For stylists weighing it up
Rent a chair, go it alone,
or franchise?
Every employed stylist hits the same fork in the road: keep handing your column’s profit to someone else’s salon, or take it self-employed. There are three honest ways to do that. Here’s how they actually compare.
Rent a chair
You stay in someone else’s salon, paying a weekly rent or a 40–60% split for the privilege. You bring the clients; the salon brings the roof.
- Lowest cost to start — but the meter never stops
- The brand, the premises and the walk-ins are never yours
- Your ceiling is one chair in one room, on someone else’s terms
Go mobile alone
Freedom, and every problem that comes with it: kit, insurance, a reliable vehicle, a booking system, and a diary you fill from a standing start.
- Realistic kit budgets run £1,000–£2,000+ before the vehicle
- No-shows, admin and marketing are all yours, every week
- It works — but slowly, and you climb alone
The franchise
£14,500 all-in: the wrapped electric van, elite kit, starting stock, a defended county territory, and the technology that fills and protects your diary.
- 8% royalty + 2% marketing levy — taken automatically, no invoices
- Deposits and reminders compress no-shows; routing kills dead miles
- The ladder runs from one van to a fleet with apprentices
The honest bit
When the franchise
isn’t the answer.
If you already run a full mobile diary, own your kit outright, love your admin and want no brand above your own — keep going. You built it; a royalty needs to earn its place.
The franchise is for the stylist who wants the earnings of self-employment without building the machine alone: the van financed and wrapped, the bookings system configured, the territory protected, the training accredited, and a network to call when the boiler of life goes out. That machine is what 10% buys — and we’ll show you the workings, line by line, before you commit a pound.
- No earnings promises — our projections are illustrative modelling, shown with their assumptions, not a guarantee
- Everything in writing first — costs, fees and the agreement, before any commitment
- Talk to the founders — this is a family-run group; the person who answers is the person who built it
Bring us your numbers.
We’ll bring ours.
Thirty minutes, no pitch: what you take home now, what a chair costs you, what a territory would look like. Then you decide.