How Much Does a Floor Coverings International Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 reports revenue, sales-process metrics, and Gross Margin—not operating profit, net income, cash flow, owner salary, or distributions. The primary table covers calendar 2025 and 159 U.S. Reporting Franchisees that had operated for more than two years, operated full-time, and supplied complete data through the current standard software.

The central official sales measure is Gross Revenue Installed. For all 159 Reporting Franchisees, the average was $1,214,185 and the median was $1,005,249. Only 57 franchisees, or 36%, met or exceeded the average, showing why the median is the more cautious central anchor. Item 19 also reports a 44% average and 44% median Gross Margin.

Source: Floorcoverings International, Ltd. 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 41–50. Values are historical results for the specified Reporting Franchisees; they are not forecasts for a new territory.

Why can the Item 19 figures not be treated as a single-unit average?

The official figures are per Reporting Franchisee, not necessarily per territory or per outlet. Item 19 says some Reporting Franchisees owned more than one business or territory, 12 of the 159 operated two or more discrete territories, and more than 100 operated outside their territories. Almost all had Designated Market Areas larger than the 50,000-to-80,000-single-family-dwelling DMA offered in the 2026 FDD.

The Reporting Franchisee DMA median was 169,972 single-family homes, more than twice the upper end of the newly offered standard DMA range. That mismatch is the largest reason the official revenue data cannot be converted mechanically into a new single-territory owner income claim.

The estimate subtracts an official retail operating-expense proxy from the FDD’s 44% Gross Margin, then applies the resulting residual margin to three Item 19 median revenue anchors. This is a Mode C FDD-anchored scenario because the FDD supplies sales and Gross Margin but does not disclose operating profit.

The base benchmark uses the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 restated Annual Retail Trade Survey for Furniture and Home Furnishings Stores, NAICS 442. That category reported $52.586 billion of operating expenses on $140.504 billion of sales, a 37.4% ratio. The Census 2022 ARTS restated tables are the latest revised ARTS benchmark available, and the Census ARTS definitions state that Gross Margin is sales less cost of goods sold and that interest is not an operating expense.

The model uses the Census ratio as an all-in operating-expense proxy and therefore does not subtract Floor Coverings International royalty, advertising, technology, and other recurring fees a second time. This avoids double counting. The limitation is that NAICS 442 mainly describes furniture and home-furnishings retailers, not a mobile flooring showroom with installation activity and a franchise fee structure.

Expense treatment: normal employee payroll and manager compensation are included implicitly in the benchmark. Owner salary, draw, and distributions are not separately deducted from the residual. The Census total includes depreciation and amortization, and this model makes no add-back; it excludes interest and capital expenditures by definition. Financing principal and personal income taxes are also outside the calculation. Because corporate officer pay may appear in Census payroll while proprietor or partner pay does not, business-form differences add uncertainty.

• Conservative: Bottom 50% median Gross Revenue Installed of $683,236 and a 3.6% residual margin, created by increasing the benchmark operating-expense ratio by 3 percentage points.
• Base: All-reporting median Gross Revenue Installed of $1,005,249 and a 6.6% residual margin.
• Upside: Top 50% median Gross Revenue Installed of $1,425,299 and a 9.6% residual margin, created by decreasing the benchmark operating-expense ratio by 3 percentage points.

The revenue medians are official FDD observations. The ±3 percentage-point expense sensitivity and the resulting earnings margins are editorial scenario assumptions, not franchisor-reported results or probabilities.

Owner involvement can add about $53,000 of labor value to the modeled annual benefit when the owner personally performs the full-time supervisory role. The 2026 FDD does not require the owner to supervise personally, but Item 15 requires a full-time manager when the owner does not. It also requires the owner or manager to use best efforts to promote the business and sales, so a manager-run arrangement should not be described as passive ownership.

The owner-operator comparison adds the May 2025 national mean annual wage of $53,380 for First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics table. This is a labor-value proxy, not a Floor Coverings International salary disclosure. It excludes employer payroll taxes and benefits, and it assumes the owner truly replaces—not duplicates—the manager’s work.

The largest recurring FDD burden is the combination of royalty and required advertising: normally at least 14% of Gross Sales, or 16% where a 2% regional cooperative applies. Those percentages are official Item 6 obligations. They are not deducted separately in the scenario model because the Census operating-expense ratio is used as an all-in proxy.

