Martha Matilda Harper

The first retail franchise system. Harper, a Canadian-born former servant, opened a hair salon in Rochester, New York, in 1888 and from 1891 licensed other women, many of them poor, to open Harper Method salons using her training, products and standards. By the 1920s there were hundreds worldwide. Historians credit her with the business-format franchise later made famous by fast food, built as a route to ownership for working women.