Thoughts on franchises vs. mom and pop float centers – DSP 135

As franchises become more common in the float industry, it’s natural for people to start wondering what the benefits and drawbacks are to opening one of them as opposed to simply starting your own center.

Graham and Ashkahn delve into the nuanced differences between each approach, which both have very tangible benefits and drawbacks and whether or not it’s a good idea definitely depends on what kind of business a person wants to run.

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is “what are your thoughts on franchises versus mom-and-pop’s in the float industries?”

Ashkahn: Industries.

Graham: I assume they meant “industry.”

Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean, that’s an interesting question. There are a few franchises out there that are starting to pick up traction in a way that we haven’t quite experienced as commonly in the float industry for many years.

Graham: Yeah, I guess, so first of all, yeah, there’s a split and way more mom-and-pop in that sense of the word, just sort of privately-owned float centers, than there are franchisees, who’ve opened up a franchise, I think.

Ashkahn: Right, which is probably true of most industries. I think it’d be hard for franchises to outweigh the … I guess like fast food or something.

Graham: Yeah, fast food. I was even thinking of like sub sandwiches.

Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah.

Graham: I mean, coffee, there’s so many coffee franchises now. They might actually outweigh the amount of mom-and-pop coffee shops that are-

Ashkahn: Just the amount of normal coffee shops. There’s so many coffee shops though.

Graham: Well, we’re in Portland.

Ashkahn: Alright, so … none of that’s important.

Graham: What, you want to just debate about this for a while?

Ashkahn: None of that’s important. Franchises versus mom-and-pop stuff. It’s interesting, there’s a few things you typically get out of a franchise, if you’re looking to buy a franchise in whatever industry.

In my mind, there’s, I guess, two big categories of benefit. One of them is the basic knowledge you need to open a business, right? There’s this idea of a turnkey operation. When you’re buying into a franchise, you get that key. You get someone just being like, “Here’s how to build this, here’s how to do this, here’s how to set this up, here’s how you run these operations, here’s your manuals.” It saves a lot of work on the side of having to do all that yourself, having to hit those kind of stumbling blocks yourself, having to even just generate those materials yourself, operations manuals, all that sort of stuff. Not just saving you on work but also hopefully saving you on mistakes you’d make and expertise that this company is providing you with.

Graham: Yeah, and in the case of the float industry, it’s a pretty big key they’re handing you.

Ashkahn: Yeah, for sure.

Graham: There’s not a lot of other ways to actually get information on opening up your float center, and certainly not as comprehensively. It’s sort of like there’s a million things out there you need to know. If you’re going it alone, it’s picking all of those million things and figuring them out on your own, which is not a small thing.

So even just knowing what to know is a really big part of it. Franchises can be really comforting and just provide a really nice launching ground because of that.

Ashkahn: Especially construction. There’s so many big mistakes you can make with your construction. Those are expensive, and they happen right when you’re starting your business.

Graham: And they’re really hard to go back on.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so having a franchise tell you, “Here’s your construction plan, here’s how you build things, and here are the materials,” that’s really nice.

Graham: Yep. I was gonna say that the second big benefit is often listed as marketing too.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Theoretically, franchises are going to try to help you with more national marketing, even if it’s on social media and stuff like that, just kind of generating awareness for your brand that you’re not doing and giving you a fully fledged marketing plan that’s worked for other locations to bring in floaters. That’s kind of like the second most difficult part of opening and running a float tank center is just filling your tanks, for a lot of people.

Ashkahn: It’s kind of interesting in the float industry, when you consider those two big benefits because I feel like the marketing side, the benefit you get from the marketing side with a float franchise is not quite the same benefit that you’d get from other franchises.

Graham: Right, right.

Ashkahn: Like if you’re opening a Subway or a McDonald’s, they have humongous brand awareness. You don’t have to let people know what McDonald’s is. You’re just opening up in a place. If you have a good location, you’re probably gonna get people to start coming to your McDonald’s, right?

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: That’s not really where things are at with floating. They have some ability to help with their marketing experience, and they may have marketing campaigns already formed and graphic design and stuff like that, but you’re not really getting the kind of like “We are a giant brand, everybody already knows. You’re opening up 10 miles away from any other of this business. We can almost guarantee you’re gonna make this amount of money” sort of stuff that you get from those big franchises.

That side’s kind of weaker than it normally is in the franchise world, and I feel like the other side, the turnkey part, is a way bigger benefit than you normally get. The difficulty of opening a restaurant or whatever, like a small sandwich shop, is probably a lot less difficult. There’s a lot less crazy construction things you may not know in opening up a deli, compared to opening a float center.

Graham: Yeah, for sure.

Ashkahn: So that boosting your startup knowledge is, I’d say, especially of value in this sort of franchise model. And currently, until the float industry gets bigger and these franchise locations really start to have a serious national presence and awareness in people’s mind, then the marketing stuff is not quite the same benefit as you get from other, more typical franchises.

