United States Virgin Islands Feature Articles

Savvy franchise companies continue to flourish in this challenging economy. Each month FUSR will bring you good news, highlighting brands that are bucking the trend by adding units, increasing comp store sales, striking deals with investors, and continuing to grow - despite the economy.

New franchise concepts spring up every year with dreams of becoming the next McDonald's or Subway. But it's the older brands who deserve a tip of the hat for their staying power over the decades. We asked four of them how they do it.

For a man in the hospitality business who's traveled widely, Ted Torres didn't fall far from the tree, nor did he want to. "My father, a first-generation hotelier, was my mentor, teacher, coach, and partner," says Torres, who at 43 has been in the business for 20 years. His most far-flung project, building hotels for Hilton across Russia, never came to fruition--through no lack of willingness on his part--but it was a fabulous month-long adventure just the same.

"How has the capital market for franchise financing changed in the last 3 to 6 months, and what are you doing differently in franchise sales in the next 3 to 6 months?"

Many franchisors have reached their limit on expanding into suburbia, but the imperative to grow remains strong. In response, an increasing number are training their sights on America's cities.The move to the suburbs has been a decades-long trend in the United States, and franchisors have followed suit. But more than half of the U.S. population live in the country's top 25 metropolitan areas, and nearly 80 percent live in the top 100 metro areas.Cities are complex, crowded places, running the gamut from blighted ghettos to luxury high-rises. Suburban commuters flood into them by the millions each day to work and shop, creating a vibrant marketplace. And the under-served inner cities are hungry for retail goods and services, jobs, and entrepreneurial opportunity, making them fertile ground for franchisors who take the time to learn, understand, and develop relationships with the people who live there.The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, studies inner cities with a focus on economic development. According to ICIC, "[T]he inner city retail market offers significant profit potential for retail companies now operating in the highly competitive, over-saturated suburban markets." According to an ICIC study, the country's inner cities contain:

It is a quiet Saturday morning. If you are the average American, the downturn in the economy has started you to think about how it will impact your career and the opportunities for your children as they enter the workforce. Articles about Enron and Tyco and Global Crossing and other corporate scandals abound and some of the most respected brand names internationally are talking about layoffs and bankruptcy.

Before I answer your question I think a bit of historical background is important. Our economy is where it is today because we chose not to learn from what we did in the past. I remember after the bubble broke following the dot-com meltdown we were faced with similar questions. And we moved through those troubled times to what became one of the best environments for the growth of small business and certainly franchising. It is a fact of life in our economic marketplace that business cycles happen. Business cycles in the United States have always produced a beneficial cleansing although living through the corrections is always painful in the short term.

The franchising continues to grow, not only in size, but complexity—and in recent years, a huge part of that is attributable to multiunit, multi-concept franchising. Today one of every two franchise operators has more than one location. And really, why not? If the cookie-cutter approach works in one location it will most likely work in another, and another. In fact it really boils down to a simple numbers game: the more sales and revenue generated, the more profit potential there is.

The Government of Afghanistan is currently reviewing a bill that would reform and modernize the country's contract law. Afghanistan is a civil code jurisdiction and, currently, contracts are governed by sections of the country's Civil Code (dating from 1976) and Commercial Code (dating from 1955). Both the 1976 Civil Code and the 1955 Commercial Code are based on the laws of Egypt, which in turn are based on French civil law. During the period following the Soviet invasion, and the subsequent civil war in Afghanistan, little attention was paid to updating or modernizing these Afghanistan statutes.

Franchisees aren't the only ones with more than one brand these days. Increasingly, franchisors are getting into the act as they see the value in selling multiple brands from under one corporate roof.

Every year thousands of franchise companies pour money and other precious resources into lead generation and sales with varying degrees of success. But few rise to the top.

In franchising, no one has to be reminded of the importance of making deals and signing fabulous new franchisees. But unless you actually open new units, inking the deal is only part of the story. This important distinction--between units sold and units opened--led us to examine six franchises that grew by more than 100 units between 2005 and 2006 and ask them how they did it.

In today's business environment, the mystery shopper - the person who pretends to be a customer or potential client while noting every conceivable plus and minus of their shopping or consumer experience - is a fact of life.

