The British Franchise Association (bfa) was established more than 40 years ago. Its aim is to support and influence high quality, ethical, business, franchising in accordance with a European Code of Ethics, proactively collaborating with government, academia, the media, other trade associations and the UK public regarding franchising best practice.

In the UK, it is the largest not-for-profit trade association for franchising and works in partnership with the European Franchise Federation (EFF) and World Franchise Council (WFC), to influence standards and legislation across Europe.

The BFA allows potential franchisees to identify companies offering an ethical business format franchise, with a commitment to act ethically and maintain standards.

We joined the BFA in 2019. As a franchisor we are committed to add value to our franchisees businesses, a prerequisite to being part of the BFA.

For our franchisees, they have access to low cost support in case of a dispute. Thankfully we’ve never needed this, but it’s an additional reassurance to them. easyStorage is signed up to a code of ethical conduct, including having proper procedures in place for discipline, complaints and appeals. This means that our franchisees are protected from other franchisees potentially bad behaviour. We believe the way we filter our franchisees helps prevent this being needed – we have an amazing team – but it’s good to know these things are in place.

Suffice to say, for easyStorage being part of the BFA is important. We want to attract the best franchisees on behalf of our customers.

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And we did it!!!

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Our BFA membership was just upgraded to Associate Membership. Have a look at our listing here. To achieve this, easyStorage needed to meet four key criteria: to prove that the business is viable, franchisable, ethical and fully disclosed.

Broken down, this meant providing evidence that easyStorage franchises are:

Viable: the easyStorage offering has to be saleable, and profitable enough to sustain a franchised network.

Transferable: know-how can be transferred to a new owner at arm’s length;

Ethical: The franchise is structured and operated according to ethical principles laid out in the European Code of Ethics for Franchising (covers things like advertising, recruiting, selecting, and interactions with franchisees). And any  applicant’s franchise agreement must be formally assessed.

Disclosed: Anything that might affect the franchise proposition and contract must be unambiguously disclosed to prospective franchisees.

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BFA Associate Membership

An Associate Member meets the same criteria as a Full Member, apart from the length of time the franchise has been operating, the size of the network and the range of experiences – not possible for companies like easyStorage simply because they’re newer.

Associate Members are effectively good quality, ethical franchisors working their way towards the Full Membership that they can’t get until they’ve been established for longer.

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Thank you

So many of the team were involved in getting this accreditation that mentioning one would mean leaving out another.

So suffice to say, well done and thank you to the leadership teams who helped this happen, to the people who crunched numbers to demonstrate our success, to the franchisees who shared their data and who spoke on behalf of easyStorage franchisees, and to the third parties who worked hard to validate that what we were saying about ourselves is true.

We are delighted to have made this next move as a franchisor, and would like to thank the many franchisees who put their faith in us early on, and who continue to be part of the easyStorage success story.

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And….

If you would like to become part of the easyStorage success story, there’s more information here: https://www.easystorage.com/franchise