Franchise Players

Contractor Mag:

Contemplate, if you will, while drinking your Starbucks coffee or, perhaps, on your way to Panera for lunch, the state of franchising in the plumbing-heating-cooling industry.

While so many of the products and services we buy today come from franchises, PHC contractors have remained the last of the hairy chested individualists, resolutely resistant over the years to franchise them.

The lone exception is 72-year-old Roto-Rooter. Most of the other franchises, even if they’ve been around for years, still have plenty of openings.

Franchises may be the way for contractors to get the phone to ring and to be able to charge more money. It’s often been said that McDonalds doesn’t make a great hamburger, but they make a consistent one so that customers always know what they’re buying. The lack of consistency has always been a problem in contracting. Will the service technician show up two hours late, the homeowner fears, looking like a prison escapee and incapable of performing the repair correctly? A franchise can offer a neatly scrubbed, uniformed, badged, consistently trained, on-time service tech backed with some kind of guarantee or warranty.

Contractors have also been resistant to franchising because they think they know what they’re doing and, by-and-large, they do. They don’t need the brand of a franchise because they’ve been able to turn themselves into a well-known local brand. But some contractors might need help taking their businesses to the next level. More.