100th franchise blog post
This is my 100th franchise blog post. It has been great to sit down every other day and comment on what is happening in the UK economy and to pitch my views and insights on behalf of the UK franchise market.
Over the past six months we have seen an extraordinary period in British economic history. The end of 2008 borough shock and dismay with the banking crisis. Uncertainty reigned on every area of business. Would customers still buy goods and services? How would margins to protected? How could franchise brand owners and their franchisees raise business development capital from a broken financial sector? These and many other questions dominated franchise industry thinking at the transition of the year.
As we have moved into spring of 2009 confidence seems to be slowly returning. The housing market improved in May with an increase of housing stock value of 1.2% reported by the Nationwide Building Society. Banks have confirmed that they have capital to lend to franchise businesses and are heavily using the EFG – Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme - to fund franchise start ups and business development capital requirements.
2009 is proving to be a time where much culling of businesses that have run on thin margins during the good times is taking place. On the positive side strong franchise busiensses are becoming stronger by focusing on improving effciancy and productivity in every area of its businesses.
There is now, and in reality never was, any place for complacency in business. Well managed franchise businesses are quickly becoming stronger than ever before. This is great news as businesses that are well managed and profitable in the slow times will fly as the economy improves.
The recently released British Franchise Association and Nat West national franchise survey confirms that UK business format franchising continues to grow in spit of the recession. I am looking forward to commenting further on the twists and turns of the economy during 2009. UK franchising is remaining robust in current times. This is great news for franchisees, their customers and the UK economy. Our community have over £12 Billion to contribute to UK GDP and is a massive employer via franchisee businesses. More to come soon and thanks for visiting and reading my blog. Your comments are very valuable to me.
Tags: banks, EFG, enterprise finance guarantee, franchise blog, franchise survey, nick strong
June 5th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Hi, Congratulations to the site owner for this marvelous work you’ve done. It has lots of useful and interesting data.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Very useful idea
June 19th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Congratulations Nick, doing a great job on your new blog
Cheers
Matthew
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:03 am
You are most kind Matthew. Nick
July 22nd, 2009 at 1:14 am
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!