Source: Floorcoverings International, Ltd. 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 9–12. For one software user, the disclosed fixed recurring baseline is approximately $10,800–$15,450 per year before convention travel, lodging, and any additional users.

The article separates revenue, Gross Margin, manager-run business residual, and owner labor compensation because they are not interchangeable. The following definitions apply to calendar-year scenarios for a mature U.S. mobile retail flooring operation.

The range is wide because the strongest same-brand evidence stops at Gross Margin, while the reporting cohort is materially different from a newly offered standard territory. Confidence is therefore LIMITED: the model relies on an official but broad retail operating-expense proxy and an editorial sensitivity band rather than same-brand operating-profit data.

• Territory comparability: The 2026 offer generally describes a DMA with 50,000–80,000 single-family dwellings, while the mature Reporting Franchisees had a median DMA of 169,972 and an average of 196,739.
• Per-franchisee reporting: Item 19 is not a clean per-unit table. Some Reporting Franchisees operated multiple businesses, multiple territories, or work outside their awarded DMA.
• Expense disclosure gap: Item 19 does not report payroll, studio occupancy, vehicles, insurance, technology, bad debt, professional fees, or operating profit.
• Maturity effect: The main revenue cohort excludes startups. A separate table for 59 businesses open more than one year but less than two years reports a 42% average Gross Margin, compared with 44% for mature businesses.
• Industry proxy mismatch: NAICS 442 is a fixed-location retail benchmark. Floor Coverings International combines in-home selling, a Mobile Flooring Showroom, installation coordination, and a studio.
• Financing and taxes: Interest, debt principal, owner-specific taxes, and capital expenditure timing can materially reduce cash available to the owner but are not included in the published operating range.

What does Item 20 add to the risk assessment?

Item 20 shows a growing franchised system, but it also shows enough exits and new-unit activity to make franchisee interviews essential. Franchised outlets increased from 288 at the start of 2025 to 309 at year-end. During 2025, 61 outlets opened, 15 were terminated or not renewed, 25 ceased operations for other reasons, and 17 transferred to new owners. These counts do not disclose why each outlet changed status or what its owner earned.

Item 20 also lists 37 signed-but-unopened agreements as of December 31, 2025, and notes that some current or former franchisees have confidentiality restrictions. Buyers should distinguish mature operators from startups, transfers, closures, and multi-territory owners when testing the earnings model.

Source: Floorcoverings International, Ltd. 2026 FDD, Item 20, pp. 51–59.

A buyer should rebuild the estimate for the exact territory, staffing plan, and financing structure, then compare it with written Item 19 substantiation and franchisee records. The Federal Trade Commission’s guide to buying a franchise explains that gross sales do not reveal costs or profit and recommends asking for written substantiation behind Item 19 claims.

• Ask for the written substantiation supporting the 2026 Item 19 tables, including how Gross Revenue Installed and Gross Margin were extracted and reviewed.
• Confirm the proposed DMA’s single-family-dwelling count and compare it with the Reporting Franchisee median of 169,972—not only the offered 50,000–80,000 range.
• Ask mature single-territory franchisees for payroll, manager compensation, studio rent, vehicle costs, insurance, software-user count, telephone fees, local advertising, and cooperative assessments.
• Ask owner-operators how many hours they work and which manager, sales, production, or administrative duties they personally replace.
• Ask manager-run owners whether the manager is sufficient for direct full-time supervision and what owner involvement remains necessary for promotion, hiring, quality control, and cash management.
• Interview former franchisees and 2025 transfer or closure cohorts about sales ramp, working capital, installer availability, and reasons for exit; do not rely only on high-performing operators.
• Model interest and principal payments separately using the actual financed amount, rate, term, and collateral requirements. Do not treat operating earnings as after-tax take-home pay.

The strongest defensible range is approximately $24,000–$136,000 in manager-run, pre-tax owner earnings, with a base scenario of about $66,000. It is a limited-confidence, FDD-anchored scenario—not an official owner-profit disclosure. For an active owner who replaces the required full-time manager, the corresponding estimated owner-operator benefit is about $78,000–$190,000, including $53,380 of labor value. This range is a planning envelope, not a prediction: weaker conversion, higher staffing needs, or more expensive local media can push the result lower, while stronger sales and cost control can move it higher.