What was once a humble grassroots movement to "Save the Planet" has now become big business, with consumers a major part of the push. Seems everywhere you look these days, more and more companies are touting their "green" initiatives as they scramble to implement various ways to recycle, reuse, and renew. Green is in.

Last Saturday, mom and dad packed the kids into the minivan and headed out to the fitness center (Curves for her and Athletic Republic for him). First they dropped the kids off (one at Huntington Learning Centers, the other at Abrakadoodle). Before they left, they'd made sure the woman from Bathfitters knew exactly what they wanted done with their new shower, and reminded the man from Spring-Green to cut the back lawn extra short this week.

1987 was a good year for franchising. Up to then, franchising was young, brash, and not always professional. Franchises weren’t much concerned with history. They were built mostly by young entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity and grabbed it, looking forward, not backward. The first 30 years of modern business format franchising had the feeling of the Wild West (like the Internet of the last 10 years).

In the chronicles of franchising history, some names come immediately to mind - Ray Kroc, S. Truett Cathy, Dave Thomas. The names conjure up images of independent-minded entrepreneurs with the savvy, know-how, and vision to create successful business models replicable anywhere. As part of the celebration of Franchise UPDATE's 20th anniversary, we look back at some of these colorful, inspiring, and sometimes controversial characters.

Since 1653, when Izaak Walton published The Compleat Angler, "compleat" has come to mean many things beyond what Walton described as "a Discourse on Fish and Fishing." The dictionary tells us it means classic or quintessential. But compleat also implies mastery far beyond the basics, conjuring up words like visionary, leader, even master.

When Liz Goodwin of Durham, N.C., was announced as the Curves Franchisee of the Year for the Southeastern Region last October, a cry went up from across the Las Vegas hotel ballroom.

On January 31, 2007, the State Council of the People's Republic of China adopted the "Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Franchise," scheduled to take effect on May 1, 2007 ("2007 Franchise Regulations"). With promulgation of the 2007 Franchise Regulations, China entered the last phase of a long and difficult process that started in 1997 to create a legal structure for the franchise business model in China.

William Monk, Burzynski's ideal AD, was born in Farmville, N.C. He grew up around the family tobacco business his grandfather had started in the 1900s, and went to college to prepare to be part of it. He earned a degree in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later got his MBA down the road at Duke University in Durham.

Conventional wisdom has it that young franchises are jumping on the area developer bandwagon to grow quickly and establish their presence in the most efficient way.

Innovation has played a progressive role in franchising since the beginning. Over the years, there have been new spins and fresh angles on all kinds of products, services, and concepts. As if there were any doubt, consider the more than 300 new franchise concepts introduced last year alone, according to franchise research firm FRANdata.

In 2007, chances are there's a sign franchise near you--offering customers a wider array of choices than ever before, thanks to continuing technological advances, especially in communications and digital imaging.

David Asarnow, 38, might make a good case study in the genetics vs. environment debate. His great'grandfather and namesake, David Bauer was an Eastern European immigrant who opened the first discount pharmacy in Newark, NJ in the early 1930s (according to family lore). But it was his grandfather, Jules Bauer, who also built a successful business, who set the 5'year'old David on the business track.

Many trace the origins of franchising as we know it today back to Europe in the 1800s, when German beer makers granted pubs and taverns the rights to sell and use their name. In fact, the word "franchise" is a French derivative meaning privilege or freedom.

As highlighted in last quarter's Investment Insights column, most of us are not particularly suited to be wise investors. In fact, neuroscientists are increasingly proving what veteran investors and asset managers alike have long suspected: Individuals make a lot of not-so-rational choices when it comes to dealing with their money, investments and financial affairs.

Franchising is founded on the concept of replicating success at the unit level. But Mary Rogers is taking that premise one better: she's replicating success at the franchisor level.

Pets and pet-related businesses are among today's hottest franchise opportunities--especially in the U.S., where pet owners are notorious for pampering their dogs, cats, birds (and even their rodents, reptiles, amphibians, and fish).

The most powerful players in franchising will gather this spring for the nation's only conference dedicated to the industry's most strategic and fastest-growing segment - multi-unit franchising.