7,316 beauty pros in metro Boston
already work for themselves.
That is the US Census count of one-person beauty businesses in this metro, and it grew by 340 in a single year. A bex+Co. location needs about twenty of them. On top of that, one competing suite company already has 331 independents paying it for a room across 10 open locations here. Every number on this page comes from a public record, and every source is printed under it.
The hardest part of filling a salon is finding people who already want to work for themselves. Boston has 7,316 of them on the government's own books, and you need about twenty. The behaviour is proven, the income is there, and bex+Co. has no location anywhere in New England. This is a city where the model has already been sold. The brand has not arrived yet.
Sources. The 7,316: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2023, industry code 812112 (beauty salons), Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metro area, up from 6,976 in 2022. The 331 and the 10 locations: counted from Sola Salon Studios' own published studio rosters for its Boston-area locations, retrieved 18 August 2026. Population: US Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 population estimates. Household income: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates, table S1901, margin of error plus or minus $2,297, compared with the 2023 figure of $110,697.
You need about 20 stylists.
Boston has thousands who already went independent.
Here is the whole question in three steps. Start with everyone working in beauty here on a payroll, then look at the ones who already work for themselves, then look at how many you actually have to sign.
You need to sign about 1 stylist in every 365 who already works for herself here. Say that out loud in a room. And that leaves out every stylist still on a salon payroll who has not made the jump yet, which is a second pool almost twice as large.
Sources. The 3 job counts: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metro area, occupation codes 39-5012, 39-5092 and 39-5094, from the BLS bulk data file. Two cautions on that group: BLS does not publish a barber count for this metro at all, so barbers are left out rather than guessed, and BLS reports how reliable each estimate is, with the esthetician figure of 1,180 the weakest here, so treat that one as indicative. The 7,316: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2023, industry code 812112, same metro area, from the Census bulk data file. These two counts come from different surveys and are never added together on this page. The 331: counted from the studio rosters published on Sola Salon Studios' own Boston region page and its individual location pages, retrieved 18 August 2026, covering the 10 open locations inside the metro area. The "about 20" target is bex+Co.'s own figure, not a government one. It is the membership target named in bex+Co.'s internal growth strategy, and it matches what the brand's existing salons actually hold: Georgetown has 18 rooms and 20 members, and 19 stylists are working at each of Gateway and Georgetown today. Source: bex+Co. locations data and live roster reconciliation, 11 August 2026.
Boston is a city of very small salons.
Those are the people who switch.
There are 2,025 beauty salons in this metro that have staff on a payroll. Most of them are tiny. A stylist working in a 4-person shop has very little holding her in place, and that is the population that moves to renting her own room.
How big Boston's salons actually are
2,025 salons with staff on a payrollOut of 2,025 salons in this metro, 1,249 have fewer than five employees and only 64 have twenty or more. Almost 6 salons in 10 are tiny. Those small operators are the ones most likely to move into a space of their own, and there are more than a thousand of them.
Source. US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, industry code 812112 (beauty salons), Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metro area, from the Census bulk data file. This counts only salons that have staff on a payroll, so booth renters and one-person businesses are excluded from it by definition. Bar widths are drawn against the 2,025 total. The 64 is 54 salons with 20 to 49 staff plus 10 with 50 to 99; the Census withholds the count above that, and the published classes sum to 2,023 of the 2,025. 2023 is the newest year the Census has published.
307 different business names among 331 people
Almost every one of those 331 independents at one competitor trades under her own business name. They are not staff who happen to rent a chair. They are small business owners who need somewhere good to work, which is the exact customer a bex+Co. location is built for. The competitor's Boston-area locations hold between 22 and 45 of them each, 33 on average.
Source. Counted from the studio rosters published on Sola Salon Studios' own Boston region page and its individual location pages, retrieved 18 August 2026, covering the 10 open locations inside the metro area (an 11th, in Newton, is listed but has no roster yet). The count was checked a second way against three individual location pages, which returned 31, 42 and 22 professionals, matching the region roster exactly. On privacy: 331 and 307 are totals. No individual's name, photograph, handle or profile appears anywhere in this document, and none ever will.
27 suite locations are already open here. Not one of them is a bex+Co.
