How long will it take to recover my investment?
This is always the million-dollar question and probably the one we hear the most. And also the most difficult to answer. Why? Because the future, by definition, is uncertain, and anyone who offers you a sure answer to this question is probably lying to you.
When selling a franchise, it would be much easier to tell you that you will get your investment back within a certain period of time. And the shorter the period, the better. The Sportmadness model is very affordable and accessible because of its low initial cost. Imagine if we told you that you would recover your investment in 3 months.
How easy would it be to sell franchises like that, right?
Easy yes, but that would be lying to you. We hope to be with you for 15, 20, or 25 years. If we start our relationship by lying to you, that's a bad sign. If there's one thing we know for sure at Sportmadness, it's that we will never betray our values as a company for anything. One of our principles is to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. This empathy prevents us from lying. And it leads to us not being able to answer the question.
That's why you'll never hear a definite statement from us about how long it will take to get your investment back. We can estimate with ranges based on concrete examples, but always keep in mind that it is impossible to guess or predict anything.
And the fact is that no franchise or person can guarantee the return on investment of a business. Not even in a hyper-predictable business. The best franchises in the world in industries like hospitality or retail have data models that can give you a close approximation, but they will never be 100% reliable. No one can predict a pandemic, inflation, rising energy costs or simply changing consumer tastes.
At Sportmadness, we have seen many of our franchisees recover their initial investment in less than two months. We've also seen how some, even the most successful today, took 12 months to do so and currently, have businesses that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. And, unfortunately, there are some who never get it back.
Every path is different. That's why it's so hard to make a business plan that tells us how long it will take to recover the investment. And this is something that, because of the particularities of our model, we'll never be able to say with sufficient certainty. Each franchisee is different from the others, their areas of influence and operations vary considerably and the opportunities that exist there, are very different.
You may be asking yourself: does anyone have the answer to my question?
Well, yes, and that person is you.
As an entrepreneur, you will be the person responsible for getting your investment back as quickly as possible. We'll help you in every way we can to make that happen. And not just so you can get your investment back. That's just the first step. Our success as a company is based on the fact that, with our help, you can build a solid business that allows you to make a living from your passion: getting your initial investment back is therefore only a small short-term goal that we will try to achieve... as soon as possible.
