Being the first or the only one to offer a product or service to the public does not necessarily guarantee the success of that business, but it certainly never hurts. Many business concepts aren’t true originals, but are facsimiles of existing ones proffered in hopes of doing it better, and end up failing because they’ve only changed the style, not the approach. The market is oversaturated with these types of businesses, where truly original concepts have failed due to lack of a solid support and marketing structure.

Innovation, new thinking, and customer satisfaction are the keys to survival in an oversaturated marketplace.

When Dave Thomas started Wendy’s the so-called experts told him that the hamburger market was already saturated with people like McDonald's and Burger King. The same thing was told to John Schnatter about Papa John’s Pizza. There was already Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Pizza Inn and many others. There are myriad examples where the so-called experts were wrong.

Other “experts” were surprised to see on several occasions when Dave Thomas would locate a Wendy’s across the street from a McDonald's and a Burger King, where most would expect the sales volume from the stores to reduce. The opposite would occur: not only did Wendy’s experience success, but also the sales volumes of the two other hamburger franchises went up as a result.

In short, it is a verity that even in high growth areas there is room for additional franchise units. In metropolitan Phoenix for example, with the number of new families moving in per month, one new retail location could be added per month for just about any concept. Case in point: there are more individual representations of multiple industries than ever before existing side by side with the competition. There is, effectively, no one “King of the Hill” in franchising on the whole, or business in general.

Even with extensive analysis on the number of units that can be put into a given area, the experts can still be wrong. A franchisor called the Taco Maker has 140 plus units in North America, though approximately 80 of those locations are located on the island of Puerto Rico, which has a population of about four million people. Oversaturation by one brand can most often increase, or sustain its popularity, as opposed to squelching it.

No matter what the so-called experts say, the market will always accept great products and services, regardless of how oversaturated a certain marketplace may appear. If it is as good or better than the competition and marketed properly, the franchise will be a success, and there is always more room in the marketplace for a franchise that’s doing business “the right way”.

We specifically seek out these kinds of companies at FGS, only offering our franchisees winning concepts that possess a long-term recipe for success!