Is it possible to run a franchise as a second location?

[Coco_Coquette]

I have my own Shopify pos and am in the process of franchising to a second location. We'll be selling 90% of the same product, and would like to have our franchisee set up as a second location under our Shopify plan. The problems that we've encountered are: 1) There's no way to have 2 separate bank accounts for these two stores, so my franchisee's sales would be deposited into my bank account. 2) We'll only be hosting one website, so we want our online orders to be fulfilled through our store first, then be diverted to our second location if we're out of stock on something. If we have two separate Shopify plans, we'll have to pay for an added app to integrate our two shops which is expensive and from the reviews I've read, performs poorly. Does anyone have experience with running multiple franchises from their Shopify?

[Nick]

Hi @Coco_Coquette,

Nick here from Shopify. 

I'm wondering if the Shopify Single Sign-on is something which could benefit you here. The basic principle behind single sign-on is that store owners and staff members can use a single, unified email address and password to log in to all the stores and Shopify services they have access to. So you can have multiple stores (one for each franchise in this instance) and be able to navigate between them easily. It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but it might still be able to do what you need. 

You can see more about how to migrate to single sign-on and learn more about it from the helpful guide Shopify made about it here. 

Hopefully, this helps you in any way shape or form.

All the best, Nick

[Bamboa]

Hi Nick, where are there any shopify resources on franchising a shopify store please?

[Nick]

Hi @Bamboa,

Are you looking to create a physical POS franchise? The content team wrote a blog about retail franchising a while back which would be the only official franchising material. You can see and read it here. 

[Bamboa]

Hi Coco, I can’t help you right now as I’m also looking for a franchising solution. Can you at all tell me good sources of where we can find a good template for the franchisor/franchisee agreement?

[Coco_Coquette]

There isn't a simple template that I know of. I had to have a lawyer draft an agreement to make sure we were following all laws and procedures... Good luck!

[Talktohenryj]

@Coco_Coquette, have you found a solution to this? I am in the process of building something out for another user and would love to talk to you about what you need.

henry