Moving Parts is a weekly series. Every Friday we take one part of the system behind the Memory Catcher™ Franchise, show it working, and explain what it saves the franchisor. This week, everything that happens after the prints are taken, and how one studio keeps quality the same in every territory.
In most franchises, the product gets made wherever it gets sold. Every franchisee needs the kit, the skills and the time, and the quality is only ever as good as whoever is on that day.
For a keepsake that is made once and kept for ever, that is a lot to hand to fifty different people. So we didn’t.
Her part ends with a folder
At a session, payment comes first, on her card reader. Then the prints, and that is the bit that takes real skill: a nervous parent, a wriggly baby and a print worth keeping.
The original prints go home with the family in a branded folder, with a QR code inside to send them in. That is her part done.
The family sends them in from home
Nobody wants to photograph prints with a baby in their arms. So the family does it at home, in their own time, by scanning the code in the folder or tapping the link in their receipt email.
Each upload arrives at our studio matched to her sale by its order number, so nobody wonders whose customer it was.
One studio, one standard
Our designer tidies any smudges and the personalisation goes on. Then a free proof goes to the family, by message or by email, whichever they chose.
Nothing is foiled until they have approved it. If they want a change, they say so, and the next proof comes back the same way.
Once it is approved, it is foiled, packed and posted from the studio. Every print is reproduced life size, and every artwork is kept, so a keepsake that is lost or damaged years from now can be made again.
She’s brilliant with babies. She shouldn’t also have to be a designer, a printer and a despatch department.
Why central production matters more at fifty than at five
With five franchisees making their own product, you can check every piece that goes out. With fifty you can’t, and one poor keepsake gets passed round a baby group faster than any advert.
Made in one place, the fiftieth franchisee’s customer gets exactly what the first one’s did. And she can start trading without a press, a studio or a single design skill. That’s quality control done once, in one place, rather than fifty times over.
What it does for the franchisor
You control the part customers judge you on, so you can promise the same keepsake in every territory and mean it. Her job stays the bit only a person can do, and that is a much easier job to recruit for.
Questions franchisors ask
How do franchisors keep quality consistent across territories?
Make the part customers judge you on in one place. Our franchisees take the prints, and one studio does everything after: the tidying, the proof, the foiling and the posting. The fiftieth franchisee’s customer gets exactly what the first one’s did.
What should a franchisor do centrally rather than locally?
Anything that needs specialist kit or skill, and anything where one poor result reflects on the whole brand. Leave the franchisee the part only a person on the ground can do.
Does central production make it easier to recruit franchisees?
It narrows the job. Ours need to be brilliant with families and babies, not designers, printers and a despatch department, and that’s a much easier person to find.
If you’re building a franchise network
If your franchisees make the product themselves, it’s worth asking which parts really need to happen in their territory, and which could happen once, centrally, to one standard. That’s one of the first things we’d map with you when we build the franchise system. Take the Franchise Scorecard to see where your franchise stands across all five fibres.
Last Friday: the card tap that does five jobs. Next Friday: the checklist that onboards a franchisee for us.