Sola has 10 open, MY SALON Suite has 6, IMAGE Studios has 2, Salons by JC has 2, one Phenix franchisee is open, and 6 more belong to local independents. Three more are marked coming soon. Somebody else has already spent the money teaching Boston stylists to rent their own room. bex+Co. has no location in New England and lists none coming, so the premium, not-alone version of this model is wide open here.
Sources. Each operator's own website, retrieved 18 August 2026: Sola Salon Studios, MY SALON Suite location sitemap (all 384 location pages checked), IMAGE Studios, Salons by JC, and the local operators' own sites. Salon Lofts has zero locations in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, checked across its whole sitemap. bex+Co.: bexandcosalon.com/locations. Two things we will not paper over: Phenix Salon Suites' corporate website blocks every automated request, so the 1 Phenix location is what its own franchisee's site says and there may be more. And the 6 local independents are what surfaced in three web searches, not a census. Treat 27 as a floor.
Boston has 48% more hairstylists per job
than an average American city.
Per job, so the size of the city is already taken out. Boston is a hair town. Two of the three beauty trades the government publishes for this metro sit far above the national average, and the one that sits below it is only slightly below.
How Boston compares with an average American city
Per job, so city size is already taken outFor every job in Boston there are 48% more hairstylists and 42% more nail techs on a payroll than in an average American city. That is a deep bench of exactly the people a bex+Co. location recruits, before you count a single one of the 7,316 who already work for themselves. Estheticians are 7% below average, which is the one soft number here, and it is small.
Source. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metro area. BLS calls this measure a location quotient, which is simply how many of a job a place has per job overall, set against the national average. The underlying values are 1.48 for hairstylists, 1.42 for nail techs and 0.93 for estheticians, where 1.00 would be exactly average. Bar widths are drawn against the highest of the 3. Two cautions: BLS publishes no barber figure for this metro, so barbers are not on this chart. And BLS reports how reliable each estimate is; the esthetician figure is its weakest here, so treat that bar as indicative.
Massachusetts holds 98,418 beauty licences,
and it stopped licensing booths in 2019.
Two things about the state itself. The licence board that covers hair, nails, skin and barbering is growing fast. And since June 2019, a stylist who rents her own space needs no separate booth licence at all. She works under her own licence inside premises that hold the salon licence, which is exactly what a bex+Co. location is.
What the state's own rule says about renting a chair
In the Board's own words: “As part of its new regulations effective June 1, 2019, the Board repealed the license requirements for a rented chair or booth and the shop in which the booth was located.” What remains is simple. The premises hold a salon licence, and each professional holds her own individual licence. There is one more line worth knowing: a stylist who advertises under her own business name must include the name of the salon she works in on every ad and every post.
Massachusetts already removed the paperwork that used to sit between a stylist and her own space. And under the state's own rule, every member who promotes her business also carries your salon's name into every post she makes. That is the bex+Co. brand travelling on 20 stylists' social feeds, by regulation. Our read, not the Board's: that rule quietly rewards a salon whose name is worth carrying.
Sources. Licence counts: Massachusetts Division of Occupational Licensure annual reports, Table 1, row “Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering”: FY2023 (89,092 licensees, 4,575 new), FY2024 (96,138, 5,958) and FY2025 (98,418, 6,110). Read the label carefully: the state publishes one total for the whole board, which covers every licence type it issues, individuals and salons and schools alike, statewide. It is not a count of stylists and it is not Boston-only. A breakdown by licence type is a public records request away, and it is on the week-one list below. The booth rule: Board of Registration of Cosmetology and Barbering, Policy on Advertising of Individual Businesses Located Within a Shop, quoted verbatim, and 240 CMR 3.00, which requires a salon licence for the premises and an individual licence for each professional. Nothing here is legal advice; a Massachusetts franchise attorney reviews the licensing setup for any location before it opens.
Boston households out-earn and out-spend
New York and Philadelphia on personal care.
The typical Boston household earns $117,825 a year, and it spends $1,339 a year on personal care. That is more than a household in New York or Philadelphia spends, and 29% above the average for the whole Northeast. It has climbed 27% in two years.
The people who sit in your members' chairs earn more every year, and they are choosing to spend a growing share of it on looking good. Rising client budgets are what let an independent stylist afford a nicer room to work in, and Boston's are rising faster than its neighbours'.
