Tom’s Franchise Information Blog

A pet franchise is the perfect way to combine your love of pets with a business opportunity. If you’ve noticed over the last ten years, the pet industry has grown by leaps and bounds. People everywhere want to give their pets the star treatment. Whether you’re looking for a pet service business like a grooming parlor, or are interested in a pet related retail business that sells pet accessories, being involved with pets is certainly a smart business move.

Pets are profitable simply because there are so many people who have them.

Did you know…

* 69 million households in the United States have pets?

* 47% of pet owners own more than one pet?

* Over 60% of pet owners have dogs?

* $41 Billion is spent each year on the care of pets?

It’s no wonder that owning a pet franchise business is so popular. No matter what type of pet business you’d like to start, there’s a franchise that will help you meet your goals. Some of the main categories for pet franchise businesses include pet waste removal, boarding and daycare, medical care, pet training and pet grooming.

You may have never thought about pet waste removal being a profitable business model. But considering the fact that keeping waste off the ground is environmentally friendly, and a definite concern for pet owners, it’s no surprise that it’s a popular franchise. Since 2000, Doody Calls has been an industry leader in pet waste removal, providing services to apartment complexes, parks, home owners associations and individual home owners. Doody Calls looks for people who are willing to hit the ground running with their business and be able to do something many others ignore. There’s never an end to pet waste, and with this unique franchise opportunity you can profit from it.

On the cleaner side of pet franchise opportunities are pet grooming companies. (more…)

With China’s opening of its market and recent succession into the WTO, it has undergone rapid development in the past two decades. Due in part to such growth and in combination with its massive 1.3 billion population (330 million in its middle-class alone as compared to America’s total population of 300 million), it represents the world’s largest yet ‘untapped’ consumer market. For many franchisers seeking to market reliability associated with brand recognition and systematic organizational structures to the oftentimes chaotic and fragmented consumer sector (particularly the food and personal service industries), China will be both the largest yet most challenging opportunity in the 21st century.

Fortunately for both consumers and those in the franchising industry, 2007 arguably brought about the largest liberalization of this sector since the “Opening Up” reforms of 1979. That being said, however, foreign franchisers have, in the past, seen their share of successes and failures, many of whom have ’stuck it out’ throughout China’s market changes to become a consumer household name, such as McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut.

I. Development of the franchise market in China

In 1997, China’s Ministry of Internal Trade promulgated the Administration of Commercial Franchise Procedures (Trial Implementation and hereinafter “Franchise Procedures”) representing the first set of regulations directed at specifically addressing issues pertaining to the franchise sector. The Franchise Procedures introduced two types of franchises: i) direct franchising and ii) sub-franchising. The Franchise Procedures provided for the basic structure of current franchising laws, which requires the disclosure of material information to prospective franchisees and includes the following: basic information about the franchiser; operational results of (more…)

If you are an internal or external small business consultant for a franchise organization, you are constantly looking for ways to help your clients improve their marketing efforts in order to increase revenues.

The value of marketing efforts for franchises should be measured by both their cost-effectiveness and their results in terms of increased sales for the organization. Improved cost-effectiveness can be achieved by implementing better marketing systems. Such systems need to be designed to minimize the time required by the corporate office to oversee the management of local franchisee marketing campaigns, while at the same time they need to contribute towards an increase in the corporate office’s visibility into the campaigns and towards increased brand consistency across the organization.

Here are 5 tips for small business consulting franchise marketing made easy:

Tip #1: Unify your brand image across all franchise locations by using consistent collateral: Fast-growing franchise organizations often find themselves quickly outgoing their own marketing systems that worked so well during the early stages of growth. The modus operandi for marketing within a franchise organization must necessarily change when the organization goes from 10 locations to 50 or more, but unfortunately many organizations fail to keep pace with their own growth. One of the riskiest consequences of this type of rapid growth is the loss of control over the organization’s brand image due to individual franchisees taking on the task of managing their own campaigns using inconsistent marketing collateral. Therefore, it is important to advise your client to find ways to unify the company’s brand image across the entire organization.

Tip #2: Put the power of ordering direct mail and promotional goods directly into the hands of franchisees: By (more…)