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Business View Australia - June 2015 103
Industry:
Story
leader for franchising worldwide.
Franchising in Australia has grown ex-
ponentially over the last half century to
achieve the position of being one of the
most important sectors of the econo-
my. Starting off in the early 1970s with
American chains such as KFC, Pizza
Hut and McDonald’s, the franchise in-
dustry grew by leaps and bounds and
Australia today has the second largest
number (just behind New Zealand) of
franchise outlets per capita in the world.
The number of franchise systems grew
from 693 in 1998 to 1160 in 2014,
while the total number of franchisees
increased from 43,800 to 79,000 in
the same period. The number includes
70,000 business format franchised
units and an additional 9000 compa-
ny owned units. Additionally, there are
6120 fuel retail units and 4598 motor
vehicle retail outlets. Given these figures
it is not surprising that the number of
franchise outlets per capita in Austra-
lia is thrice that in the United States.
The sales turnover of business format
franchising units grew to $65 billion in
2014, up from $62 billion in 2011. In
addition to this figure motor vehicle sales
were at $38 billion and fuel retail stood
at $41 billion, making for a franchising
sector of $144 billion which accounts
for almost 10% of the GDP of the coun-
try. The franchising industry employed
461,000 people in 2014, 155,000 of
whom were permanent full-time em-
ployees, 125,000 permanent part-time
and 181,000 casual employees.
Success of franchis-
ing in Australia
Chairman of the Franchise Council of
Australia, Warren Wilmot, has this to say
regarding the success of franchising in
the country, “Geographically, Australia
is the world’s sixth largest country so
FRANCHISING