Coming up with a business idea that’s never been done before is difficult. Most completely ‘new’ business concepts that appear in the 21st century are technology-based, and so unless you’re extremely tech-literate, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have a million-dollar idea about a brand new product or service. It’s rare that totally new objects are invented or even conceived now. We’re stopped inventing as a species. Instead, we’ve started refining the ideas we already have by using the latest technology.
If we rule out the idea of coming up with something totally new, that means your new business idea comes with a problem. No matter how good you are at what you do, you’re going to have rivals. You might be the most exceptional insurance salesperson in the world, but the moment you open your own brokerage, you’ll find yourself going head to head with far bigger companies, with far greater resources. Open a web-based retail store, and you’re in direct competition with Amazon. Even something as simple as a convenience store struggles against the Walmarts and Tescos of the world.
What if there was another way, though? What if you could make big money by capitalizing on an idea that someone else has already had, and making it better? Better still, what if we told you that you could do precisely that far more easily than you imagine? That’s what franchising for, and franchising is increasingly big business.
There are some brands – Subways and McDonald’s, for example – that most people already know to be franchises. If you want to open your own McDonald’s or Subway, you can do so tomorrow so long as you have the start-up capital. Let’s look past them, though. Let’s look at some brands and industries that you probably didn’t know were franchise-based!
Levi’s Jeans
Levi Strauss might have come up with the concept of Levi’s Jeans (and the story of how he came up with that concept is quite a surprising one), but the company that bears his name is quite happy for you to open up a store selling them over 150 years later. Levi’s is a franchise, and you can ‘buy in’ for an average price of around fifty thousand dollars, depending on where you are in the world. That might seem steep as a start-up cost, but think about how iconic Levi’s are. Blue jeans might be everywhere now, but until Strauss created the first pair in 1873, they’d never crossed anybody’s mind before. Levi’s has continued to push new ideas in the field of denim for decades since, and they’re as relevant and popular now as they ever were. They’re also exceptionally experienced in handling franchises and helping you to get yours off the ground; they’ve been doing it since 1965.
Online Casinos
If you’re the type of person who pays attention to adverts on the internet instead of blocking them out, you’ve probably noticed an uptick in the number of ads for online slots websites that you’ve seen recently. That’s because online slots are big business, and they’re becoming bigger business with every passing month. The gaming industry they belong to is worth more than fifty billion dollars a year and is projected to sail past one hundred billion by the end of 2025. You may not know anything about online slots or gambling in general, and you might think that’s a problem. It’s not. Several large casino companies are happy to provide access to their Online Slots to you for a fee, and give you everything you need in terms of making them work; all you need to do is drive people towards your web page. That means your knowledge of SEO will be far more useful than your understanding of online slots. In other words, if you’re a web designer and you know how to make a page rank well, you could hit the jackpot. As lucrative as this trade can be, bear in mind that it isn’t legal everywhere. Check the law before you try to buy in!
IKEA
There’s probably an IKEA in the nearest big city to where you live, and that IKEA probably wasn’t there ten or twenty years ago. The Swedish furniture company appears to be taking on the world one flat-pack store at a time. Almost all of us have had the experience of injuring our hands trying to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture, swearing that we’re never going to buy anything from them again, and then eventually falling in love with the piece once it’s finished and going back for more. Amazingly, IKEA is almost entirely franchise-driven. Only one store (based, for some reason, in the Netherlands) is owned and operated directly by the business, and the rest operate under a franchise agreement. The precise structure of the company’s ownership is a little hard to understand (some would say deliberately so), but they’re happy to be approached by potential new franchisees. Do bear in mind that you’ll need access to an enormous store space if you’re going to open an IKEA, though.
Swarovski
You don’t have to be a millionaire to deal in crystals and jewels – you just have to be a franchisee of Swarovski. The Austria-based company takes an unusual approach to business; it’s not entirely franchise-based, but nor is it entirely self-owned. The idea of switching to a franchise model arrived a little late in the day in terms of the company’s existence; they opened well over a century ago but didn’t start accepting franchise applications until 1977. That’s led to a situation today where around half of their near-three-thousand stores are centrally owned and operated by the company, and the remainder are run as franchises. You’ll find their stores in over 180 countries, and so there’s a strong chance that they offer franchise opportunities near you if you’re interested.
These brands are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to surprising franchises. World-famous hair-dressing company Toni & Guy is a franchise. The Body Shop is a franchise. Amazingly even the Hilton Hotel company is a franchise, albeit an expensive one to get involved in. We all know that these brands make money, and so there’s no reason why they can’t make money for you. If you’re itching to start your own business but don’t have the right idea, why not borrow someone else’s and become a franchisee?
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