The power of experience:

How brick-and-mortar retail can thrive in the age of e-commerce.

By Dana Spinola

In today’s fast-paced, tech-savvy society, e-commerce is changing the game for retail as we know it. As CEO of a fashion enterprise with 42 retail stores and a full e-commerce space, I’m always watching advancements like mobile apps, drone delivery and digital assistants and how they entice online shoppers with increasingly simple and accessible methods.

Yet despite our growing dependence on technology, the vast majority of retail sales are still generated in-store.

Read more: Brick and Mortar

Stand out in a crowd: 

Create positive publicity for your franchise business and personal brand.

By Heather Ripley

“There's no such thing as bad publicity,” P.T. Barnum supposedly said. In today’s world of sudden social media infamy where one misstep can outrage hundreds of thousands, few business owners would believe that. Successful franchisors or franchisees are increasingly aware that their brands and reputations are just as important as any services they provide or products they sell.

Read more: Publicity

The new Franchise Management for Dummies helps make sense of the legal,

money, location and other issues a would-be franchisee must understand.

By John Krukowski

Franchising is attractive to many people who want to launch second careers or be their own bosses. What they quickly discover, however, is that there is much to learn about their new venture. Helping to make sense of it all, Franchise Management for Dummies was released May 1 by John Wiley & Sons.

We reached out to one of the authors to get her take on the state of today's franchise industry.

Read more: Franchising Today Interview

Watch out!

The six mistakes that too many franchisees make and how to avoid them.

By Kyle Zagrodzky

I’ve been in the franchise world for a long time, and I continue to see new generations of franchisees make the same mistakes again and again. Despite the fact that they are smart and talented would-be entrepreneurs, sometimes franchisees repeat mistakes with the same regularity as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Read more: Franchise Success