The birth of franchising

Franchising is the engine that drives much of the world's entrepreneurial train, but it's more than just fast food. Today, you can't drive down any major street anywhere in the world and not pass by some business that is part of a franchise network, and those businesses can be in any of more than 120 distinct lines of businesses today.

Franchising has a long history stretching back to ancient China. The crowns in Europe even used it to control their lands and to explore and conquer the globe. The history of franchising is pretty interesting. But, before we jump right into the thick of things, we want to share the story of Benjamin Franklin.

Now every grade student knows about one of the most important of our founding parents - the bifocaled inventor of seemingly everything including the lightning rod, the flexible catheter (we don't want to know what they used before), swim fins, the odometer, daylight savings time, the Franklin Stove and even a library chair that converted into a stepladder. Old Mr Franklin even invented a musical instrument called the armonica for which Beethoven and Mozart both composed music. Benjamin Franklin gave us our first understanding of the properties of electricity, founded the nation's first hospital, charted the temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean, drafted the Albany Plan, cowrote the Declaration of Independence and on top of all that found time to create the first franchise system on these pre-United States shores.

It was back on September 13, 1731, 45 years before the US was even a nation, that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Whitmarsh entered into the first franchise, or what they called a 'Copartnership for the carrying on of the Business of Printing in Charlestown in South Carolina'. The printing shop published The South Carolina Gazette as well as being the local printer of many of Franklin's writings including the Poor Richard's Alamanack. Ben went on to establish other franchises in the colonies in the years before the revolution.

Without Benjamin Franklin, the French likely would never have entered into the US War of Independence against the British. Without the income Ben earned as a franchisor, he may not have been able to support himself while living in France, So, have a celebration each September 13 to honor the first franchise because it and Ben were important contributors to the birth of USA.