Franchisor Q&A (#19): Lingotot

🕒 Estimated reading time: 5 min.

With a wide variety of needs in the market, children's franchises are filling all the niche markets with different opportunities that cater to the needs of parents and kids across the nation. Some of the most popular child-focused franchises are centered on early education. Parents are now more likely to spend extra on private lessons for their children (Private tutoring in the UK is now an industry worth approximately £6.5 billion) to further invest in their future.

One franchise that fits into both of these sectors is Lingotot, who provide multi award-winning language classes to thousands of children each and every week. Founded in the UK in 2010 by qualified teacher Angela Sterling, the business has seen rapid growth and now teaches around 20,000 children per week via a network of over 50 franchisees.

In this week's Franchisor Q&A, Lingotot discuss what makes their brand unique and how they have adapted their business in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Click here to get free information about the Lingotot franchise

Q1. What makes your franchise standout?

The demand for children’s activities continues to grow as more and more parents will want to give their children a head start in global languages. Young children pick up languages effortlessly. The exclusive Lingotot Method makes use of active, communicative and interactive teaching methods which come naturally to young learners. Learning is through songs, stories, games, movement, drama and play.

We are the only children’s language franchise to offer Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish to children aged 0-12.

We are the only franchise to offer languages qualifications to our children which are fully accredited by an OfQual regulated awarding body. Additionally we provide TWO teacher training qualifications to our franchisees and their teaching staff.

Q2. Why is it worth investing in your brand?

Our brand is growing consistently across the UK and internationally and is a recognised force in the children’s activity and education sectors.

If you choose to become a Lingotot Franchise Partner, we will help you plan your business growth flexibly, allowing you to balance working patterns alongside other commitments and enjoy teaching at the same time. You really can create your ideal work-life balance.

Our Franchise Partners usually start with one area, often their hometown, with the option of buying further territories at a reduced rate if they decide to expand their business further.

Q3. How is your franchise adapting to the current COVID-19 crisis?

Before the lockdown began we completely re-wrote our lesson plans and policies to deliver “no props, no touch” teaching in our classes, which we believe will prove useful once again when the restrictions ease a little.

Immediately upon the announcement of lockdown we pivoted the business to deliver classes online. Most of our customers have taken up the offer of online learning as they are delighted to have something fun yet highly educational for their children to do while at home. It also gives them a break!

With a great many more parents online, our franchisees are following our marketing plan and have found new local customers within their territory areas. Additionally, we opened up national and international teaching slots for our franchisees so they could find customers outside of their territory and make some extra income.

A great many of our franchisees teach in schools across the country and are also delivering online lessons to them and successfully renewing contracts for the new academic year, in addition to winning news ones.

Q4. What extra support and assistance are you offering your franchisees during this time?

It’s really hard to put this into words! The support we’ve been offering has exploded in size, but is very personal and continuous.

We of course pivoted to online learning for franchisees and immediately amended the operations manual, lesson plans, policies and provided training, which is ongoing.

But the main support offered has been very personal and we are regularly phoning and texting each and every franchisee. We already ran weekly webinars for franchisees and this support has quadrupled with Zoom chats happening almost every weeknight on topics such as marketing, sharing teaching practise and we even have an online quiz hosted by a different franchisee each week.

Harriet Blain from Lingotot West Hove recently her thoughts on the franchise's support since the COVID-19 outbreak:

We find that small personal messages of support and encouragement are very welcome and it has brought the network even closer together. Everyone is looking forward to a hug at the annual conference!

Q5. What plans do you have for the franchise over the next few years?

Our plans remain ambitious. We would like to grow our network here in the UK, but overseas too. We are actively looking for franchise partners in Ireland, Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore and South Africa.

We will continue our online learning moving forward and we are now ready to offer our qualifications for children online.

Q6. What skills are important for your franchisees to have?

Our franchisees tend to be highly educated professionals looking for the perfect balance between work and home. They want to run their own professional business but still be there for their family.

They don’t necessarily have to speak any foreign languages as they can hire staff to do the teaching for them. They certainly don’t need to be teachers as we can train them and offer teaching qualifications.

It is important for our franchisees to understand that they will need to work hard and can think on their feet. Most importantly, they need to love children, be friendly, sociable, cheerful and smile a lot!