Tom’s Franchise Information Blog

If you own an equipment rental business should you franchise it? That is to say, if you are a small business owner and you have a successful equipment rental business, perhaps several branches in several different cities, and they are all making money, despite this outrageous recession which has taken a huge hit on your best customers, such as the contractors, all builders, and construction workers and the various industry sectors; then perhaps, your business is viable enough to franchise.

If you truly want to franchise such a company, you will have to make sure you get your business plan and operations manual in sync with the reality of a perfect business model, one which can carry a franchisee through both upturns and downturns in the business cycle. Now then, there have been such companies which have franchised in the past and done quite well. There have been some that have failed also. Not all the names of these companies that are no longer in business had gone bankrupt, some of them were bought up and merged by larger companies.

This shows you that historically there is the opportunity for a nice exit strategy once the company is built up. Interestingly enough, in this industry subsector, it is quite competitive, and there are regions of our country that are completely locked up by long-standing businesses that have been there for generations. Therefore, it may be difficult for franchisees in these territories to compete, but not impossible.

In fact, if your rent-a-piece-of-equipment business serves a specific niche, it very well could survive amongst the sharks in the industry, and most powerful rental companies out there. Likewise, because equipment makers are so interested in selling equipment, you may find that your franchisees can get easy financing from all the different vendors who make those items they will be renting. Because right now financing in the commercial space is a huge issue even though this global economic financial meltdown is nearly over. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in franchising.