happen,” says Anderson, who admits he learned
patience and an appreciation for “delayed gratification” in the process.
Anderson says he’s proud of the communications forged between franchisor and franchisees. “That’s one of the [council’s] biggest accomplishments. It remains important to put it
all on the table—no issues are dead, but some
take longer to negotiate than others,” he says.
“As franchisees, we can be impatient to change,
while management generally takes a more deliberate approach. Change comes with patience,
reason, communication, mutual action, and understanding of mutual benefit.”
The six members of the council are elected
by franchisees they represent from each operational region. “We also have a Marketing Advisory Council, which is more involved in issues
related to advertising and marketing, and a Profit Action Council, which focuses on operational
issues, such as profitability,” Anderson says.
These organizations are important in facilitating communication, he says, regardless of the
size of the company or the franchisee’s holdings.
“When I got into this organization, it was half
the size it is now, and there was a more familial
feeling,” he says. “With a larger organization, it’s
easy for a franchisee to feel isolated, so it takes
more effort to keep people involved and communicating.”
That’s where the FAC worked with management. “It was necessary to work not just on behalf
of franchisees, but to also get in front of them, so
we did a lot of traveling. I represented the northeast region of the country, and I traveled there as
well as to other areas to talk with franchisees
about their concerns and to help them understand what’s going on in San Diego [at corporate].
It was a very positive experience. I learned more
about what was going on with franchisees and
was better able to communicate about their concerns,” Anderson says. “With a council, even
when you hear ‘No,’ an issue is not dead. With
tenacity and focus, it can be worked out. In fact,
this is where a FAC can do its best work.”
That being said, Anderson acknowledges
that some franchisees still don’t see FACs as truly representing them. There are currently several
franchisee associations “trying to establish
meaningful organizations” with The UPS
Store/MBE, according to Anderson.
He is quick to point out, for example, how
the efforts of Burger King’s franchisee association have positively affected the history of
change at that organization. And at Meineke
Car Care Center, the re-established FAC has
helped the organization weather stressful times
by building a strong relationship between franchisees and franchisors, he says.
Representation for all
Gary Grace, long-time president of the Supercuts Franchisee Association (SFA), says there
are generally good relations between the association and Regis Corp.’s advisory council. “We
have both a franchisee association and a franchise advisory council. Since we have more than
50 percent of the stores in the association, we
just ask that board members be elected by the
membership to also serve on the franchise advisory council,” he says. “There’s a lot more credibility when members of a franchise advisory
council are elected by the membership rather
than appointed by the franchisor.”
The reasons for the unusual arrangement are
practical, Grace says. “Wearing one hat, we represent the members of our association; with the
other hat, on the council, we represent all the
franchisees, even if they’re not a member of the
association. We do it this way because it works
for us. We go to council meetings in Minneapolis half a dozen times a year. The association has
its board meeting the day before the council
meeting. We actually work at the board meeting
on the issues, and then have dinner that night
with senior corporate people,” he says. “I sit
next to the president of the company, where we
resolve a lot of things before the formal meeting
the next day.”
The system works well at Regis, Grace says,
because of the continuity of relationships and
because the franchisor is not threatened by franchisee organizations. “We’ve been working together for years, and there’s a mutual respect
and good communication that means we can
usually work things out to everybody’s satisfaction. We try hard not to be adversarial.”
Both the SFA and the FAC offer benefits to
members, says Grace. One of the best things the
franchisee association offers is an annual convention that is different from the one held by
the franchisor. “Theirs is good, and ours is
good. They usually focus on operations and best
practices, while the association convention offers practical sharing, networking, and education for our members,” he says.
Another big benefit available to members of
the SFA is special vendor pricing. “Some people
have joined just to get the special pricing,” says
Grace.
The franchisee association also has on retainer for its members a franchise lawyer and a labor
lawyer, and offers a tip line so people can report
“irregularities.” And it’s no small advantage to
be part of a large group that’s not afraid to take
on difficult issues. “We have such a high membership percentage in the association that it
gives us a very strong voice,” says Grace, who
has opened 130 salons for the company and
currently owns 35 units in southern California.
The genial franchisee has served on the FAC
from its earliest days, except for a few years in
the mid-1990s, when he went to New York for
a joint venture with the parent company, opening 86 Supercuts stores in two years. He’s spent
much of his time as both chairman of the coun-
cil and president of the association. “The pay is
great—we work for food and beverage.”
Collaborative franchising
Robert Purvin, CEO and chair of the American Association of Franchisees and Dealers
(AAFD), based in San Diego, says his “purpose
in life” is to advance the image of franchise
owners associations as positive assets of a franchise system—something that actually helps the
brand sell.
“The public perception is that a franchisee
association is, at best, like a union, and at worst,
a mob. In point of fact, the true thing that I can
say about owners associations is that every one
comes into existence as a byproduct of the pas-
sion of the individual fran-
chisee to work for the suc-
cess of his business and
brand. If every franchisor
would recognize that
truth, these associations
could become a valuable
asset,” he contends.
Purvin, who notes that
Robert Purvin he’s a “recovering attorney”
because of his efforts to get franchisors and franchisees to stop being adversarial and to start
speaking collaboratively, had spent 30 years as a
lawyer representing both before he founded the
AAFD in 1992.
Initially, Purvin and his colleagues began as
an organization for the buyer’s side of franchising, because they felt franchisees weren’t being
well represented. “By the third year, we’d figured
out that the path to effectiveness was to help
support independent owners associations with
negotiating leverage,” he recalls. “If we could get
a strong, effective association in every brand, it
would act as a tool for problems to get solved
collaboratively. And when people collaborate,
they take ownership of a problem.”
In 1995, an AAFD committee of 45 people, including franchisors, franchisees, consultants, and attorneys, began the process of negotiating a set of standards that could meet everybody’s needs, says Purvin. “In doing that, we
were transformed into an organization that represents franchisees and franchisors and anybody
dedicated to great franchising. Our mission was
simply to define, identify, and promote total
quality franchising practices.”
The AAFD has spent the last dozen years
developing those Fair Franchising Standards,
Purvin says. “The beauty is that we don’t dictate
one size fits all; all we dictate is a culture of collaboration. There are lots of ways to get to collaboration. But we’re the only organization on
the planet that has an accreditation for franchisors that embodies our vision of total collaborative franchising.”
To earn the AAFD seal, a franchise organization must have a recognized independent own-
