Every number in this deck
comes from work already done.
Everything on these pages is already built and running. The salons are open. The market pages are published. The stylist lists are collected and scored. Here is the short version of why that matters to you.
These 4 numbers are bex+Co.’s own published answers to the questions owners ask first. You do not need to be a stylist, you are not running a team, and 7 salons have already proven the format works.
Source: bex+Co. franchise page, bexandcosalon.com/franchise/, retrieved 13 August 2026. All 4 figures are published there by bex+Co. All 7 open salons are company-owned and the first franchised location has not opened yet.
We study a market
before we open a salon in it.
Most salon groups pick a spot, sign a lease, then go looking for stylists. We collect the stylists first. Every public stylist profile in a market gets pulled into one database and scored by AI for how good a fit they are.
How those 893 stylists are ranked
Hot, warm and cool are the system's own labelsSource. bex+Co. master stylist database, read 13 August 2026. Each tier was counted separately and the three add up to 893, which matches the total counted a different way. Hot, warm and cool are assigned by the AI scorer. Profiles rated cold or marked to skip are not in this chart and are not approached.
The list arrives sorted. On day one you know which 296 people to call first, and you can see why each one landed in that group. You are never left guessing who to call next.
What we do not do with any of it
The rule, in one lineNo stylist's name, photo, or social handle is ever published. It stays inside the system and only the people recruiting see it. The database carries a “do not contact” marker as a real field, and a check runs on every build that stops the whole publish if a single name reaches a public page.
Sources. The profile and score counts were read directly from the bex+Co. master stylist database on 13 August 2026, and the publishing rules from the nightly job that reads it, 11 August 2026. The total was established twice, by two people using different tools, with matching results. The privacy check is a blocking step in that same job, which means a failure stops the publish rather than warning about it.
You need about 20 stylists.
Your market has thousands.
This is the question every new owner asks first. Here is the honest arithmetic for Boston, the market this deck is about.
Your job is to sign about twenty people out of a metro that has more than 7,000 of them already working for themselves. Say that number out loud in a room and watch it land. It is roughly 1 stylist in every 365, and hundreds of them are already scored and waiting on a list before you start.
Sources. Boston business count: US Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2023, industry code 812112, Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metro area, up from 6,976 in 2022. This counts one-person businesses, which is how a stylist working for herself files at tax time. Scored-stylist count: bex+Co. franchise pipeline snapshot, 11 August 2026, added up across the 4 markets that have a franchisee portal built, which are Tucson, Frisco, Charlotte and Liberty Hill. The “about 20” is bex+Co.'s own internal growth target for a location. The 19 is measured, taken from the bex+Co. roster reconciliation of 11 August 2026 and counted from the live public roster rather than from a database filter.
Every city we open
makes the next one easier.
The groundwork is already built in more than twice as many markets as there are salons. Somebody already wrote the checklist, already published the market page, already pulled apart the competition's advertising. A new owner does not start from a blank page.
Market pages published, against salons open
Counted from the live site, 13 August 2026Sources. Market page and salon counts from the live bexandcosalon.com sitemap, 13 August 2026. A published page in a market with no salon yet: Tucson, Arizona. Checklist and task counts from the franchise pipeline snapshot, 11 August 2026, where all four markets carry the identical 71 tasks. 71 tasks times 4 markets is the 284. Ad counts from a bex+Co. teardown of a competitor's public advertising, 12 August 2026: 26 different video ads, grouped into 9 ideas. Review count from the Google Business Profile capture of the open salons, 11 August 2026, where every review was saved word for word and then rated 1 to 10 for how usable it is.
Opening a salon here is 71 specific steps somebody has already worked out and run four times. The advertising is 9 ideas somebody already pulled out of 26 competitor ads, so you are not starting your marketing from scratch either. Every city that opens adds to that pile, and the next owner gets the bigger pile.
Stylists already want this.
You are not talking anyone into it.
You are selling something people in this trade already decided they want. Almost half of America's hairstylists already work for themselves, and most of the ones who go independent are already paying somebody else for their space. Another company has signed up more than 20,000 of them.
The hard part of most new businesses is convincing people they want the thing. That part is finished here. Stylists went independent on their own, they are already paying for space somewhere, and one competitor alone has signed more than 20,000 of them. Your job is to be the best room in your city, and not to change anybody's mind.
Sources. The 48% is US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook – barbers, hairstylists and cosmetologists, 2024 figures. The 20,000+ is Sola Salon Studios' own published number – solasalonstudios.com, retrieved 18 August 2026. The 62% comes from a bex+Co. industry research pack compiled in June 2026 that credits its sources as a group rather than one by one, so we have flagged it as second-hand.
