GLO Tanning franchise unit economics

How much does a GLO Tanning franchise make?

The average GLO Tanning unit reported $693,963 of revenue in the 2026 FDD. The brand’s disclosure document discloses revenue and not profit, so what an owner keeps depends on the cost structure set out below. Fees come off the top first, at about 10.1% of sales across royalty, brand fund and the rest of the stack. Revenue is not income. Rent, wages, cost of goods and the franchise fees all come out before an owner is paid. The figures for the highest-selling and lowest-selling businesses are below.

Sales, highest to lowest

Gross sales by quartile, franchised and company salons, 2025

Averages, highs, lows and counts are as the brand reported it for both groups.

Closing the company gap across the franchised base is worth $7,629,504 a year. That is $90,827* a franchised salon on average. The gap is $106,808 a salon in quartile 3 and $94,905 in quartile 4, against $60,869 in quartile 1. GLO Tanning company salons pay the same royalty and the same marketing fund on the same terms as franchised salons.

The whole system differs 3.35 times over, from $445,112.50 to $1,491,940.23. The highest-selling GLO Tanning salon sold $1,046,828* more than the lowest-selling one in 2025.

Quartiles 2, 3 and 4 each span under $177,000, and quartile 1 spans $686,529. Quartile 2 spans $176,885, quartile 3 $63,295 and quartile 4 $120,088, so the quartile 1 span is 3.9 times* the widest of the other three. The highest GLO Tanning salon sold $1,491,940, 54% above the quartile 1 average.

Only 38% of the top quartile beats its own average. That is 8 salons of 21. In quartiles 2, 3 and 4 the shares were 47%, 47% and 43%. The $1,491,940 salon pulls the quartile 1 average of $968,245 to $81,725 above the quartile’s $886,520 median.

Top performers

What separates the top GLO Tanning performers

Fees and what it costs to open

What the fees come to by sales quartile

We built this from GLO Tanning's filed rates, which set a 6.5% royalty and a 3% marketing and technology fund fee, both payable monthly by the tenth of the following month. GLO also charges a $250 monthly software and license support fee, a $75 monthly email and text blast fee and a $12 monthly GLO email address charge, which come to $337 a month, or $4,044 a year.

GLO Tanning fees come to 9.92% of sales at the top quartile and 10.30% at the bottom. That is a 0.38 point range. The only flat GLO Tanning charge is $4,044 a year, and every other fee is a share of sales.

Two dormant fees would add $2,400 a year if switched on. The first is a technology fee capped at $150 a month. The second is an outbound calls and surveys fee of $50 a month per salon, which the franchisor currently pays. GLO Tanning discloses both at $0 today and keeps the right to charge them. On top, fees may rise with CPI cumulatively, and any fee attributable to a third-party charge may rise by whatever that third party charges. Budget GLO's fees at closer to 10.6% than 10.1% of sales over a full term.

Early termination is the greater of $50,000 or 24 months of average royalty. At the all-salon average that is $90,216 of royalty over two years. So the 24-month formula costs more than the $50,000 minimum for every GLO salon in the sales table, since even the lowest, at $445,113 of sales, would owe $57,865* of royalty over 24 months. Leaving has a further $1,000 a day de-identification charge for each day past the deadline. The franchisor may debit up to $25,000 in advance against post-termination costs, refundable within 30 days of completion.

Opening a salon

As the brand reported it.

The build costs 1.09 to 2.09 times a year of average sales. That is $759,200 to $1,448,000 against an average franchised salon billing $693,963. Equipment and real estate improvements alone are $573,000 to $1,065,000 of it, 75% at the low end and 74% at the high.

$95,000 reaches the franchisor before the doors open. That is a $45,000 franchise fee plus a $50,000 grand opening advertising payment, both paid as a lump sum and both non-refundable. Add up to $7,000 of optional opening assistance. Against that, salons opening after September 2025 pay a uniform fee where the franchisor discounted or waived fees for many earlier franchisees. So the cost of entry has risen for the current group relative to the salons in the sales table above.

Failing to open inside 12 months costs $10,000 a month for up to 24 months. The franchisor charges it at its discretion in place of termination. Against a build that needs an architect, a landlord, permits and a $315,000 equipment order, that timing is why the working capital line matters as much as the construction line.

Beds and what it costs to open

Sales per tanning bed

We divided each filed quartile average by a bed count.

A bed costs roughly $20,000 to $21,000 and earns $20,252 to $64,550 a year. $315,000 across 15 beds is $21,000 apiece; $500,000 across 25 is $20,000. So the equipment cost per bed holds steady while sales per bed fall from $64,550 to $20,252, depending on the salon’s quartile and its bed count. A quartile 4 salon with 25 beds earns $20,252 a bed, the lowest figure in the table.

A quartile 3 salon earns $39,907 a bed on fifteen beds and $23,944 on twenty-five. Those figures divide the quartile 3 average of $598,612 by 15 and by 25 beds. The extra ten beds cost $200,000 or so and add square footage that costs rent for the whole term. The decision is how to size the room to the market.

Rent against sales

We built this from the filed estimate of 1,500 to 5,000 square feet at $12 to $55 a square foot a year.

Building costs can be 2.6% of sales or 39.6% at the same average salon. GLO Tanning rent runs from $18,000 to $275,000 a year against average sales of $693,963. The high rent is 15.3 times* the low one, against a 3.35 times range in salon sales. At the bottom quartile a 5,000 square foot box at $55 a foot takes 54.3% of the top line. Square footage and rate are the two numbers to settle before anything else in the deal.

Every extra 1,000 square feet costs $12,000 to $55,000 a year for the length of the lease. At the midpoint rate of $33.50 it is $33,500. To pay for that at a quartile 3 salon’s $598,612 of sales, the extra space has to add roughly 5.6%* more sales every year. Beds and floor space both scale up easily and scale back down only at renewal.

The network of locations

The network of locations

As the brand reported it.

13 open salons left on 31 January 2026, taking the franchised base from 84 to 71. On 22 December 2025 the franchisor entered a Consent Order with the Securities Commission of Maryland over selling 15 franchises to one individual in Maryland before registering there, agreeing to offer rescission, register in the state and pay a $15,000 penalty. The buyer accepted rescission on all 15 units (8 in Maryland, 3 in Delaware, 1 in New Jersey and 3 in Pennsylvania) of which 13 were open salons in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

One buyer held 15 units, roughly 18% of the franchised system. GLO's Item 20 table shows zero terminations in three years alongside that sale. The three states affected each appear in the 2024 opening surge, which ran 26 openings against 9 the year before and 17 the year after.

104 signed agreements sit unopened against 84 open salons. That pipeline is 124% the size of the operating base, with 18 in Texas, 16 in Utah and 13 in Florida. The franchisor projects 75 new franchised openings in the coming year against 17 actually opened in 2025, 4.4 times the most recent year's delivery.

What territory you get

You receive an exclusive territory, usually two miles in every direction. Inside it the franchisor will refrain from establishing another franchised, affiliate or company salon under the marks for as long as you stay in strict compliance. Size is set on population density, the business base, and whether the site is metropolitan or rural. A salon inside a shopping mall may have its territory limited to the mall itself.

No minimum sales volume or market penetration is attached to keeping it. Other franchisees may advertise inside your territory and you may advertise inside theirs, and you may serve customers only at your own premises. The franchisor keeps every distribution channel (internet, apps, television, radio, social, direct marketing, national accounts, wholesale and co-branding) inside your territory with no payment to you. Relocation needs written approval, proof you can fund it, and $5,000.

Questions we get asked

Questions owners ask.