A lot of people who buy franchises end up competing with themselves. Although most commonly true with food franchising, we do hear from a lot of local service based franchises that this is also an issue for them. In a recent conversation with a well-known trades franchise, they expressed to us in detail their frustrations with “their biggest competition being themselves.” The Brothers that just do Gutters sell only large, non-competing franchise markets, to avoid competition among different Brothers Gutters locations.
When purchasing a franchise, and beginning you own business you likely don’t want to worry about overlapping marketing turning into overlapping competition between internal opponents that share the same brand. This internal competition would then be in addition to your actual outside competitors. We put a lot of time and effort into establishing our Brothers Gutters territories/service areas, and when doing this, we make sure overlapping competition among Brothers Gutters locations is not a concern.
Our typical, and ideal territories consist of 150,000 owner-occupied dwellings. This allows for the franchisee to have a large service area which contains multiple markets, providing the best growth potential.
When developing a potential Brothers Gutters territory, there are four main areas of research we focus on heavily.
- Potential Buyers – Qualified individuals in your territory – owner occupied dwellings with individuals between 35 and 75 years
- Competitors – It is important to know the competition within an area before establishing a territory for your business. Here are some important questions to consider:
- Are there gutter-only contractors in this service area?
- What is their reputation?
- What about their marketing presence?
- Costs – What is the local market price for similar services/products?
- Location – Establishing your business in the heart of the most qualified and prolific market within the designated territory
Once established as a qualified location, we will map out what zip codes are within each franchisees service area. In addition to having less competition because of these large service areas, franchise models within the trades industry are not nearly as common as other categories like food franchising, and many existing service contractors (specifically franchises) provide multiple services, and/or subcontract out for jobs. By becoming a Brothers Gutters franchisee, you are becoming a part of a niche service industry franchise, which is even less common, making your competition even smaller. We have found that most homeowners will trust a gutter-only service contractor for their gutter related project, more than a handyman style contractor.
Do you want to know what Brothers Gutters locations are available? CONTACT US