[roundbuilder]

I never thought of it like that.. On top of paying out for the franchise you have the added 20% each month royalty so in theory working nearly a week a month for nothing. It would take ages before you start to earn profit after paying for the franchise and the royalty fee. Its no suprise why so few succeed with window cleaning franchises. I only know of ian lancaster who has mastered it.
If the franchise costs 10k, and the round is say £500 a week thats £4800 every year royalty on top of paying 10k or what ever the franchise cost is. After expencies in the first year you would be lucky to break even surely??.

I can see my value to my franchisee easily. After 1 year trading I had about 20k of work (yearly value). Last night I did an income forecast for my franchisee and after 15 months he has 45k. How many sole traders, starting from scratch, could amass that much work in 15 months? How many have that after 5 years even?

45k over 15 months is around 35k for 12 months. Take off 20 percent and the buying in fee then im right to say first year would be a sruggle.
I dont know how much it costs to buy into a window cleaning franchise but im guessing around 10k.. Now if the franchisee had he's head screwed on he would have done research and see that he could buy a round for 3x(3k of monthly work for 9k. Or pay a canvasser 6k for 3k of work and have 4 k left to buy van and system.
Im not saying its a bad move to go into a franchise but what you said about how few can be on 45k every 15 months after 5 years of trading is silly.
The way i see it is if i had 10k id buy a round instead of paying to work for someone else!.
Only my view on the subject if was me starting out in window cleaning as most choose wc to work for themselfs annd not anyone else.

[davids3511]

No, I didn't explain it very well. After 1 year trading I had about 1700 a month. After 15 months trading my franchisee has nearly 3.8k a month. Everybody says "buy a round" but the fact is decent paying rounds on your doorstep very rarely come up for sale. As for pay 6k for 3k canvassed work, anybody who has ever done it knows a chunk of that (maybe as much as half) would be gone in a few months. I saw gdroundbuilders get 10 on my estate, 2 cancelled before he even got home. I think only about 3/4 are still active.

I charge 5k initially which includes all the gear apart from a van. To get to my 3.8k you would have to pay 12-20k just for the work alone. Another 1k for the equipment so you need to invest about 15k. Paying me 5k and a percentage seems attractive compared to a minimum 15k layout.

[johnwillan]

Hi Mick,

As Ian has said many times before Franchising is not for everyone, in fact like you I could never understand why anyone would buy one. However 4 years an 5 Franchisees later I get it, it comes down to experience in all areas of business, having someone provide the answer, support and motivation required to make the round a success, camaraderie with other franchisee's in addition to marketing, customers, price structures, websites, branding, call centre etc, etc, etc. Most important of all the Franchisee must see value in the Franchise/service provided and that all comes down to price/personal interpretation hence it's not for everyone.

John

[PAUL ERITH]

No, I didn't explain it very well. After 1 year trading I had about 1700 a month. After 15 months trading my franchisee has nearly 3.8k a month. Everybody says "buy a round" but the fact is decent paying rounds on your doorstep very rarely come up for sale. As for pay 6k for 3k canvassed work, anybody who has ever done it knows a chunk of that (maybe as much as half) would be gone in a few months. I saw gdroundbuilders get 10 on my estate, 2 cancelled before he even got home. I think only about 3/4 are still active.

I charge 5k initially which includes all the gear apart from a van. To get to my 3.8k you would have to pay 12-20k just for the work alone. Another 1k for the equipment so you need to invest about 15k. Paying me 5k and a percentage seems attractive compared to a minimum 15k layout.

The thing is this most of the people on here own their own rounds/business as i do so i could never dream of giving someone 5k then 20% ( £9,120 ) of my 46k ( 12x £3.800 ) yearly turnover but thats just me.

Their are loads that do want a franchise but I'm not one of them i want to build a business for my own family not joe bloggs window cleaning  

I would like to look at this closer & would love to get ahold of a fish cleaning franchise info pack it would be an interesting read but they don't post them to the uk  

Paul

[johnwillan]

Hi Paul (Erith)

I'm not so sure Fish is such a good/ fair comparison as it is a management franchise. The correct comparison would be to compare the operators of a Fish franchise i.e. the guys cleaning the windows with  a Franchisee operating under Ian's system. I think under these conditions the Franchisee would be better off.

Hope this makes sense

John

[johnwillan]

Hi Paul

I take your point, likewise franchising would be a great way for you to expand your business should you wish to do so.

John

[roundbuilder]

No, I didn't explain it very well. After 1 year trading I had about 1700 a month. After 15 months trading my franchisee has nearly 3.8k a month. Everybody says "buy a round" but the fact is decent paying rounds on your doorstep very rarely come up for sale. As for pay 6k for 3k canvassed work, anybody who has ever done it knows a chunk of that (maybe as much as half) would be gone in a few months. I saw gdroundbuilders get 10 on my estate, 2 cancelled before he even got home. I think only about 3/4 are still active.

