Hi Mike

No, I don't believe that this is a 'franchiseable' business.

As mentioned in a previous post there is no real repeatable process. The process of training and experience required to be successful is very long and involved (most franchise operations offer blitz style training - a week or two, then support in the field). Added to this, if you were specialising in diagnostics you would need relevant equipment and a decent support network - perhaps more that just a single scan tool, a data CD and a helpline which these guys seem to offer.

My belief is the mistake these guys made was thinking that reading and clearing codes is diagnostics. The market matured - many of their supposed customers (smaller garages/car sales) had capabilities which exceeded the capabilities which their franchisees were offering. In my experience the bread and butter jobs are done in-house, and generally it is the difficult to solve jobs which are outsourced.

What looked good from the pure business case was the potential of the market (no of garages/no of cars/increase in complexity/proliferation of warning lights driving work/mot emission test). But, anyone who is involved could see the subtleties of the market and knew that it would be costly and complicated, and required high calibre/specifically skilled incoming franchisees to make it work.

The other problem was one of interia. How do you get the number of franchisees high enough quick enough to sustain growth, to build the master business, to create the required national coverage, to support the complex (and costly) support network? Perhaps this was one of the reasons that one of these businesses was offering £40k per year per tech.

The better franchise bet is a repeat, process driven, brandable, easy-to-train, simple concept/product, high volume, low overhead, easily trainable, cash rich business. Look at the successes: Snap-on, Dyno Rod, McDonalds, Subway etc.

Cheers

James.