How Much Does an Annex Brands Retail Centers Franchise Owner Make?

The defensible modeled range is about $40,000 to $112,000 in annual owner-operator benefit, or roughly -$13,000 to $59,000 in manager-run residual profit. Both ranges are estimates for mature standard or flex centers, anchored to the lower-half, all-center, and upper-half median Gross Sales figures in the 2026 FDD.

The difference is owner labor. An owner-operator keeps the economic value that otherwise would fund a full-time manager, but that amount compensates the owner for working in and managing the center. It is not passive business profit. Annex Brands Item 15 states that the owner, a principal, or an equivalently trained manager generally must devote full time, energy, and best efforts to management and operation.

Estimated owner-operator benefit

Modeled cash-generating benefit after ordinary business deductions represented by the IRS benchmark, before personal income taxes and financing principal. It includes the value of the owner's labor because a sole proprietor does not deduct wages paid to themself.

Manager-run residual

Owner-operator benefit less the May 2025 BLS mean annual wage of $53,380 for First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers. Employer payroll taxes and benefits are not included, so actual manager cost can be higher.

Debt and depreciation

The IRS aggregate may include interest and depreciation claimed by Schedule C filers, but the public sector table does not isolate them. Financing principal, replacement capital expenditures, and personal taxes are not deducted in this model.

Item 19 officially discloses annual Gross Sales distributions, not profit or owner earnings. The strongest population is Chart 2 because it includes every standard and flex franchised center open at least 12 months, rather than only centers whose operators attended the 2025 national convention.

Item 19 includes PostalAnnex/PostalAnnex+, Pak Mail, AIM Mail, Parcel Plus, Handle With Care Packaging Store, and Sunshine Pack & Ship centers. Twenty-two centers open less than 12 months were excluded. Express centers were also excluded; the FDD says their smaller footprint and limited service suite make them incapable of achieving the standard and flex Gross Sales results.

The model multiplies each official Item 19 median-sales anchor by a clearly labeled margin sensitivity. The base margin is a derived 21.1753% from the IRS 2023 nonfarm sole-proprietorship table: $24.229 billion of Net Income Less Deficit divided by $114.423 billion of Business Receipts for Administrative and Support Services.

Because that IRS sector is broader than 2022 NAICS 561431 Private Mail Centers, the result has limited confidence. The conservative and upside margins are the base margin minus and plus 3 percentage points, an editorial sensitivity band rather than a franchisor disclosure.

• Conservative: $222,000 lower-half median Gross Sales × 18.1753% = $40,349, rounded to $40,000 owner-operator benefit.
• Base: $331,000 all-center median Gross Sales × 21.1753% = $70,090, rounded to $70,000 owner-operator benefit.
• Upside: $464,000 upper-half median Gross Sales × 24.1753% = $112,173, rounded to $112,000 owner-operator benefit.

Active ownership changes the modeled annual benefit by $53,380 before employer payroll taxes and benefits. That amount is the May 2025 national mean wage for First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers and is used only as a replacement-manager labor value.

For the manager-run case, the wage is subtracted from each owner-operator result: $40,349 becomes -$13,031; $70,090 becomes $16,710; and $112,173 becomes $58,793. Published figures are rounded to the nearest $1,000 after full-precision calculations.

The principal percentage obligations total 12% of Gross Receipts when the percentage tests exceed their dollar floors. This is an official FDD fee structure, not a 12% charge on Item 19 Gross Sales. Gross Receipts exclude several pass-through costs, including metered postage and postage stamps, that remain within the FDD's Gross Sales definition.

Source: 2026 Annex Brands Retail Centers FDD, Item 6, pp. 16–25, and Item 11, pp. 41–42. The $3,815 fixed-fee figure is an annualized calculation using 52 weeks and 12 months.

The fixed-fee total is a simple annualization of current stated amounts and excludes optional email addresses, e-commerce services, special assessments, training, supplier pass-through charges, insurance, rent, payroll, inventory, and other operating costs. Item 6 also permits certain fee changes under specified conditions.

Confidence is limited because Annex Brands Item 19 reports sales but no same-brand expense or earnings measure. The scenario therefore relies materially on a broad IRS sole-proprietor sector margin and a national BLS retail-supervisor wage, neither of which proves the economics of a specific Annex Brands center.

• Sales mix: Shipping, postage, printing, mailbox rental, notary, fingerprinting, packaging, and freight can have materially different gross margins.
• Occupancy and payroll: Item 19 gives no rent, labor, payroll-burden, or staffing distribution for the 527-center population.
• Cohort boundary: The sales evidence covers centers open at least 12 months; it does not describe a new center's ramp-up or any express-center earnings.
• Owner labor: The IRS sole-proprietor margin can include compensation for the proprietor's work, so it is more suitable for owner-operator benefit than passive profit.
• Operating continuity: Item 20 reports 21 openings and 24 centers ceasing operations for other reasons during fiscal 2025 across all retail brands, plus 49 transfers. Those events do not quantify losses, but they show that a median-sales scenario does not remove closure or transition risk. Source: 2026 Annex Brands Retail Centers FDD, Item 20, pp. 97–105.

The Item 19 sales range was exceptionally wide: $30,000 to $1,659,000 among mature standard and flex centers. The FDD also reports that only 42% of the 527 centers met or exceeded the $368,000 average, which is why the median is the more decision-useful central anchor.

A buyer should replace each broad assumption with written center-level evidence. The FTC explains that Item 19 claims must disclose their source, limitations, and important assumptions, and that a prospect may request written substantiation.

• Request the written substantiation for Item 19 Chart 2 and confirm the exact brand, format, geography, age, and reporting status of comparable centers.
• Ask current and former franchisees for recent profit-and-loss statements showing Gross Sales, Gross Receipts, postage and carrier costs, packaging materials, payroll, manager compensation, rent, insurance, technology, advertising, and owner hours.
• Reconcile the proposed location's expected sales mix to the Item 19 Gross Sales definition and the Item 6 Gross Receipts definition.
• Model the actual lease, local wage rates, workers' compensation, payroll taxes, employee benefits, and staffing schedule rather than relying on a national wage-only assumption.
• Separate operating profit from owner labor compensation, financing interest, financing principal, depreciation, capital replacements, distributions, and personal income tax.
• For an existing center, obtain its actual records and compare them with the broader Item 19 cohort before accepting any seller-adjusted earnings measure.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $40,000 to $112,000 in estimated annual owner-operator benefit for a mature standard or flex center, with manager-run residuals of about -$13,000 to $59,000. The result is scenario-based, not an official Annex Brands earnings disclosure.

The largest earnings driver is sales performance: the official lower-half and upper-half median Gross Sales differ by $242,000. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand unit-level expense and profit data, especially the relationship among service mix, Gross Sales, Gross Receipts, labor, and occupancy. A buyer should verify Item 19 substantiation, obtain actual center records where available, and test the model against franchisee interviews and written profit-and-loss statements before treating any point in the range as applicable to a specific location.