Retail Franchises Can Offer the Perfect Work Life Balance – Here’s How

Interested in being your own boss? Retail franchises are one of the best business opportunities to run, because they are diverse. Offering many different business working styles, there are many types of retail businesses to suit a range of personal needs.

Franchising is recognised as one of the best ways to get into business ownership. Franchising has a higher success rate*, it provides business owners with a complete business package including the brand, support and everything to launch the business. When it comes to retail franchises, this is no different.

What are Retail Franchises?

Franchising is where a proven business model and brand is made available to third party entrepreneurs to invest and run themselves, in their own area. Investing in a franchise grants to you the rights to run the brand in your own exclusive territory. The franchisor provides you with the support and training necessary to help you start the business. For the investment, you also get the tools of the trade to get started.

Retail is a very diverse franchise sector. At first glance, retail might suggest a high street store business. While that is one type of opportunity, it isn’t the only one.

Retail refers to any business model where goods are sold and supplied to consumers or merchandisers. What and how those goods are supplied is irrelevant. Retail can apply to many different types of product.

How Retail Franchises Can Offer the Perfect Work Life Balance

There are many UK franchise opportunities. Some require full time commitment, some allow for part time working, while many allow you to fit the work around your own schedule. Retail franchises are no different. Some may require full time commitment, at least in the early stages. The same applies for home or premises based working. You may find some types of retail franchise opportunities even offer a mix of home and van based working. Let’s take a look at the different types of retail franchises and how they can work well for you.

Retail Management Franchises – For Greatest Earning Potential

Management is where a business is run by the owner in oversight rather than wholly hands-on. This mostly applies to franchises where the franchisee employs staff. The infographic below explains how the principal works for cleaning franchises. A similar setup works for retail, restaurants, and other staffed businesses. The franchisee recruits staff, such as team members, duty managers, who run the day to day operation of the shop.

Management franchises can offer fantastic profits. Initial investment is often higher due to recruitment costs, so you’ll need healthy working capital. But with a retail management franchise, like a shop, you’re not limited to your own efforts. Like you would be with an owner-operated business. Shop franchises are sprouting new revenue streams all of the time. With online ordering, and home delivery via couriers such as Deliveroo and Uber, this is a really profitable sector to get involved in.

There are a wide range of highstreet retail franchises. From clothing & beauty, to more diverse niches such as CBD and e-cigarette franchise business opportunities.

Van Based Retail Franchises – For On The Road Lifestyle

For some, the perfect lifestyle isn’t working from home – and it isn’t working in an office, or shop. It’s on the road. And while retail businesses may seem the complete opposite of a van based business, there are some great opportunities that prove otherwise. Franchises like pet food suppliers and vending machine maintenance all cater for the retail of products sold to consumers. These are all frequently road based.

Owning a van based business means your profits are only limited to how many clients you can fit into your working day. The business is yours – and how many days a week you work is up to you. Van based franchises are fantastic business models to achieve unlimited earning potential.

Internet Based Retail Franchises – Low Cost, Great Flexibility

A ubiquitous trend, 80% of the UK’s population are digital buyers. Everywhere from buying products online to ordering dinner. Online shopping offers flexibility and convenience, with many advantages over in person shopping on the high street. One of the biggest trends in the eCommerce entrepreneurship world is dropshipping. Amongst the growing retail opportunities available, dropshipping franchises are increasingly popular due to their flexibility. Dropshipping is where a business owner runs and markets a business, but the actual fulfilment and shipping of orders is done by a third party. Due to the online nature of the business and the fact orders are fulfilled externally, means you can benefit from great flexibility in your working schedule.

Yes – Coffee and Food Businesses are Retail Franchises Too

Coffee is one of the biggest and best franchise sectors to get involved in. There are many types of coffee franchise opportunities available. You don’t necessarily need to own a premises either! A popular coffee business opportunity is bringing the coffee to the customer. Such as coffee bikes and coffee vans. There are a few different coffee van franchises in the UK. Well known mobile coffee opportunities include:

• Really Awesome Coffee
• Coffee Blue
• Cafe2U
• Coffee-Bike

New franchises to the UK, including new brands establishing as franchises, are always popular due to their unique offerings and twists on products.

Coffee shops and food businesses are still retail businesses. They provide products to consumers. Without question, this is one of the best retail sectors to get involved in if you’re after the perfect work life balance. Why? Because coffee retail has everything for everyone. Coffee vans offer on the road success and work your own hours lifestyle. Coffee shops offer high profits combined with management type, hands off working. And with such a large choice of opportunity when choosing a retail franchise to buy, the investment / price range is vast too.

Retail is Perfect if You’re Looking for Flexibility with Opportunity

What can you see yourself doing? Would you like to run a meals on wheels food delivery service? Or bring coffee to the customer with a coffee van franchise? Maybe you’d like to run a beauty shop or a children’s clothing store. Or a completely online Amazon business requiring just a few hours a week?

Retail franchising is so diverse. With business opportunities from less than £10K to high earning potential franchises. Take a look around the Franchise Planet website and discover a world of retail franchises.

*93%, Compared to starting up business alone, 79%.