Beauty Salon Feasibility Study in the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ Metro Area

Phoenix salons: a record with many blanks

SBA approved 132 beauty salon loans around Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler between FY2017 and FY2026, worth $32.6 million. Phoenix lands at 15 of 546 across all areas, and salons land at 9 of 39 inside Phoenix. A location quotient of 0.97x leaves the local weight just under the national mix. Much of this record is withheld, from the cancellation rate and charge-off rate to several yearly counts, so no numbers are printed for them and no blank is read as nil.

What does appear is a ticket larger than the national norm. The median is $150,000, 1.50x the national class median, with $51,275 and $369,750 as the quartile edges, 127 loans came through SBA 7(a) and 5 through SBA 504. Franchised units are 18.9%. Anyone borrowing near $369,750 for a salon should be ready to explain it.

Lenders

Wells Fargo Bank National Association holds 13 SBA 7(a) loans, but only $1.6 million. U.S. Bank, National Association holds 12 loans and $377,600, a very small average, and Newtek Bank, National Association holds 9 loans and $3.1 million. Stearns Bank National Association has 7 and Alerus Financial, National Association 6 with $2.9 million. No SBA 504 lender qualifies for naming, and the county table is also withheld for this cell. These counts are SBA's holder data and say nothing about practice.

Only five years show in the yearly table: FY2017 with 17 loans and $2.6 million, FY2019 with 6 and $1.4 million, FY2022 and FY2023 with 12 each, and FY2024 with 25 loans and $6.2 million. Loan Analytics withholds FY2018, FY2020, FY2021, FY2025 and FY2026 because each holds too few loans, so no trend can be read for the latest years. A lender cannot judge recent momentum from this page, and a study should bring its own local evidence.

Testing a Phoenix salon

A study should count nearby households and workers around a valley site, list the chairs already competing for them, and weigh plumbing, chairs and build-out against $150,000. Booth rent or commission, retention and ticket volume have to service the debt. Because the loss record is withheld, the study should show its own downside case. None of the 132 approvals above guarantees a result, and 127 of them sit under SBA 7(a) against only 5 under SBA 504, which is too thin a program mix for a study to build on.