Sources. Household income: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey one-year estimates, table S1901, comparing 2023 with 2024, margin of error plus or minus $2,297; 1,970,240 households in the metro. Spending: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, selected northeastern metropolitan areas table, Boston column, “personal care products and services”, two-year average for 2023 to 2024, compared with $1,058 for 2021 to 2022 and $1,034 for the Northeast as a whole. Please note: BLS publishes only the combined products-and-services line for Boston, so that is the figure shown; there is no Boston-only services figure. Population figures: US Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 estimates, showing 5,034,221 people, up 11,991 in the last year and up 126,550 since the 2021 low point.
Here is what we could not get from public records,
and what we would go and measure in week one.
Boston has a lot of verified proof on this page. It still has gaps, and every one of them is listed here, because a page that only shows the good numbers is worth less than one you can trust.
| What is missing | Why nobody publishes it | How we would get it |
|---|---|---|
| How the 98,418 licences split by type and by townCosmetologists versus salons versus nail techs, and how many are in metro Boston | The state's annual report publishes one total for the whole board. Nothing in it splits individuals from salons or Boston from the rest of the state. | A public records request to the Division of Occupational Licensure, which offers the first four hours of work free. This is the single highest-value thing to get before you sign anything. |
| How many barbers work in metro Boston | The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes no barber count for this metro at all. Nationally, three barbers in four work for themselves, so the payroll count would be small anyway. | The licence breakdown above answers it. Barbers hold their own licence type. |
| How many rooms are inside those 27 locations | We know how many buildings each competitor has, and for one of them how many people. Not one publishes how many individual studios are inside, so the total number of rooms in this metro is unknown. | Phone calls, plus a walk-through of the main competitors. |
| How many people search for this in Boston | Google's trends tool blocks automated requests, and every free tool that shows real numbers requires a paid account. There is no honest number to print. | A paid keyword tool, scoped to Massachusetts rather than to the word “Boston”, which also pulls in Boston, Lincolnshire, in England. |
| How many Phenix Salon Suites operate here | Their corporate website blocks every automated request, including from a real browser. One franchisee's own site names one location, in Beverly. There may be more. | A person in a browser. Five minutes. |
| The full list of local independent operators | Three local suite operators surfaced from three web searches, with 6 locations between them. That is what a search finds, not a census of the metro. | Direct contact with each one during the market walk, plus the licence data above, which lists every licensed salon by town. |
Every gap above is a number that no agency or company publishes at all, rather than one we did not look for. The top row is the important one. It turns a statewide licence total into a Boston-only headcount by trade, and it is a records request away.
Note on dates. The salon and one-person business counts on this page come from Census County Business Patterns 2023 and Nonemployer Statistics 2023, which are the newest years published. The 2024 files do not exist yet. No search volume number appears anywhere on this page, because none was obtainable from any source we could verify.
We built the full stylist list for Tucson
in a single day.
Tucson was a market bex+Co. had not opened yet, exactly like Boston. Here is what happened when the team went and built the local stylist list from scratch.
This is what week one looks like in Boston.
The open questions on this page get closed the same week. We request the licence breakdown from the state, and we build the real list of working beauty pros in your trade area, before you sign anything.
You are not being asked to trust a market study. You would get an actual list of the beauty professionals in your area, plus the state's own licence count by trade and by town, inside your first week. Boston starts with 7,316 people already working for themselves. Week one turns that into names on a list.
Source. bex+Co. portal rebuild handoff, 12 August 2026. The pass covered 133 stylists in the Tucson market and moved photo and profile coverage from 21% to 99%. To be clear about what we do not do: no stylist's name, photograph, social handle or profile appears anywhere in this document, and none ever will. Everything you see on this page is counts and totals.
About the numbers on this page. Figures credited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau and the Massachusetts Division of Occupational Licensure are taken directly from those agencies' published files, and the links go to the source. Competitor counts are taken from each company's own website on the date shown. Figures marked second-hand come from a bex+Co. industry research pack compiled in June 2026 that credits its sources as a group rather than one by one. Those are shown as background context and we have not independently checked them.
This page makes no promise about money. Nothing here states or suggests the sales, costs, income, or profit of a bex+Co. franchise. That kind of information would only ever be provided in Item 19 of a Franchise Disclosure Document.