First Business Franchisor – A Canadian Woman
Martha Matilda Harper and the Harper Method – 1888
Martha Matilda Harper was born in Ontario. She emigrated to New York where, in 1888, she founded the first retail franchise (also called a business format franchise). She first established one salon and built up its clientele and reputation, then expanded to Buffalo, across New York, to Detroit, Michigan and then to Chicago in time for the World Fair in 1893. She eventually developed a network of 500 salons across America, Europe, Central America and Asia. The first shop owners were all poor or working class women. Harper created the Harper Method and training centres and created a formula for business success that considered location, product lines and services, marketing and the customer experience. Nothing was left to chance, so that customers got a predictable experience in any Harper salon around the world. As her biographer, Jane Plitt (author of Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream) says, ‘She created a team of loyal, ambitious women who followered her precept and business practices as if they were scriptures, and whome she and customers worldwide trusted to carry on the Harper tradition withconsistency and finesse”.
Her ‘Secret Sauce’
The three things that distinguished Martha Matilda Harper and made her frachise operations a huge success are still key to franchises and their business success today.
- Creative and distinctive Marketing
When she first began, Martha Matilda Harper used creative advertising and marketing techniques, including offering her salon as a reception room for the next-door piano teacher (one way to get customers in the door!), setting up child care rooms in her salons to build a future generation of customers, and getting the patronage of high profile women like Mrs. Coolidge and Susan B Anthony. - Customer Experience
Martha Matilda Harper focused on making the experience of being in her salons a delight for her customers. She developed the first reclining shampoo chair (so customers would not get the soap in their eyes), charmed everyone who entered, and, through her training programs, ensured that new associates would not graduate from her training programs until they could make the customer smile. - Consistency and Training
Martha Matilda Harper set up training schools across Canada and the United States to ensure that the quality and training were consistent. She closely monitored the quality and practices of the franchise locations and sent regular newletters to her many franchisees.
Historical Considerations
As I was researching the story of Martha Matilda Harper, and the first franchise, I came across a number of sites that referred to Albert Singer, founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, as the founder of the first franchise system. The key difference seems to be that Singer’s products were sold by salaried employees, rather than by franchisees, as in Martha Matilda Harper’s case. She installed working-class women like herself in salons exactly like hers, trained them, inspected them, and shared the benefits of her marketing and advertising campagains with them. They owned the salons so long as they bought Harper and followed Martha’s rules and the Harper Method.
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