I charge 5k initially which includes all the gear apart from a van. To get to my 3.8k you would have to pay 12-20k just for the work alone. Another 1k for the equipment so you need to invest about 15k. Paying me 5k and a percentage seems attractive compared to a minimum 15k layout.

The thing is this most of the people on here own their own rounds/business as i do so i could never dream of giving someone 5k then 20% ( £9,120 ) of my 46k ( 12x £3.800 ) yearly turnover but thats just me.

Their are loads that do want a franchise but I'm not one of them i want to build a business for my own family not joe bloggs window cleaning  

I would like to look at this closer & would love to get ahold of a fish cleaning franchise info pack it would be an interesting read but they don't post them to the uk  

Paul

Sounds like your doing well now paul.. Keep it up mate.

[PAUL ERITH]

No, I didn't explain it very well. After 1 year trading I had about 1700 a month. After 15 months trading my franchisee has nearly 3.8k a month. Everybody says "buy a round" but the fact is decent paying rounds on your doorstep very rarely come up for sale. As for pay 6k for 3k canvassed work, anybody who has ever done it knows a chunk of that (maybe as much as half) would be gone in a few months. I saw gdroundbuilders get 10 on my estate, 2 cancelled before he even got home. I think only about 3/4 are still active.

I charge 5k initially which includes all the gear apart from a van. To get to my 3.8k you would have to pay 12-20k just for the work alone. Another 1k for the equipment so you need to invest about 15k. Paying me 5k and a percentage seems attractive compared to a minimum 15k layout.

The thing is this most of the people on here own their own rounds/business as i do so i could never dream of giving someone 5k then 20% ( £9,120 ) of my 46k ( 12x £3.800 ) yearly turnover but thats just me.

Their are loads that do want a franchise but I'm not one of them i want to build a business for my own family not joe bloggs window cleaning  

I would like to look at this closer & would love to get ahold of a fish cleaning franchise info pack it would be an interesting read but they don't post them to the uk  

Paul

Sounds like your doing well now paul.. Keep it up mate.

I wasn't talking about my actual turnover i don't do that on here,  i was talking about the figures spoken about by davids3511 

Business is great though none stop work coming in every week but i'm off for two weeks soon due to a key hole hip operation should be fun when the phone and emails are still coming in.

I should get a better price by quoting while on crutches 

Paul

[richard jagger]

I thing that makes Ian a success in his franchise are well thought out franchise with a good business.If one reads between the lines you will observe his dedication and commitment to his franchisees.
So many do not even a good proven  business of there own, never mind a franchise able business plan. But yet still want to sell this to someone as a franchise, easy money business.

[Ian Lancaster]

Wow

Just noticed this old thread (2009) was resurrected while Lise and I were away. (North Devon - 30th May to 7th June - didn't we do well? Picked the only wall-to-wall sunshine week this year )

My thanks for all the positive comments.

Mick:
I would never expect someone like you to consider buying into a franchise, in fact I would be very suspicious of your motives if you were to approach me with the suggestion   You are right, it takes time to recoup the initial investment, according to government figures anything up to five years before break-even.

But the sort of people who buy franchises like mine are not like you.  They tend to be people who have spent many years in run-of-the-mill jobs and are then either thoroughly demoralised or (even worse) made redundant.  They have neither the inclination nor the drive to start their own businesses BUT when offered the chance to own their own lucrative business with very little input from them and absolutely no necessity to go out selling their services they see it as a golden opportunity.

As John Willan said, franchising is not for everyone, but there are, and always will be, people such as I describe above who will feel happy and comfortable operating their own business under the umbrella of an established brand but who would be unable to imagine themselves doing it in total isolation with the ever present possibility of failure.

Just imagine, if you had a few franchisees out there while you are undergoing your surgery and recuperating, your business would still be trading, and earning you money

Best of luck by the way - I hope all goes well and wish you a speedy recovery.

[PAUL ERITH]

You are the man when it comes to window cleaning franchises in the uk and it is still something i will be looking at in the future but it scares me the potential damage a bad franchisee could do to my business.

But the growth it could bring is also very exciting.

Hope you had a nice holiday Ian

Thanks Paul

[dave0123]

You are the man when it comes to window cleaning franchises in the uk and it is still something i will be looking at in the future but it scares me the potential damage a bad franchisee could do to my business.

But the growth it could bring is also very exciting.

Hope you had a nice holiday Ian

Thanks Paul

staff could cause more damage to your business because they dont care and just want the wage at the end of the week so to speak.

a franchisee could loose a lot, plus its his business he would need to treat it as his business and its in his mind set from the off i imagine. you still got to train them well obv.

that's my view.