10 STEPS TO CREATE A WINNING FORMAT

“To leave is to win an argument against habit,” writes French writer Paul Morand.
If you are in the condition of having become accustomed to a job you don’t love and that bores you, it is time to leave for other shores.
Franchising is a very open direction, there are many paths you can follow to get there (food, health, fashion, education…), but to create a franchise format from scratch, you have an obligatory path.
In this article I point out what are the ten steps that, regardless of the sector of your business, you must complete if you don’t want your desire for new adventures to lead you to get stuck in quicksand.

Step 1:

the detective

To accompany us on this path we choose a friend, let’s call him Marco. He has an innovative idea in beverage, a solution for home delivery of raw food. To make his idea more interesting for investors Marco, who has a past as a programmer, decided to add an artificial intelligence system capable of combining wines, beers and sparkling wine. What is the first step you must take? First of all, Marco needs a market survey to understand where craft beers are produced most, where they are sold and, especially in his case, evaluate the supply chain of the product, trying to understand which are the main suppliers, but also what are the risks and opportunities.

Step 2:

the snitch

In the book Let’s Franchise, chapter “2” I dedicate a space to a fundamental concept: the benchmark, a marketing methodology that helps you discover more about your business model, comparing it to that of other companies that have made success in the industry. The second step that Marco will have to take is to compare his idea to others that have been successful. In the case of beverage delivery, for example, he will study players like Tannico or others who have been able to distinguish themselves. What if Marco doesn’t have any competitors? This is a question that many wannabe franchisors often ask me: if you have no competitor it often means that your business model does not work. Careful: benchmarking does not mean copying, but being inspired by the best practices of others to create something new.

Step 3:

the resolver

The biggest players on the poker table are the ones who sense your opponent’s weaknesses and know how to exploit them to their advantage. To prevent your competitors from using your weaknesses to wipe you out of their competition, you need to anticipate them. An acronym of strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), a SWOT analysis is an excellent critical scheme that Marco can use to understand what can be wrong in his idea, for example, an unclear brewery selection process, and finding solutions, anticipating problems.

Step 4:

the strategy

Where does Marco want to position himself in the delivery market? This is a fundamental question, on whose answer depends the future of its franchise format.
To understand the strategic positioning of his brand, Marco will have to evaluate four aspects, the 4 Ps that correspond to “product”, “price”, “place” (in terms of point of sale or distribution) and “promotion”. Each of these deserves in-depth consideration. In “product”, for example, several aspects converge, those related both to the quality of the product, the choice of a beer or another, but also to the design, such as the packaging chosen, not secondary aspects for the strategic positioning of the brand.

Step 5:

the calculator

Let’s move on to the main topic of the format, to its heart: the creation, that is, the business plan. To do so, Marco will have to assess the economic feasibility of the whole operation. What does it mean in simple words? Examine the costs and revenues of his business, the average receipt, the margin on the product, and he can always do so by observing other similar companies. In addition, at this stage Marco must also get an idea of the initial capital he needs for his business: for the first procurement, the development of a site, an app, promotional campaigns and all activities related to brand identity (see step 8) and the necessary team to make its activity active (see point 9).