<span style="font-size: 25px;">🕒</span> Estimated reading time: 3 min.
Needless to say, 2020 and the first half of 2021 have hit the event industry hard as a result of the pandemic. With so many weddings, parties and conferences cancelled or switched to virtual, many event-focused businesses have suffered greatly for more than a year. However, with a successful vaccination program in place and restrictions coming to an end, in-person events are making a comeback.
With event needs poised to be at all an all-time high, this creates an exciting opportunity for event franchise Smiley Booth.
Smiley Booth is the UK's largest, longest-running, and most successful photo booth franchise in the UK and Europe. Since 2008 Smiley Booth has been providing photo and video-led services through its event photo booth solutions to 1000's of weddings and parties alongside working as partners for brand activation events with companies such as Disney, Sky, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Virgin, and Samsung as well as celebrity events with One Direction, Jude Law, and Game Of Thrones to name but a few.
The Smiley Booth franchise opportunity is a hugely rewarding, high-return business that gives you all the flexibility and excitement of your own business with the full support of an established brand, head office team, and network of franchisees for a low financial investment.
Learn more about the Smiley Booth franchise opportunity here>>>
In our latest Franchisor Q&A Interview series, not only do we take a closer look at Smiley Booth's franchise model, but we learn just why look the business is looking forward to how the events industry will adapt and succeed in a post-Covid world.
Q1. Why is your business a smart franchise investment for entrepreneurs?
Smiley Booth is an excellent investment for entrepreneurs because it is very flexible. It can be hands-on, with the franchisee working in their business mostly themselves or they can easily build a small team to enable them to grow their franchise as an asset.
It is also a low investment for a high profit margin business in an evolving industry with a fast return on investment. .
Q2. What do you look for in a potential franchisee?
Smiley Booth looks for diligence, professionalism and most importantly a positive, can-do attitude. The most successful Smiley Booth franchisees take personal responsibility for their results and value their contribution to the overall Smiley Booth network.
Q3. What does the initial training process look like for new franchisees?
Franchisees take part in a 3 day training “boothcamp” which covers everything from the software and hardware of the equipment, managing an event, sales and business administration. Further training is provided as and when needed and there are regularly scheduled franchise meetings.
Q4. How do you help franchisees achieve a work-life balance?
The Smiley Booth franchisors have been there and bought the t-shirt, they know exactly what it takes to run a successful and profitable event business and most importantly where to focus your time and attention. The bulk of the franchisee support is aimed at taking away time consuming activities enabling you to focus on revenue generating activities.
Q5. How has the Covid-19 pandemic changed the way the franchise operates? What extra support and assistance are you offering your franchisees during this time?
Covid-19 unavoidably hit the events industry hard. Smiley Booth supported their franchisees throughout and provided extra resources and new online product solutions at the same time as dramatically reducing franchise fees. Moving forward the franchise offering and franchise contract have been reassessed to provide franchisees with flexibility and assurances should any similar situation arise in the future.
Q6. What plans do you have for the franchise over the next few years in a post-Covid economy?
By its very nature the events industry is extremely agile. Covid has propelled event technology forward by 5+ years and Smiley Booth are embracing the rise of “hybrid” events with the addition of online engagement solutions to their product portfolio. There is currently a huge surge in event bookings across both the private and corporate markets and trends experts have cited the next 5 years as “nothing less than spectacular” for the events industry. Smiley Booth is poised to ride that wave.