Beauty Salon Feasibility Study in Illinois

An Illinois salon loan looks like the national one

The Illinois record for beauty salons tracks the class nationally almost exactly. The median loan is $100,000, precisely 1.00x the national median, while a location quotient of 1.05x shows salons carrying about the same weight in Illinois SBA lending as nationwide. Illinois ranks 9 of 54 among states for salon loans, and salons sit 7 of 39 in the Illinois class order, on 327 approvals worth $75.3 million from FY2017 to FY2026. The headline figures sit close to the national ones, so the value of this page lies in the detail: the lenders, the places and the outcome floors that a salon owner in Illinois will actually meet.

Programs, lenders and Cook County

The middle half of salon loans runs from $40,000 to $240,250, a range that can stretch from refreshing an existing salon to a full build-out with new equipment. SBA 7(a) carried 300 of the loans and SBA 504 carried 27, so property purchases are the exception. Franchised salons account for 11.0% of loans. The Huntington National Bank holds 58 of the salon loans, totalling $7.2 million, and U.S. Bank, National Association holds 41, with Northeast Bank at 15 and PNC Bank, National Association at 11; Small Business Growth Corporation leads the 504 lenders with 17. Cook County dominates with 164 loans, far ahead of DuPage at 32 and Lake at 27. One year looks unusual: FY2020 brought only 25 loans but $17.8 million, a sign that a few large deals can move the annual dollars a long way in a class this size.

Outcome floors and the feasibility questions

Cancellation took at least 10.2% of the salon approvals from FY2017 to FY2024, or 12.3% on the ceiling that also counts undisbursed loans. Of the 124 salon loans in the charge-off cohort, 4.8% have been charged off so far and 3.2% within five years of approval, floors that can rise as open loans season. A salon owner should read both as lower bounds. A feasibility study for an Illinois salon has to test demand from the specific neighbourhood and the stylists the owner can actually retain, cost the build-out, plumbing and stations against the loan, and show debt service coverage on realistic chair occupancy and service prices rather than on a full book from day one. When a building is involved, the appraisal will treat it as ordinary retail space, so the study should not count on salon fit-out adding value.

No special coding limitation applies to this class. The usual caution still applies: the classification follows the industry the lender entered for the borrower, and both rates are floors, not final outcomes.