Growing Your Own Business is co-located with the British and International Franchise Exhibition, enabling small businesses to not only access business products and services, but also explore the options of franchising as a route to expansion.

Franchising has proved to be one of the most successful ways of starting your own business and there are now over 665 different businesses operating as franchises. The franchising principle is simple – all companies want to grow, so the idea is to permit a license to others to help sell their established product or service.

What are the advantages of a franchise?

• You don’t have to come up with an idea, which might be time consuming
• The market has been tried and tested cutting out a lot of research time
• An established trade name
• Get support and advice through access to an experienced network
• An allocated trade area
• Good franchises will offer training in business skills and sales
• Market intelligence from the franchisor
• Marketing activities undertaken by the franchisor
• Bulk buying powers of the franchisor
• Finance may be more readily available
• Lead-time to success may be smaller