Graham: There’s also … they just help fill in a lot of gaps in skill that you might have, being someone who wants to open up a float tank center. Maybe you’re not the best at choosing retail or understanding exactly how your lobby should be shaped to encourage your customers to buy or to hang out longer so that they can eventually be converted to members, or anything like that.

The franchise has a way they want things done and a way they want the lobby set up and oftentimes items they want you to carry for retail and different accessory services that they want to offer. It kind of just takes all the thinking out of that. Again, there are a million decisions you need to make as a float center opening up. Having some of the burden of that relieved, I think, is a lot of the benefit of going with this turnkey kind of operation.

Ashkahn: That pretty much brings us to what you want with your business because if you’re the type of person that sees that as “Great, what a relief,” then this franchise seems like a benefit. And it’s pretty much that exact same list of things that, I think, seems like a downside to some people.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Some people want to open their business, and they want to do things their way. They want to choose the retail. They want to choose what their branding is like. They want to choose the colors.

Graham: They want to choose their name.

Ashkahn: They want to choose their name. They don’t want someone else telling them, “This is how we do it, and you need to do it like this.” If you’re that type of person, then franchising is probably not for you. You probably want to do your own thing and run your own business and not have someone … not have kind of a model that you need to fit into.

And you will need to fit into something. The franchises have a certain brand they’re trying to build, and they can’t have people deviating from that like crazy. The customers are probably gonna be expecting some amount of similarity to their experiences. They’re probably gonna expect that their float package from one place works in another place. You can’t really just off on your own as a franchise and do whatever you want and run whatever crazy marketing ideas you have and stuff like that. If that’s the type of business person you are, and you want that independence, then that’s where you probably shouldn’t be looking at franchises. You should be looking at opening your own business.

Graham: Yep, and just like having a franchise gives you a little bit of oversight and even kind of business counseling. You have people who you can turn to, who have helped open a bunch of other centers, who are in charge of the corporate franchise. Chances are, if you have questions, or you’re hitting problems with your own location, they can be a great source of information.

If you’re going it alone, then you have to dig a little deeper. Fortunately, we’re in a great community. The float world is wonderful. I know of very few other industries when you can call your so-called competitors across the country, and they’ll often give you a lot of information about what’s worked for them.

That is a benefit, but there’s still this stitching it together and putting the pieces together and making sure it works for your business specifically. And because you’ve been making decisions yourself all along the way, that can be a little bit harder. Fitting what worked for one center into a model that is just totally unique to yourself is not always the easiest thing to do, or something that worked for somewhere else just might not work for your kind of business. Whereas, in a franchise, because things are so similar, the advice you get is often very similar as well.

Ashkahn: Luckily, I think most people know what type of person they are. I think it’s pretty obviously whether the franchise sounds appealing to you or not. Choosing … if you do really want to run an independent business and you’re in a franchise, that’s probably where you’re gonna have some of the most trouble. That’s often what I hear is kind of like the most conflict in a franchise is one location just has these ideas they think are great, and they really want to do them, and the franchise is like, “You can’t. We have a consistent thing we’re trying to do. We can’t just have you going off and trying whatever ideas you think are great.” That’s kind of where some butting of heads happens.

Graham: Yeah, to follow up on what I was saying earlier about the benefit of having that kind of oversight, the downside is you kind of have a boss again.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: You have people who you actually need to go to for permission to do certain things. You have a list of items that you signed off on, in a contract, saying you would not do things this way, and you absolutely run your center this way. Oftentimes, especially for people going into, not just business for themselves, which is already kind of a scary, adventurous sort of route to lead in life, but going into a business that doesn’t have a lot of history behind it, and where you are kind of a pioneer.

We’ve just found, and I think this is why, at least over in North America, the float center industry is so centered around mom-and-pop’s is just that it attracts that kind of person. Being in this new wide open kind of industry, the kind of people who want to get in there, I think, oftentimes do want to be explorers and pioneers. I think that kind of personality often suits itself more to being in complete charge of their own ideas.

Ashkahn: Think about who you are and what you’re looking for. At the end of the day, the nice thing is, that no matter what type of business it is, it’s just getting people into float tanks. That’s kind of the core of all this, and the more any type of these businesses, franchise or mom-and-pop, exist, the more people are floating. Ultimately, it’s nice to see floating spread through whatever method.

Graham: Yeah, absolutely. I think they both have great things working for them, even within franchises. If you are a franchise location, it’s not like you only have to listen to your franchise higher-ups or only take advice from them. You still have access to the full float network as well.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Again, being in such an encouraging industry, especially since it’s also such a terrifying industry because of the construction and different things that can go wrong, is one of the benefits that comes along with it, whatever role you take.

Ashkahn: If you guys have other questions, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Latest Blog Posts