A reasonable U.S. planning range is approximately $300 to $18,300 per year in estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit on an ongoing annualized basis, with a modeled base case of about $7,900. This is not a figure reported by Sign Gypsies. The 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document gives no sales, profit, or owner-income results, so the range uses the franchise’s disclosed operating structure and recurring obligations with the closest official U.S. sole-proprietor benchmark.
This range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC. It combines identified facts from the 2026 FDD with separately identified government benchmarks and editorial scenario assumptions. Confidence is limited because the FDD discloses no same-brand sales or expense data and the model relies materially on a broad IRS industry category. Actual results can differ materially because of local demand, pricing, territory size, order volume, seasonality, sign-piece purchases, insurance, travel, labor, financing, owner involvement, and execution. A franchisee can incur a loss.
Evidence status: Item 19 contains no financial performance representation. The applicable business is a custom yard-greeting installation service operated within an Area of Primary Responsibility, generally from a home office. The selected government proxy is the Internal Revenue Service’s 2023 sole-proprietor category for All Other Consumer Goods Rental, a broad category that includes party-rental activity but is not specific to yard greetings.
After the current $1,000 renewal fee, before financing principal, and not an official forecast.
2023 sole proprietors in All Other Consumer Goods Rental, including returns with losses.
Net income less deficit divided by receipts across the full IRS category.
Net income divided by receipts only for category returns reporting net income.
Required each year, excluding discounts and shipping charges.
Applied once in each ongoing annual scenario because the disclosed franchise term is one year.
What does the 2026 Item 19 actually tell a buyer?
Officially, it gives no revenue or earnings number. Item 19 states that Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC does not make representations about future franchisee performance or the past performance of company-owned or franchised businesses. Therefore, there is no same-brand average sales figure, median, profit margin, owner compensation figure, or percentage of outlets reaching a threshold to use as the primary earnings answer.
This distinction is decisive. Gross sales would measure customer revenue, not owner earnings. Net income would measure a residual after source-defined expenses, while owner compensation, draws, distributions, and the value of labor performed by an active owner are separate concepts. The FTC’s consumer guide to buying a franchise explains that franchisors are not required to provide earnings claims, but any sales, income, or profit claim must appear in Item 19 and have a reasonable basis.
The published range on this page is not a disguised sales figure. It is a scenario for cash-like owner benefit after ordinary operating expenses represented by the benchmark margin. Personal income taxes and financing principal payments remain outside the calculation.
- Business receipts
- Gross operating revenue reported on sole-proprietor tax returns. It is the revenue anchor, not the owner-income result.
- Net income less deficit
- The IRS category’s combined net income after subtracting losses. It is an aggregate tax-statistics measure, not a Sign Gypsies result.
- Owner-operator benefit
- Residual business income plus the economic value of work performed by the owner when no market-rate owner wage is deducted.
- Manager-assisted residual
- The owner-operator scenario after deducting an illustrative portion of a market manager wage. It is not passive income.
- Pre-tax
- Before personal income taxes. The estimate also excludes financing principal; interest and depreciation are embedded only to the extent reflected in the IRS aggregate data.
FDD citation: 2026 Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 19, p. 16.
How was the annual earnings range estimated?
The estimate applies three transparent revenue-and-margin combinations to a U.S. owner-operated territory. The central revenue anchor is $52,668, calculated from $1.120 billion of 2023 business receipts divided by 21,274 sole-proprietor returns in the IRS category All Other Consumer Goods Rental. Because the FDD gives no Sign Gypsies distribution, the conservative and upside revenue anchors are explicit modeling assumptions at 80% and 120% of that average.
The conservative margin is the IRS category’s 3.1% aggregate net-income-less-deficit margin across all returns. The upside margin is the 30.6% aggregate net-income margin among returns reporting positive net income. The 16.8% base margin is the arithmetic midpoint between those two observed benchmark margins. It is an editorial sensitivity point—not a median, probability-weighted forecast, or “most likely” outcome. Each scenario then deducts the current $1,000 renewal fee because the disclosed franchise term and successor terms are one year.
| Scenario | Revenue anchor | Applied margin | Estimated owner-operator benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Conservative 80% of benchmark revenue; all-return margin |
$42,134 | 3.1% | $300 |
|
Base 100% of benchmark revenue; midpoint margin |
$52,668 | 16.8% | $7,900 |
|
Upside 120% of benchmark revenue; profitable-return margin |
$63,202 | 30.6% | $18,300 |
- Formula: (scenario revenue × scenario margin) − the current $1,000 renewal fee = estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit on an ongoing annualized basis. Calculations use full-precision inputs and are rounded to the nearest $100 for publication.
