MOSES TEICHMAN



(born 1895; died 1991)

A PIONEERING GIANT OF THE BUSINESS WORLD

Moses Taught The World How To Franchise

Moses Teichman either was born in Austria and was brought to New York City as a toddler; or he was born in New York. The records differ. While he was in high school, he took night courses in architectural drafting; and upon graduation, he got a job in an architectural office which involved running errands as well as working at a drafting desk. He also had a hobby to which he devoted a great deal of time and effort, because he enjoyed it and he wanted to perfect those skills. He became so adept at the hobby that he found part-time jobs teaching it after-hours. He had found a niche, and he determined to refine the product and widen the market for it. Budding entrepreneur that he was, he knew that he needed mentoring from the best in the business, so he sought it out. He was such an adept student that his mentors sent him to a high-quality venue in North Carolina to teach what he had learned to people of substance, who of course were in a position to refer others to him by word-of-mouth.

He wanted to learn more about the world of business, so he then enrolled at Georgia Tech and took business courses there, while in his spare time he continued to teach his hobby at a leading resort hotel in Atlanta. He tried to sell instruction in his hobby by mail, through the use of a crude motion-picture contraption. The scheme didn’t work, not because it was a bad idea, but because the manufacturer of the device was unreliable. Moses lost all his money in the attempt.

He knew that he had to find a better way. He also knew that he had a saleable product of his own; he had already proven that. He began selling instructions by mail order, while still teaching at the resort hotel. The plan worked so well that he quit his job at the hotel and devoted full time to the mail order business, which was successful for a while – until rates for magazine ads increased to such an extent that they made his business unprofitable.

So Moses had to start all over again. He moved back to New York and rented a small space to once again teach his hobby. These were the early years of the Depression, and things were very difficult for him. His lucky break came when the manager of a hotel chain asked him to set up instruction rooms wherein to teach his hobby at every hotel in the chain!

While Moses fully appreciated the huge size of the opportunity, and wanted very badly to capture it, he knew that he would have been “in way over his head" if he were to set up a large business such as that, and have to deal not only with instruction in his hobby but also hiring, firing, and innumerable business, financial, and legal issues in multiple locations. It would have been overwhelming to try to build a large business quickly from such a small base. Therefore, in exchange for giving up 100% of the potential profits from each business location, he chose instead to excuse himself from the heartaches of developing and operating a sizeable business in multiple locations while still retaining the right to a percentage of the net profits.

So Moses FRANCHISED each location, whereby he took a percentage of the profits and the operators of each location kept the rest.

The first franchised location opened in Minneapolis in 1938. The business grew very quickly. His hobby, now his business, eventually expanded to some 350 franchised outlets, which he and his wife promoted via national print advertising and also via their own television program from 1950 to 1960.

Building on the knowledge which he derived from the business courses at Georgia Tech so many years ago, and of course upon the practical business skills which he had learned first-hand, Moses became an astute private investor who made himself and a small circle of his close friends very wealthy. He died a rich man.

Moses didn’t invent franchising (A&W probably did), but he fine-tuned it over a period of many years. He laid down the basic rules of franchising. All franchisers who have followed in his footsteps have learned something from the first master, but they may not know it.

Most people have never heard of Moses Teichman. But everyone knows him by his adopted name: Arthur Murray!