Through franchising one can expand faster, provided, with the right partnership- Sadiya Naseem

Franchising has the power to make a business succeed and grow at a high rate. Every business should believe on the wide scope of development franchising provides. In a conversation with Ms Sadiya Naseem, founder and CEO, Glam Studios, we unearth the importance of franchising and the various aspects it holds in it.

How is your brand, Glam Studios’ franchising model different from other models?
When we look at franchising model, the first thing that comes to our mind is a partnership between a business and investor. An investor who is ready to invest money in bringing that particular business into the locality and this is the traditional approach to franchising which we have nowadays. If I give you an example of the model of Glam Studios, how we have innovated with Franchising is very different. Normally, people partner with investors who can put in money and they give their business to them and they run the show based on the SOPs shared with them. What we have thought is that instead of bringing new people into the system, we can give our franchises to the existing players and this is what we do at glam studios. We pick up existing salons, give them our franchisees, train them on our SOPs and they run the show.

What plus points do you see in your style of the franchising model?
I think one benefit of this is the person who has joined us is already trained at that business so the churning ratio is a bit lower. The person just comes with the money, he learns the business and then he is ready to run it on his own. Sometimes a person who already has his own business comes to you with a hint of dependency as his business lacks brand power, standardisation and marketing support which as an individual he cannot have at once. So, we have evolved our model in terms of franchising in such a way so that we can give all these support to that person who is already doing the business. We just enhance him. So, this is how we have looked at franchising at Glam Studios.

How important is having the perfect partnership in franchising for a business to succeed?
Through franchising, you can expand faster but provided with the right partnership as that is very critical. If you end up having a wrong partner, you’ll ruin your business completely. If we talk about master franchisee where the whole geography of the business is given to someone and the person becomes a kind of franchisor himself. He ends up bringing in franchises for you and the moment your relationship with the franchisor goes wrong, you ruin up everything related to your business. Though it is a very good way of expanding but implementing SOPs, training, control and right partnership is something which everybody should focus on.

What are the various aspects a franchisee can look for?
I believe that whenever you look for a franchisee, you should always look for entrepreneurs because they are generally passionate and they want to do something big. They do require some support and then they deliver the results. If you end up partnering with people who are just investors, they have some money lying in their bank accounts and they want to do some business, they are not the right kind of people to partner with. Rather, you should go with people who are passionate about doing something and they are looking forward to starting some business. This relationship is very important and every franchisor should take care of that.