- Operating-expense treatment: the IRS margin is an all-in category result after source-defined business deductions, so the FDD’s $1,000 annual sign-piece minimum is not subtracted again. Subtracting it separately would risk counting normal inventory expense twice.
- Debt treatment: the FDD states that the franchisor offers no direct or indirect financing. No common financed amount, interest rate, or term is disclosed, so debt principal is excluded and no debt-service estimate is presented.
- Tax treatment: no after-tax amount is calculated. Entity choice, jurisdiction, deductions, self-employment tax, and the owner’s other income can materially change personal tax outcomes.
Estimated pre-tax owner-operator benefit under three independent scenarios
Interpretation: the $18,000 spread is driven by both revenue and margin sensitivity after the same current renewal fee is applied to each case; it does not represent an FDD-reported performance distribution. Source: independent calculation from the IRS nonfarm sole-proprietorship statistics and the 2023 IRS industry table, combined with stated editorial assumptions.
How does active ownership change the result?
Owner involvement is central to the modeled economics. The 2026 FDD allows a natural-person franchisee to hire a manager, but recommends that the franchisee remain involved in operations. The current official Sign Gypsies franchise information goes further and states that absentee ownership is not allowed. This means the owner-operator estimate should not be read as passive business profit.
The IRS sole-proprietor margin generally does not deduct a market salary for the proprietor. Consequently, the $300 to $18,300 range may combine residual operating profit with compensation for taking orders, designing greetings, scheduling, loading signs, driving, installing, removing displays, maintaining inventory, and marketing locally.
A manager-assisted model can materially reduce the owner’s residual cash. For illustration, the comparison below deducts 25% of the May 2023 BLS median annual wage of $46,690 for First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers, or $11,673 before employer payroll taxes and benefits. The main scenarios already include the current $1,000 renewal fee. The 25% staffing fraction is an editorial assumption, not a Sign Gypsies requirement.
Owner-operator benefit compared with residual after a 0.25-FTE manager-wage allowance
Interpretation: limited manager support turns the conservative and base scenarios negative before payroll burden, while the upside scenario retains about $6,700. A full-time manager at the same median wage would exceed the modeled owner benefit in all three cases. Source: scenario calculations and the BLS May 2023 wage estimate for First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers.
FDD citation: 2026 Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 15, pp. 11–12.
Which disclosed costs matter most to annual owner earnings?
Officially, the 2026 FDD lists no continuing royalty, required advertising fund contribution, or technology fee, but operating costs still determine the result. It does require at least $1,000 of sign-piece purchases per year, excluding shipping, and Item 8 states that approximately 90% of operating purchases and leases are expected to come from the franchisor, designated suppliers, or specification-compliant sources.
| Obligation | FDD treatment | Earnings-model treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Continuing royalty | No royalty listed in Item 6 | No separate royalty deduction |
| Advertising fund | No required fund or cooperative contribution disclosed | Local advertising remains an owner operating decision and is embedded only through the industry margin |
| Technology fee | No recurring technology fee listed | No separate technology deduction |
| Sign pieces | Minimum $1,000 purchase each year, plus shipping | Not subtracted twice from the all-in benchmark margin; any incremental amount above normal inventory expense reduces earnings dollar-for-dollar |
| Insurance | Required commercial general liability coverage, with stated minimum limits | Actual premium must be verified locally; represented only through the broad benchmark margin |
| Renewal | $1,000 for each successor one-year term; a then-current agreement may impose a different fee | The current $1,000 fee is deducted once in each ongoing annual scenario; first-year timing and future renewal terms can differ |
The absence of a percentage royalty does not make gross sales equivalent to take-home pay. A franchisee still bears the cost of signs, stakes, replacement inventory, shipping, storage, insurance, vehicle use, fuel, customer acquisition, payment processing, subcontractors or employees, professional services, and damaged or lost pieces. The official franchise page’s statement that owners keep 100% of sales refers to the absence of royalties; it does not mean that 100% of sales becomes owner income.
FDD citations: 2026 Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document, Items 6–8, pp. 3–6; Item 11, pp. 7–9; Item 17, pp. 13–15.
Why should the earnings range be treated as limited-confidence?