Here is every option a stylist has.
Including where we come up short.
A stylist deciding what to do next has 4 realistic choices. The table below is written straight to her, so you can read any line in it out loud in a recruiting conversation without changing a word. The last row is written the same honest way as the other three.
| Your four options | What it actually is | What you get out of it | Where it falls short for the stylist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission at a traditional salonThe most common setup in the trade | You are on staff. The owner owns the chair, the space and the client list. | Steady work, a team around you, and somebody else deals with the building and the front desk. | You do not set your own prices, and the clients are not yours. If you leave, your client list stays behind with the salon. |
| Renting a boothOne chair inside somebody else's salon | You rent a single chair on the floor of an existing salon and work for yourself. | You set your own prices, book your own clients, and your client list is yours. | You get a chair, not a room. No door, no privacy, and your client hears every conversation on the floor. The space belongs to somebody else and it can change without asking you. |
| Opening your own solo studioYour own small shop, on your own | You lease a space of your own and run the whole thing yourself. | Full control of the room, the look, the hours, and the name on the door. | You sign the lease, you do the build-out, and every problem is yours at 9pm on a Sunday. Nobody has heard of your name yet, there are no other stylists nearby sending you work, and there is nobody to ask when something breaks. |
| A chair at bex+Co.What a bex+Co. salon offers | You work for yourself inside a bex+Co. salon, with your own space and other stylists around you. | A finished space in a building you did not have to find, build or maintain. A brand and marketing behind you. Other stylists around you rather than a locked door between you. | bex+Co. is young and small. 7 salons are open today. If you already know the big suite companies, you have probably never heard of us, and one of them alone has more than 20,000 stylists. We are asking you to bet on a name you do not know yet. |
Sources. The 7 open salons are counted from the bex+Co. location file, 11 August 2026, and match the salon pages on the live sitemap. The 20,000+ competitor figure is Sola Salon Studios' own published number – solasalonstudios.com, retrieved 18 August 2026. The four options above describe how stylists are commonly set up in this industry. Nothing in this table states or suggests what anyone makes.
Our own weakness is in our own comparison table, in the same column and the same plain words as everybody else's. It is this: bex+Co. is young, 7 salons are open, and most stylists have never heard the name. That admission is the reason she believes the other three rows. Hand her a table where every competitor has a flaw and we do not, and she stops reading it as information and starts reading it as an ad.
What we actually do
when a new market opens.
Four things, in this order. Each one has already been done in other markets, so none of it is being invented for you.
1. We map your market
We count the stylists two separate ways, because the two government counts measure different things and only one of them includes people working for themselves. Then we collect the public stylist profiles in your area and score them.
2. We build your market pages
Your market gets published pages on the bex+Co. site so stylists and clients in your area can find you. 16 markets already have them, and only 7 of those have a salon open.
3. We hand you the opening checklist
71 tasks, each one with a phase, a target date, an owner and a written definition of what “done” means. It is the same checklist running in all 4 pipeline markets right now.
4. We help you sign your first members
You get the scored list for your market, a recommended action for each person on it, and a recruiting pipeline that tracks each stylist from first contact through to signed.
Sources. Task count and task fields from the bex+Co. franchise pipeline snapshot, 11 August 2026, identical across all four markets that have a portal. Market page and salon counts from the live bexandcosalon.com sitemap, 13 August 2026. The two government counts are the US Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs survey, which excludes the self-employed by its own published answer, and the US Census Bureau Nonemployer Statistics, which counts one-person businesses. See page 01.
Everything in this deck already exists.
A new owner starts with all of it.
The database behind these pages was built in about fifteen weeks, and almost all of it was collected by software rather than typed in by hand. That is the pace you would be joining. The next step is a conversation.
Every number in this deck says where it came from, right underneath it. Most of them come from US government data and the link goes straight to the agency that published it. A few come from industry research and we have labelled those second-hand so you know the difference. Where we could not source something, we left it off the page and said so rather than filling the gap with a guess. You can check any figure in here in front of the person you are pitching, and that is the point.
Source. Build window measured from the earliest and latest created dates in the bex+Co. master stylist database, 10 April 2026 to 28 July 2026. 956 of its 962 rows were collected automatically and none were typed in by hand.
About the numbers on this page. Figures credited to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau are taken directly from those agencies' published files, and the links go to the source. 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.