How do you calculate ROI on a window film franchise?

The basic ROI formula

Return on investment = (annual net profit ÷ total initial investment) × 100. So a shop that nets $150K annually on a $200K total investment delivers 75% ROI in year one. That metric pays back the investment in 16 months and starts compounding from there.

The key drivers are: tickets per bay per day, average ticket size, gross margin, and operator overhead.

Polar Tint's baseline assumptions

<strong>Average auto-tint ticket:</strong> $500. That includes the standard sedan/SUV tint job at retail; PPF and ceramic upsells push the average ticket toward $700-$1,200.

<strong>Tickets per bay per day:</strong> 6-10 in steady state. Most Polar Tint shops average 8.

<strong>Gross margin:</strong> disclosed in the current FDD Item 19; driven structurally by parent-supplier wholesale film cost.

<strong>Operating days:</strong> 6 days/week × ~50 weeks/year = 300 days.

Doing the math

Single-bay, 8 tickets/day × $500/ticket × 300 days = <strong>$1.2M annual revenue</strong>. (Most operators run 6-7 tickets/day in year 1 and ramp to 8-10 by year 3.)

A more conservative year-1 model: 6 tickets × $500 × 300 = $900K of revenue. Apply the FDD Item 19 gross margin (see the current FDD for the actual figure), then subtract royalty + branding (9% of $900K = $81K), local marketing minimum (~$65K), labor (typically $180K for 2 installers + a part-timer), rent ($36-72K), and tech + insurance + other (~$25K). The remaining figure is the operator's pre-tax cash flow.

On a $200K investment, that's 220%+ first-year ROI. Aggressive but defensible. The <a href="https://polartintfranchise.com/investment">ROI calculator on /investment</a> lets you run your own assumptions.

Stacking services compounds ROI

The big lift isn't hitting 8 tickets/day on tint alone — it's stacking ceramic and PPF onto every tint job. A $400 tint job becomes a $1,200 tint+ceramic+PPF job with 40% attach rate. Same hour of labor, 3x the ticket. That's the multi-service stack model.