Snapology, a US-based educational franchise is unveiling its Australian franchise plans and Usman Khan, master franchisor for Australia and New Zealand, hopes to replicate the brand’s international performance.
“We’re looking at the education boom around STEM [science, technology, engineering, maths], a model of education changing around the world,” Khan said.
The goals are to provide much-needed back-up to under-resourced schools, he said.
“Schools are left to themselves to do robotics or engineering and we’ve found with our discussions with principals, they have too much on their hands already. The curriculum of play-based learning is a big investment and 90 per cent of schools don’t have equipment.”
The Snapology program can be delivered to children at school – replacing a science class, at pre-school, as a vacation program or as special events held at an educational centre.
Khan has taken the lead and opened up in Sydney the first Snapology Discovery Centre in Australia.
Now he is on the hunt for master franchisees to take one of five state-based regions and recruit franchisees themselves.
“We’ve mapped out the whole of Australia and are offering sub-master franchises for NSW/ACT, VIC/TAS, SA/WA, QLD/NT, NZ.”
The sub-masters will need to consider three factors when establishing franchise costs: the size of the population, the number of schools, and the median income for the area. For example, the NSW/ACT region will have about 15 territories costing about $300,000.
Snapology joins a growing list of STEM-based educational franchises in Australia, and so Khan believes the concept is already accepted.
“That there are others in the market is an advantage, they have introduced schools to the concept,” he says.
There’s flexibility for franchisees who start with a low-cost mobile business which can lead to a Mobile Plus option that includes a Discovery Centre. A mobile bus fitted out as a STEM lab with different activity stations is a model launched in 2019, in the US and overseas larger territories, and could work as an additional option in Australia’s regional areas.
