Franchising and Licensing Asia 2008

This post was written by Michael on October 21, 2008
Posted Under: Entrepreneurial

A few days ago I visited the Franchising and Licensing Asia 2008 exhibition held in Suntec City. It was a fairly quiet affair and I wasn’t sure if it was due to the current economic uncertainty, or if it was just the nature of the show. Afterall it is hardly the kind of thing you would take the wife and kids to.
Apparently previous shows have resulted in high-quality leads for the exhibitors. For example 7-Eleven said that they signed up 22 new franchisees at the last event and Mr Steve Lim, Franchise Director of Waraku International Pte Ltd.said “The response to the Waraku brand at FLAsia 2007 was overwhelming. We generated a lot of interest, including genuine investors from Indonesia, Thailand, China, Malaysia and the U.S., who were interested in bringing our concept to their respective countries. As a result of our participation at FLAsia last year, we signed up one master franchisee in Indonesia, entered into a joint-venture with a Malaysian company, opened our first overseas’ Pasta de Waraku in Kuala Lumpur. FLAsia has proven to be an excellent platform to source for high quality investors, business partners and franchisees and we look forward to participating again this year.”

Many of the exhibits were rather poor, some consisting of a few company reps sitting at a desk loaded with brochures.One of the least interesting exhibits, but possibly the most interesting concept was called “Funky Fish”. It is a retail outlet aimed at young teenage girls HERE and sells ‘pop gifts’ and accessories. The photos of the stores showed hip-themed merchandise with the predominant colour being hot pink. It looked fun.
I’ll mention some of the more interesting exhibits in future posts..

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