The global expansion of the Croatian franchise continues.
“We are not slowing down. We have recently opened our franchise outlets in Stuttgart in Germany, on Kite Beach in Dubai, in Ho Chi Minh City and in Pretoria, which is our first location ‘on the other side of the equator.’ We will soon open our shops in Kuwait and in Australia, where we will start from a well-known surfers paradise – Bondi Beach,” says Denis Polić, the co-owner of Surf’n’Fries, one of the most famous Croatian franchises, reports Večernji List on April 10, 2018.
Together with Andrija Čolak, Polić now has more than 50 franchise outlets in 15 countries around the world. He hopes to increase this number further by late summer with new outlets in Hyderabad in India, and eventually enter the US market as well.
However, while the Croatian franchise is conquering the world, the franchise way of doing business, which is one of best forms of self-employment, especially in the absence of your own business ideas, has not yet been sufficiently developed in Croatia.
According to research conducted in the United States, as many as 90% of newly-launched start-up companies fail, mostly due to the lack of consumer interest in their products and services. The franchise business, where you do not need to spend time on developing products and services, but just on business development, brings much less risk.
“Every day in Croatia, each of us comes into contact with at least six franchise operations, but we are not even aware of it. This form of doing business encompasses about 50 percent of global retail. As many as 24,500 brands in the world are franchise chains which have created 1.1 million businesses and offer great employment opportunities,” says Ljiljana Kukec, the president of the Croatian Association for Franchise Businesses, adding that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs make up 95 percent of franchises, with so-called micro-franchises being the most popular form in Croatia.
One of the most successful franchise operations in Croatia is Pek Snack, and others are those which everyone has heard about: McDonald’s, KFC, Hilton, Sheraton…
Among Croatian franchises, one of the most successful is Mlinar, which already has franchise bakeries in Slovakia, Australia, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Germany.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Jolanda Rak Šajn).
