Hi! I own a franchise - I would say approach with caution. It’s worth considering what you are actually getting for your investment, and if you would be better off setting something up yourself.
Unless the franchise is an very well known brand or topping the search engine results for anyone searching for baby massage / messy play / baby classes / whatever it is you want to do in your area, don’t under estimate the amount of work you will need to do to build awareness and make sales. And with baby classes there is a constant need to find new customers as people will always age out of them / go back to work etc. The best baby classes spread by local word of mouth / reputation - and you don’t need to pay a franchisor for that as you will have to create it yourself anyway, their nationwide website and social pages are unlikely to do that for you.
It’s definitely true that there are always parents looking for baby classes, and massive opportunities to make something successful. But margins can be tight once you’ve paid out for space, equipment etc - so if you are having to give any of that to a franchisor as monthly fees or them taking a percentage of your sales that makes things tighter.
There can be a lot of rules to follow too when you are operating someone else’s brand (like social media guidelines, formats for how you run classes etc) which can be frustrating when you can’t respond to local nuance or use your creativity or judgement.
What franchises do offer is support in terms of a group of people in the same situation to talk to and share ideas with, which is really lovely - but you can make more money and have more control setting up by yourself, so it depends what is most important to you. In my personal experience the “business” support they offer is little more than website hosting, access to payment processing and information you could easily work out yourself on the internet (eg social media guidance).
I am 20 months into my franchise and haven’t made back my initial investment yet, even though on the surface you would think my business is successful (sold out classes, positive reviews etc) - but once I have paid all of my costs and franchise fees I don’t make very much money each month. Luckily for me it was not about making money and more about having flexibility - but even so I am finding that the franchisor’s estimations and guides of what you can make were exceptionally optimistic and not very realistic - so make sure you really do your maths, and factor for quiet periods of the year, holidays you will take etc.
I was definitely naive getting into it - I under estimated the amount of time it would take me outside of running classes - going back and forth with locations, customers, maintains social media and constantly working to sell the next thing. I can’t do these things during the day when I have my children so it has taken over my evenings. Like most situations I can’t have my children at the class with me as they need too much from me, which means I have to sort out childcare - and to run more classes to make more money I have to sort out more childcare - which can be difficult, and either expensive or leave me feeling like I am asking too much from family.
All this said, it’s been a really interesting experience and I’ve met some amazing people. It’s definitely worth really thinking about the time commitment and if it is really worth getting into a franchise with the buy in costs and fees rather that just going it alone and doing your own thing where you have full control.
Hope this helps, sorry it’s long!