In this article, I am going to cover the important elements that you should be considering when looking to start a coworking franchise. If you have an existing coworking company or are looking to gain market share through franchising, there are a few things you need to know. Let’s go!

First, let’s cover the basics. What is a franchise? A franchise in layman’s terms allows companies to aggressively expand, using intellectual property, know-how and procedures. These “assets” are licensed to franchisees or independent operators in an effort to expand company locations or market penetration. This alternative growth strategy is used to overcome capital issues or other limiting factors created by managing, owning, or operating company locations (in-house).

Coworking Franchise Pros and Cons

Pros

Minimized Capital and Liability.  With this less capital-intensive model, your franchisees (depending on your model, industry and product), bear a lot of the setup and costs. For example, when starting a coworking franchise, real-estate, leases, and fit-out costs can all be disbursed among your network of franchisees.

Agile Team. Since you are inherently outsourcing company operations, you can have a small specialized team that oversees brand procedures, policies, and operations. By ensuring that your brand guidelines are met, management will come with ease.

Scale.  If you have proven out your model with a few pilot locations, you can rapidly gain market share by showing others how to achieve success.

Brand. Increasing brand recognition drives more organic customers and more interested franchisees (who will pay recurring fees to be part of your vision).

Cons

Starting a Franchise Is Expensive. There is a ton of legal work, foundational investment and time commitment needed to prove out your coworking franchise opportunity.

Brand Differentiation. You need to develop a strategy on how you can differentiate from other more well-known coworking franchises. This is much harder than it sounds, as anything can be replicable with the proper time and investment.

Buyers Remorse. If you decide to become a franchisee, you cannot operate your own vision and must follow the protocols of the parent company.n This means paying franchise fees, and sinking with the ship if the management company makes the wrong brand decision.

DropDesk: The Coworking Franchise Alternative

If you are looking for a way you can get all of the benefits of a coworking franchise, and with the flexibility to choose between running your own brand or leveraging a brand name, you should consider working with DropDesk. DropDesk offers a partnership model allowing independent coworking brands access to our technology, support, marketing, and know-how. 

• Choose between starting your own coworking brand powered by DropDesk or leveraging the DropDesk name.
• Scale your business with an experienced team that will be with you at each step.
• Coworking model creation, floorplan, and architectural designs.
• Support, training, and operation templates.
• Coworking Property Management.
• Access to our proprietary coworking management software.
• Use of our coworking automation, digital marketing tools and marketing team.
• Hassle-free way to get started without learning everything by yourself.