Equipment and Inventory

Micro-franchise operators receive equipment, supplies and marketing tools to run their business successfully. They pay Supply Hope for their products after the products are sold. Growth in their commissions is not dependent on whether they can afford more products.

Micro-franchising is like a “business in a box”. It is simple to learn, easy to manage, and can grow quickly. In our testing we know exactly what equipment each store needs, and this is delivered on their opening day. They also get the best supplies and marketing tools to help them grow their sales.

Because we want our micro-franchises to be owned by the most financially vulnerable families, they can’t usually obtain a loan to pay for their inventory. And learning how to manage inventory is hard – a big reason why businesses started with micro-finance loans fail. We design our micro-franchises so operators can focus on serving their customers and marketing their business instead of managing suppliers or fixing equipment.

Giving them products to sell BEFORE they have paid us may seem like a gamble. But with our inventory control procedures, our losses on this approach are less than .5% of the value of the inventory we have sold. By comparison, a good micro-finance loan loss rate is 2%. We are willing to make this gamble, and our operators tell us this one of the most valuable aspects of our program.