Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Selling the Concept to the Big Boys

I was asked recently, something along the lines of, 'if you had unlimited resources, what would you do in this space of microfranchising?' My extemporaneous answer was that I would research the major franchises in the U.S. and Europe and then design microfranchises around their products and services. I would then pitch the BOP appropriate designs to them, showing how they could reach a new customer base, create future clients and how they could use it as a tool to show that they are a socially responsible business.

They would not have to take my exact design or even hire me as a consultant for appropriate operations at the BOP, I simply think that if these folks latched onto the concept of microfranchising, considering their resources and expertise, they would drive this concept to a whole new level and scale. So, Cendant could build small hotels catering to migrant workers, a McDonald's or Subway could create bicycle distributors like Fan Milk, Jani-King could launch franchises and clean the buildings of all the NGO Offices in these countries, GNC could bring essential nutrients to the BOP, ACE Hardware could create tool libraries as previously talked about...the list could go on and on.

What do you think? Would the big name franchises be open to this concept? Would they maintain a social mindset or would it just open the door to exploit the poor?

No comments: