The Franchise
Franchising was invented by a woman who was sent out to service at the age of seven. Martha Matilda Harper moved from Canada to New York State and made a hair tonic while working as a live-in domestic servant. In 1888 she opened a beauty salon with the 360 dollars she had saved. In 1891 a sister opened a branch in another town — held to be the first franchised outlet. And she chose former servants as her franchisees. She designed franchising as a mechanism through which women who had stood exactly where she stood could own a shop. It passed five hundred outlets worldwide in forty years. The starting point is the opposite of today's image of franchising as something for people with capital. A form much like Japan's noren-wake became, on the other side of the ocean, an industry of contracts and royalties.
The myth, corrected
Franchising was invented by Singer Sewing Machine in 1851
The origin story is still told in the industry, but what Singer ran were territorial sales-agency contracts, with manufacturing, brand and price all held at head office. That is a different thing from lending out an entire business system. The real first is 1891 and Martha Matilda Harper's beauty salon. One more while we are here: Ray Kroc, the «founder» of McDonald's, was not the inventor either — he was the agent who acquired the rights from the brothers.