldwide’s response to the FTC’s Request for Information on franchise agreements & franchise business practices

In its 2007 update, the Commission eliminated the requirement that FSOs and brokers provide material disclosure to the potential franchisees they are working with. While removing that information from a franchisor’s FDD was a sensible decision, eliminating it entirely leaves prospective franchisees in significant jeopardy.
Managing Your Franchise’s Reputation in Times of Crisis

Most professionals agree that the existence of a working crisis plan and its successful implementation must be viewed as important to the survival of business. The damage from a poorly handled crisis can cause long-lasting and often permanent damage to a company’s reputation and its marks.
Franchisor vs Franchisee: Understanding Roles, Responsibilities, and the Business Relationship

While the parent-child analogy is sometimes used to describe the relationship between franchisor and franchisee, it is neither the legal relationship nor even the practical business relationship.

Finance and Legal Issues in Franchising

The American Franchise Act and the Future of American Entrepreneurship, Part Four

Congress should pass the American Franchise Act because the law should recognize the business that actually employs the worker; preserve the independence of the owner who actually runs it; and hold a franchisor responsible when — and only when — it crosses the line.
The American Franchise Act and the Future of American Entrepreneurship, Part Three

The progressive argument starts with a true statement: franchisors can have enormous commercial influence. Then it makes the leap that influence is employment. That leap is the problem.
The American Franchise Act and the Future of American Entrepreneurship, Part Two

Congress has a legitimate reason to provide a franchise-specific rule rather than leave owners, workers, courts, and regulators to chase a standard that changes with the agency, the statute, the circuit, or the election cycle.

Real Estate and Territories

Franchise Site Selection and Impact Policies

An Impact Policy establishes guidelines and procedures by which franchisors can create a safe harbor whereby franchisees are given an opportunity to address their concerns about a new location prior to its development.
Retail Modeling – Encroachment avoidance in a franchise system

To evaluate the potential impact of new locations on existing locations, franchisors today are using increasingly sophisticated retail modeling techniques.
Franchise Encroachment – Managing Market Expansion

In franchising, what a radius generally means is that a franchisor cannot establish either a company-owned or franchised location within a certain distance from another location measured in miles in all directions.

Strategic Planning in Franchise Systems

More Than a Contract: Take a balanced approach to franchise agreement management

Success requires understanding how franchise agreement provisions drive outcomes, and balancing brand protection with franchisee partnership.
Protecting Brand Standards: Finding the right supply chain balance

While franchisors need to maintain brand consistency and quality standards across their networks, franchisees face increasing pressure to protect their profit margins in an inflationary environment. The most successful franchise systems recognize that supply chain management must balance the needs of consistently meeting brand standards with the economic realities facing franchisees.
Strategic and Long-Term Planning in Franchising

A detailed guide to developing your franchise system’s Strategic Plan, including utilizing a team approach to get all the elements to fit together.

Social Franchising

MSA Worldwide Ramps up its Response to Social Sector Needs with Social Franchising Initiative

MSA’s focus on social franchising extends back more than twenty years, supporting NGOs, donors, government agencies, and social franchisors.
Fundamentals of Good Social Franchise Design

Implementers and funders of social franchising will dramatically improve their bottom lines when they understand the fundamentals of franchising discussed in this article.
Fifty Shades of Franchising: Differentiating commercial, micro, social, and hybrid franchise models

A discussion of how the social and micro franchising communities of practice can collaborate so that the social franchising field of practice can advance more rapidly.

Associations and Events

The IFA International Committee

This committee oversees IFA’s International Department, which supports members outside U.S. borders through education, communications, trade missions, conferences, research, addressing trade and regulatory concerns, and working with partner organizations.
IFA, MSA Worldwide Announce Franchise Certification Partnership

MSA Worldwide has partnered with the IFA to offer continuing franchise education and certification through the IFA Certified Franchise Executive™(CFE) Program. “Understanding the Dynamics and Requirements of Commercial and Social Franchising” is a thirteen-week self-directed CFE course for franchise professionals.
VetFran: Helping Veterans become Job Providers

VetFran was founded in 1991 as a strategic initiative of the International Franchise Association (IFA), and is built upon the foundation of helping Veterans find careers in Franchising. VetFran includes over 650 IFA member companies that offer financial incentives, training, and mentoring to veterans interested in franchise ownership and/or a career path in franchising.

Market Trends in Franchising

The Agreement That Changed Everything

Once upon a time in an alternative universe, Benjamin Franklin didn’t franchise his printing business, and the American Revolution never happened.
Franchising Conferences – Proposing a New Direction

Are franchising conferences keeping pace with the issues that we really need to address? Study results will look rosy if you don’t include the systems that have failed and gone out of business.
The Ghost of David Weil and the Machinery of Anti-Franchise Advocacy: What Brian Callaci Gets Wrong — and Why It Matters

Mr. Callaci’s sweeping claims about the “cruel reign” of a complex method of downstream distribution that covers over 300 distinct industries, without the discipline of peer review, and with seemingly little to no background in franchising, is not economic analysis but instead advocacy with footnotes.

Buying a Franchise

How to decide if you are cut out to be a franchisee

Becoming a franchisee in a well-established franchise system has many advantages over starting a new business independently, but becoming a franchisee is not for everyone.
Top Ten Reasons to Invest in a Franchise

Expert Michael Seid’s top ten reasons for becoming a franchisee, with pros and cons, are essential reading for anyone considering investing in a franchise opportunity.
How Much Does a Franchise Cost?

It’s essential to make certain that you have adequate capital to not just open your new business, but also to operate your business through break-even.

The Basics of Franchising

Start-Up Costs: Determining Your Initial Franchise Investment

Smart franchisees investigate the costs in their area and modify the franchisor’s projections based upon the reality of their markets.
What is a Franchise: How Do Franchises Work?

Franchising is a system for expanding a business and distributing goods and services, and is based on a relationship between the brand owner and the local operator to skillfully and successfully expand.
Are You Ready to Be a Franchisee?

As a franchisee, you are agreeing to follow someone else’s operating system, including specific requirements for marketing, suppliers, and the products or services you offer.

Franchisor Interviews and Profiles

Why Franchising is Right for Enovana Green Cleaning

Bring all-natural cleaning to your neighborhood with an Enovana Green Cleaning franchise, using green cleaning products to deliver a more environmentally-friendly and healthier house cleaning experience.
Making a Splash in the Franchise World – Goldfish Swim School

Goldfish Swim School’s year-round swim lesson model for children 4 months to 12 years teaches swim and safety skills while building character, with one certified instructor for every four children. By Chris McCuiston, CEO & Co-Founder, Goldfish Swim School Franchising When my wife, Jenny, and I decided to start our own learn-to-swim business, we never…
Franchisor Profile: Shelly Sun, BrightStar Care

Shelly Sun, CFE, is CEO and Co-Founder of BrightStar Franchising, LLC, a healthcare franchise system providing the full continuum of home care, child care, and medical staffing services. Shelly also serves as Chair of the International Franchise Association’s Executive Committee. In the rapidly changing healthcare industry and regulatory environment, BrightStar Care franchisees – like all…

MSA Worldwide Franchising Resources & Library

MSA provides expert guidance on developing a successful and sustainable franchise system.

Browse Articles

Get Expert Guidance for Your Franchise System

Get Expert Guidance for Your Franchise System