Unishippers Begins Selling Franchises Again

Shipping Services Firm Aims to Add 80 New Franchises in Existing Franchise Territories

SALT LAKE CITY (Blue MauMau) – Unishippers Association, Inc. has announced that it is now selling franchises again after a ten-year hiatus. More than 80 franchises are available immediately, and will be sold within 265 already existing franchise areas.

Its website explains what Unishippers does. With over 80,000 small business customers, “Unishippers is the largest reseller of complete shipping services in the U.S.” And Unishippers has recently been included in the "Inc 5,000" list of America's fastest growing private companies.

Dan Lockwood, President of Unishippers, says that one reason for now selling new franchises is to take advantage of Unishippers' greatly expanded network of carriers. When the first Unishippers franchises were sold, the company essentially offered one product from one carrier. Today, Unishippers uses dozens of carriers and offers a wider range of transportation services, including domestic express, international express, ground, bulk mail and ocean shipping, as well as air freight, LTL and full-truckload freight shipping. "Our annual system-wide revenue is more than $300 million and we're part of a $60 billion industry — so there is an incredible opportunity out there for our franchise system to grow,” observes Mr. Lockwood.

"Simply put, adding new franchises to our system will help us bring Unishippers' great service and significant savings to a lot more customers," Lockwood concludes.

Some Old Territories Will Now Accomodate New Franchises

Explaining about the new franchises having no exclusive territory rights, Andrew Lambert, Communications Program Manager for the firms says, “We stopped actively selling franchises approximately ten years ago when we basically sold all of the available territories in the United States in about 265 franchise areas nationwide. Looking at the tremendous opportunity available in the market, we have decided in the past few months to expand franchise opportunities.

“The new franchise offerings are available in dozens of markets across the country and will be created in existing franchise territories. These territories, in which the existing franchisee will give up exclusivity, were selected based on those franchisees' performance. Since they were unable to meet the growth goals, they have agreed to give up exclusivity and allow a new franchise to be sold in their sales area. Once a new franchise is sold in their area, the growth requirement in their contract is relaxed.”

Some franchisors have been criticized in the past by franchisees for territory encroachment in which a new franchise eats into an existing franchise's territory, drawing business away from each but increasing the overall sales royalties to the franchisor.

But Nick Bibby, a franchise consultant with over 25 years of experience and Principal of the Bibby Group, observes, "the term 'territory encroachment' does not apply to the deft (and rare) franchisor that truly tests and understands its model well enough to specify performance standards, publishes them, and backs it all up with actuals that stand up to scrutiny."

Can Work at Home 

New franchise opportunities include product-specific franchises, which allow owners to focus on small parcel DHL express sales, heavy freight services or both. Prospective franchisees may also purchase an existing franchise from an owner who is ready to sell. Either way, says Lockwood, a franchise opportunity with Unishippers represents a chance to own a non-asset-based business which provides residual income from selling transportation services that prospective customers need and already use.

The firm has developed contracts with a number of different carriers, with the most prominent being DHL. Lambert states, “By bringing all the small- to medium-sized businesses to them, which their reps don’t really pay a lot of attention to because they do not have the volume that their reps are trained to go after, we service the smaller accounts.”

Unishippers claims that its franchise model does not have a lot of start-up costs in terms of brick and mortar. "In the beginning days, a lot of our franchisees will begin in their own homes," says Lambert. "You don’t have money tied up in inventory because you sell the services and customers begin to use our shipping partners.”

A franchise fee for a sales territory can be as low as $24,000 or as high as $36,000 for the right to sell both freight and express services. And the total initial investment ranges from $45,625 up to $783,950 for the first six months. The company’s website states, “The biggest variable cost (ranging from $14,100 to $617,400) is the additional funds you will need to cover living and business expenses during the first six months.”

Bibby advises franchise buyers, "the franchise buyer should know more about Unishippers financial model to understand why a franchisee is better off investing in this concept as opposed to making no investment and working in sales for any number of freight companies or freight brokerage concerns. But it is quite unusual that Unishippers has installed franchisees as key officers to manage the organization. Franchisors are wise to embrace such practices."