Capture the moment with a Venture Studios franchise

Venture Studios is the UK’s leading photographers of portraits and proposes an incredible franchise business opportunity for ambitious individuals with a dream of running their own business.

Venture has operated as a photography franchise for the past 17 years and has built up a distinct and recognisable brand in this time. A total of 15,000 customers visited a Venture studio in 2017, making them ten times bigger than their nearest competitor.

Venture now operates across three continents, with 16 studios in the UK, as well as studios in Asia and the USA. Opening a franchise with Venture will see you combine exceptional customer service, market-leading photography, and a contemporary range of products. All while generating excellent financial returns.

If you’re passionate about capturing special moments and creating breath-taking images for customers, then this photography franchise could be the one for you.

What’s required?

You don’t need to have any photography or studio experience to become a Venture franchisee. In fact, Venture franchisees come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, yet they all have a few things in common.

Opening a franchise with Venture takes passion and determination, as well as the ability to lead your team from the front. The ideal Venture candidate possesses the following qualities and skills:

• Customer-focused
• Takes a hands-on approach
• Is a natural leader
• Disciplined

Sound like you? Then perhaps you could put yourself in the frame to become a franchisee. But what if you don’t know the first thing about taking the perfect photo? Fear not, the Venture training package will give you all the information you need to make your business a success.

Training and support

To become fully competent as a Venture franchisee, you’ll be given eight-weeks of training on a full-time basis. This ensures that you can get the most out of this franchise business opportunity.

Your training will consist of two elements:

1. Photography

You’ll receive comprehensive training which is divided into core skills and advanced skills to make sure that all levels of experience are catered for. Once you've completed your photography training, you'll have the necessary knowledge and skills to create the images that have become synonymous with the Venture brand.

Venture’s photography training is also accredited by the BIPP (British Institute of Professional Photography), so when training is complete, you'll be a fully qualified photographer.

2. Sales

There’s no point being able to take beautiful photographs if there are no customers to shoot. This is why you’ll complete a mixture of classroom and studio placement training to teach you how to run your studio and acquire the required customer volume for your business to make a profit.

When you’ve recruited for your studio, your employees will also receive training provided by Venture for their roles.

As well as your initial training, you’ll also receive the following support from Venture:

• Business planning to secure funding from your lender.
• Help to find the best location and then negotiate the lease.
• Assistance in interviewing and recruiting your studio team.
• Full training for you, other photographers and all supporting studio roles.
• Pre-opening lead generation marketing plan.

Case study

Martin and Michelle Hillman knew that they wanted to buy a franchise business opportunity and be their own boss but didn't know where to start. When they came across the Venture Studios franchise, they immediately knew this was the one for them and opened their Southampton studio in January 2012.

Martin and Michelle were particularly impressed with the clear end-to-end process and the support on offer to open their studio. Because they had never owned a business before the help provided to find the right location, develop a business plan to present to the bank, as well as the photography and commercial training was invaluable.

Before opening their studio, Martin and Michelle worked closed with Venture to learn as much as possible about the business model. They spent time in other successful studios to gain an understanding of the skills needed to operate the studio and took full advantage of the support from existing franchisees from within the network.

Martin and Michelle would advise anyone considering opening a franchise with Venture to spend time developing an effective marketing plan before launch. Having this in place ensured that Martin and Michelle had a full diary of customers booked in from day one which resulted in them turning over £100,000 in their first two months of trading.

The Southampton studio continues to go from strength to strength and is one of the most successful studios in the Venture network. Martin and Michelle admit that, at times, it’s been hard work, but this has been rewarded with impressive financial returns. In fact, the studio has turned over an average of £600,000 in the last three years.

But more than just the profit that has been made, Martin and Michelle get great satisfaction from seeing how happy customers are when they view the fantastic photographs that they have taken.

Financial information

A Venture Studios franchise business opportunity can be a very lucrative one. The average annual turnover is £440,000, with top performing studios generating sales worth over £650,000.

The investment needed to purchase this photography franchise will vary from location to location but as a guide, here is a breakdown of the costs involved:

Franchise fee: £10,000 Minimum investment: £30,000 Total investment: £70,000 - £100,000 Royalty fee: 5% of gross turnover Marketing fee: 2.5% of gross turnover

The Venture model is designed to make a return of between 10-15% for franchisees. This is in addition to the salary of approximately £25,000 per year that you would pay yourself.

Venture’s standard franchise term is three years, which can be renewed.