Cebu brands open up for franchising

At least 17 home grown Cebu brands have signed up as members in the new Cebu chapter of the Philippine Franchising Association.

As of Friday, new members include Dimsum Break, Golden Cowrie, Abba Travel, Munsterific, Body and Sole, Magic Melt, Islands Souvenir, Bo’s Coffee, Dessert Factory, Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes, Mooon Cafe, Thirsty, Coffee Dream, Chikaan, Crunch Chicken, Tablea Chocolate Cafe and Famcor Franchise Management and Executive Development Corp.

“We have many micro and small enterprises with good concepts for franchising,” said Virgilio Espeleta, PFA director for Cebu in a press conference.

He said they are optimistic that other Cebu brands will benefit from franchising and become competitive as national and international brands later on.

The franchise industry grew by double digits last year, said Robert F Trota, PFA chairman and president of Max.

“We expect the growth to be better this year especially with our projects that we believe will help fuel more growth in the industry. We expect the growth to come from across all sectors – food, services, retail – which will ride the wave of tourism in the country.”

According to PFA president Elizabeth Pardo-Orbeta, 63 percent of their national members started as micro, small and medium enterprises.

“Now majority of our members are homegrown master franchises. At least  83 percent of our member are homegrown brands and 17 percent are international brands. This shows that franchising in the Philippines has become a preferred investment option of Filipinos,” said Orbeta.

Their goal is to introduce the concept to more entrepreneurs as well as would-be franchisees and investors, especially overseas Filipino workers.

“Most of them work for many years abroad and they have money that they want to invest in businesses. Franchising is one good option,” said Orbeta.

An incubation section will again be set up in this year’s Franchise Asia Philippines 2012 International Conference on June 25 to 26 at the SMX Convention Center in Metro Manila.

“In our past expos, we dedicated a section in the whole exhibit area for incubation. There we feature start up businesses which have very good concepts that we feel will have huge potential to enter the mainstream. The incubation section would allow businessmen to test their products if they have a ready market to franchise their brand,” she said.