The Federal Trade Commission out of the blue decide in November of 2004 that they wanted to revamp the franchise and business opportunity rule; specifically addressing franchising. Now then, why now? To prove to the masses that the Federal Trade Commission is in control? After all it is nearly 10 years after the Federal Trade Commission considered revising the rule, before this report has surfaced again. Ten years? Franchise companies have come and gone since then, technologies have come and become obsolete since then. The Federal Trade Commission does not need to prove self worth in the franchising realm, for the industry is fully under control with fewer than 2000 active franchisors at this point. Making rules which will only effect 2000 total companies in an already over regulated industry is just not needed. Do not worry about it. Change some definitions, reduce these over burdensome regulations in the franchise rule to prevent unnecessary barriers to entry, maintain competition in the market place and everything will be fine. Right now as it stands these regulations in franchising and those proposed changes will actually create criminals or perceived fraud of entrepreneurs who will be investing capital into markets and providing jobs. Making criminals out of the hard chargers who create, build and innovate, merely because they did not fill out a form correctly, have an extra sentence in a paragraph or make a chart just right is simply something that the Federal Trade Commission should not be involved in. The statue in front of the Federal Trade Commission shows a half naked man on steroids who could not make the Olympic team in Athens due to doping issues. This man in the statue is attempting to control the mighty wheels of commerce depicted by a horse, it does not show a man shooting the horse in the head with an unregistered handgun. Either way this cruelty to animals is so highly and politically incorrect it must be stopped at once. The Federal Trade Commission needs to get with the program, provide a seem-less market place and work with the business community or remove the statue. Since 1980 the number of active franchisors is down from 5800 to about 1700 as of 2003. The franchising industry employs a huge chunk of our workforce. Franchising accounts for almost 1/3 of every consumer dollar spent in America, which drives sales and sales tax revenues for state and local governments at a time when they can use all they can get. Franchising accounts for over 350,000 plus outlets, which open each day to sell their wares to willing buyers of their products and services. For us to consider the few complaints in franchising a trend that fraud is increasing and for the Federal Trade Commission to go out of their way to bring cases about out of mere complaints and further burden the industry with additional rules is truly absurd. Think about it. |
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