Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Study the City Ordinances, County Codes and Federal Laws When Franchising

Many franchise opportunity buyers see a great new concept and want to get in on the ground floor, what they may not understand is that their city has an ordinance against such types of businesses, their county has rules concerning such companies, and their state has additional regulations that are untypical to other states. Suffice it to say it's important to check the local, state, and federal laws concerning such a business prior to the purchase of the franchise.

In many franchise agreements it states that the franchisee must comply with all local, regional, state and national laws, and thus, any additional costs associated with compliance once the business is opened is indeed the sole responsibility of that franchisee. Now then, having been in the franchising industry for 2-decades before early retirement, I have seen a number of for instances, and solid reasons for recommending that franchise buyers; Check the Local Ordinances before purchasing a franchise business opportunity, but let me give you just one to illustrate this.

One of our franchise companies was a Mobile Oil Change Service Business. We noted that a number of cities in and around Los Angeles County had ordinances against mobile auto services in business improved parking lots (of various zoning), home driveways on any public street. Thus, we didn't bother trying to sell any franchises there, but our franchising competition did. Once the franchisees bought their franchises with assigned territories they couldn't even work in things got nasty.

The disgruntled franchisees were seeking litigation, but against the big guns of their franchisor choose not to. Their loss turned out to be our gain, as we hired one of them, and allowed the other to join our franchise team after their termination and the non-compete clauses ran out. Still, this is a good lesson for any franchise opportunity buyer, so please remember; Check the Local Ordinances before you buy your franchise.

Lance Winslow is a retired franchisor - Lance Winslow's Bio. Lance Winslow is formerly the CEO of WashGuys family of franchises for instance one of Lance Winslow's favorite companies on the team; http://www.windowwashguys.com/links.shtml.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow

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