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If you have decided that a home daycare is not for you, there are
a few options which you can adopt to start up your own daycare centre.
Brand new daycare start up
You can consider setting
up your daycare facility from scratch. You’ll need to do a lot of home work and put in a lot of effort and hard work
in the preparatory stages. However, the process can be very fulfilling and you can derive great satisfaction from its successes.
Visit the Articles and Resources page for more resources on daycare management.
Buying over an existing daycare centre
Before committing
to buy over an existing daycare centre, there are a few issues to take into consideration:
Condition of the daycare centre
You need to assess the
physical condition of the existing daycare facility. Take a good look at the condition of the premises (are minor renovations
required?), the state of the company assets (is it reusable?), assess the location (is it ideal?), ask to look at the accounts
and the lease agreement, etc.
Business
of the daycare centre
How is the existing daycare business doing? Is enrolment stable or shrinking? Take a look
at the financial statement of the daycare business to assess the financial health of the business. Survey their customers to understand them better. Find out if the parents are happy with the current daycare services
that are being provided. What is the reason(s) their children are still enrolled in the present daycare facility?
The daycare centre's competition
Gather as
much information as possible about their competitors. Find how many daycare facilities are there within a 500 meters from
you. Know what are their daycare charges and preferably how many children they are caring for in their daycare. Are they successful?
Any legal issues
Ensure
that all the legal aspects such as contracts, agreement, licenses, creditors, etc can be easily resolved.
Buying a daycare franchise
You can consider buying a daycare franchise from a daycare franchisor. There numerous benefits which can be gained
from purchasing a daycare franchise as opposed to a brand new start up or purchasing an existing daycare business: - The chances of success, although not guaranteed, are good.
- The daycare franchisor would have established a set of proven practices and operations.
Training will be provided and as a result of transfer of management expertise, the learning curve of running a daycare facility
will be significantly shorter.
- You can make significant savings
such as cost of developing a daycare curriculum and marketing as the daycare franchisor usually would assume some marketing
function in raising brand awareness.
- The daycare franchisor
will act as a mentor and should there be any uncertainties, you can always turn to the daycare franchisor for advice and support.
However, there can be some disadvantages in purchasing a daycare franchise: - The daycare franchise fee can be quite prohibitive and you will be required to
pay a percentage of your monthly earnings to your daycare franchisor.
- A daycare franchisee is more of a managing director than an owner. The daycare business, whilst yours, is also not
completely yours. You will be required to adhere to strict operational procedures and campaigns of the franchisor and sometimes,
such standard procedures or campaigns might not necessarily suit your present situation.
- The daycare training program might not be of good quality and support services might not be sufficient.
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