ABSTRACT
My first experience of franchising dates from the late 1960s. My father was working for Singer, the US company, to pioneer the use of franchisees as a way to service the large number of sewing machines that they had been selling successfully since the mid-1850s. He had been working as managing director of its household appliance division to launch this entirely new venture in the UK. It was a highly competitive market, which meant that the project was in reality doomed to failure before it had begun. And so at the early age of 50, like many before and since, he was forced to ask himself the question ‘what next’?
