You are correct Cliff. I have been doing business with lots of franchise shops for years. The only time the franchisor is involved is for new store opening or if someome is buying out an existing Fr shop, but even then all trannsactions and payments come direct from the store owner.
Pat, if you don't mind I'd like to clarify what I think you said, just so there's no confusion for others who might read this.
I believe what Pat meant is that the only time the franchisor is involved with a
vendor is when a new store is opened or an existing store is sold to a new owner. That is correct to some extent, as we send the franchisee a new store order book or individual purchase orders for equipment, supplies, etc. However, our merchandising department is in frequent contact with our key vendors to get information on new products, negotiate pricing, and so on.
The shops, in my understanding have no obligation to buy from anyone and most are owned an operated by single family's or maybe a partnership.
That's correct. We can recommend vendors and products, we can warn against companies with bad reputations, and we can find the best product at the best price. In the end though the decision is the franchisee's to make. That's the whole "independenty owned and operated" part.
The only difference that I see between IR's and Franchise shops is that the Fr's have a support staff behind them with name recognition. That is really gereralizing and I know that they do a lot more than that. Dave Lantrip can give you a much better Idea of the extent of the franchise involvment with the indevidual shops, but my experience has been that they are no different. The way I see they are as independent as they want to be and definately run their own show in every way.
That's correct, we are in regular contact with our stores. I don't want to make this a long commercial post, so I'll just say that we are there to support and advise our store owners in all aspects of their business.
And there are already a lot of them in PPFA.
It's been a while but I once asked Nick Shaver to send me a list of all Great Frame Up and Deck The Walls that were members of the PPFA. I don't remember the exact number of members and it's probably changed anyway, but at the time a far larger percentage of our stores were members than the industry as a whole.