The largest uncertainty is the absence of same-brand sales and expense data. The 2026 FDD identifies the structure of the business but does not disclose average orders, average ticket, annual Gross Sales, sign replacement costs, labor hours, travel miles, operating profit, owner compensation, or results by mature territory. The IRS benchmark is official and reproducible, yet it covers a broader industry and all U.S. sole proprietors in that category rather than Sign Gypsies franchisees.
The benchmark also reports averages and aggregate margins, not medians. The 2023 IRS data include 21,274 returns, of which 11,017 reported net income. That 51.8% share is a tax-statistics characteristic of the broad category, not a Sign Gypsies success rate, closure rate, or probability that a buyer will be profitable.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses data show approximately $310,700 of receipts per establishment for employer firms with fewer than five employees in NAICS 532289. That figure is not used as the revenue anchor because employer establishments are structurally larger than the home-based sole-proprietor format contemplated here. The divergence illustrates how strongly the selected business population changes any earnings estimate.
Item 20 does not measure earnings, but it shows substantial system contraction that a buyer should investigate. Franchised outlets decreased from 754 at the start of 2023 to 565 at the end of 2025, a net reduction of 189 outlets, or 25.1%. Adding the annual Item 20 rows produces 81 openings and 269 terminations, non-renewals, or other cessations; transfers are reported separately.
| Year | Start of year | Opened | Terminated, non-renewed, or ceased | End of year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 754 | 29 | 117 | 666 |
| 2024 | 666 | 32 | 72 | 626 |
| 2025 | 626 | 20 | 80 | 565 |
Adding the 2023–2025 Item 20 categories yields 269 terminations, non-renewals, and other cessations, but the FDD cover’s Special Risks section states that 174 outlets were terminated, not renewed, reacquired, or otherwise ceased during the last three years. The document does not reconcile the difference. A buyer should request a written explanation of the populations and counting method.
The outlet movement cannot identify why an individual franchisee left, whether the business generated income, how much the owner worked, or whether a transfer preserved economic value. It does, however, make current and former franchisee interviews more important. The FDD states that no confidentiality clauses signed during the last three fiscal years restrict those franchisees from communicating openly with a buyer.
FDD citation: 2026 Sign Gypsies Franchising, LLC Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 20, pp. 16–24. Government comparison: 2022 Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses tables and the 2022 NAICS description for rental and leasing services.
What should a buyer verify before relying on any earnings number?
A buyer should rebuild the estimate from territory-level operating facts and franchisee records. The article’s range is suitable for screening and sensitivity analysis, not for underwriting a purchase. The most useful evidence will be written substantiation from the franchisor when applicable, actual records for an existing business, and consistent answers from current and former franchisees listed in Item 20 and Exhibit F.
- Confirm Item 19 status in the delivered FDD. Verify that no amendment or supplemental financial performance representation changes the 2026 disclosure.
- Ask for annual order count and average ticket. Separate birthday, graduation, school, corporate, and holiday demand, and identify cancellations, discounts, refunds, and seasonality.
- Measure owner labor. Record weekly hours for sales, design, scheduling, installation, removal, cleaning, inventory management, bookkeeping, and local marketing.
- Price vehicle and route costs. Estimate installation radius, miles per order, fuel, maintenance, vehicle depreciation, and the cost of late-night or weather-delayed work.
- Verify sign-piece economics. Ask about annual replacement volume, shipping, damaged or lost inventory, minimum purchases, storage, and supplier price changes.
- Separate residual profit from labor value. Compare owner-operated results with the cost of subcontractors, limited manager help, or a full-time manager before describing any amount as passive income.
- Interview former franchisees. Ask why they transferred, did not renew, or ceased operations, and whether demand, owner time, territory economics, personal circumstances, or another factor drove the decision.
- Model financing separately. Apply the buyer’s actual financed amount, rate, term, fees, and payment schedule after operating earnings; do not treat debt principal as an operating expense.
What is the decision-useful takeaway?
The strongest defensible public estimate is approximately $300 to $18,300 per year in pre-tax owner-operator benefit on an ongoing annualized basis, with a modeled base case near $7,900. It is a limited-confidence, structural FDD-anchored scenario—not an official Sign Gypsies earnings claim, not after-tax take-home pay, and not passive income.
The most important earnings driver is the combination of local order volume and how much installation, routing, marketing, and administration the owner performs personally. The largest unresolved uncertainty is that Item 19 provides no same-brand revenue, expense, or profit distribution. Before making a decision, a buyer should verify the delivered Item 19, request any written substantiation for performance claims, and compare the model with detailed current and former franchisee interviews covering sales, owner hours, direct costs, manager support, and reasons for outlet departures.