Saturday, March 21, 2009

Franchise or Not


To Buy A Franchise Or Privately Own A Health Club – That IS The Question

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to running health clubs. One thinks that buying a franchise is the best way to go while others think privately owning your own health club is the best way.
What these people often don’t understand is that there is NO best way for everybody, there’s only a best way for YOU!
If you’ve ever wanted to figure out which route would be better for you to take, just keep reading. First I’ll tell you the benefits of franchising, followed by the benefits of privately owning a club. I’ll let you come to your own conclusions.
The Benefits Of Franchising
1. You simply pay the money for the franchise and literally everything is set up for you.
2. You don’t have to worry about making different advertisements, learning how to market, or any of that stuff which takes awhile – it all comes with the package!
3. Building the brand is already done for you and it will probably be easier to get customers right off the bat because people already know about the franchise so you don’t have to “convince” them of anything.
The Benefits Of Privately Owning A Health Club
1. It’s usually much cheaper to start – franchising fee’s can get up into the hundreds of thousands while you can open a health club or simply buy out an existing health club and save a ton of money.
2. You have control over everything. If you’re an individualistic type of person and like things done your own way, privately owning a club is the best option for you.
3. If you want to change your marketing, your image, run specials, or pretty much do anything different or change anything – you can. With a franchise you’re usually limited to what they tell you to do.
The disadvantages of both are pretty easy to figure out as well. Essentially, the benefits of one are usually the disadvantage of the other.
For example since everything is set up for you in a franchise, the disadvantage to privately owning a health club is that obviously it’s not set up for you.
Since an advantage of privately owning is that it’s usually cheaper than buying a franchise, the disadvantage of a franchise is that it’s more expensive.
You can do this for each of the benefits I’ve laid out.
So now you have to figure out which of these two options would be best for you. If you already have a marketing background, are willing to learn, and/or want things done your own way – start your own health club.
On the other hand if you simply want to invest some money and have everything done for you and buy a “plug and play” business, franchising is probably best for you.Both are great options, but they’re both designed for different types of people. Figuring out what you want may take days or even weeks to figure out, but it’s absolutely worth it!

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