Web Firm Has Atypical Franchise Approach
Another Web developer opened for business last week in Santa Monica, but it’s not your typical two-guys-in-a-garage concern. It’s the latest franchisee of the fast-growing USWeb Corp.
Joe Firmage, USWeb’s 26-year-old founder, has signed up 22 licensees in seven months, and last week added USWeb SystemLogic to the list. With $17 million in venture capital funding (including $13 million from the aggressive Japanese firm Softbank), Firmage is out to build a national brand for Web site design and development--an industry as splintered and diffuse as they come.
To do that, he has turned the traditional notion of franchising on its ear. He’s not looking for clones; he wants a diverse portfolio of companies to join the USWeb family in order to provide breadth and depth to all members.
“Franchising is typically deployed to perfectly replicate a business like McDonald’s or Kinko’s,” said Firmage, who serves as USWeb’s chairman and chief executive at the Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters. “In reality, we’re using it for precisely the opposite reason.”
Among the early USWeb affiliates are an Atlanta company that focuses on electronic commerce, a graphics firm in Miami that produces glossy department store catalogs and a Palo Alto business that specializes in creating political Web sites.
Don DeBolt, president of the International Franchise Assn. in Washington, said that USWeb’s approach to franchising is “relatively new” but that it has worked for travel agencies, where some franchisees specialize in corporate travel and others cater to individuals.
SystemLogic serves the computer systems integration needs of big companies, such as AirTouch Cellular and Tandem Computers. When the 3-year-old firm was looking for a way to extend its expertise to the Internet and its cousin, the internal corporate intranet, it called on USWeb, said Jay Kaufman, who will head USWeb SystemLogic.
USWeb SystemLogic is actually the third franchise to open in the Los Angeles area. USWeb Hollywood came online in June and USWeb LA Metro followed in July.
