PuroClean

The $59,000 franchise fee is non-refundable and structurally two-part: you pay a $25,000 deposit when you sign the Reservation Agreement, then the $34,000 balance at Franchise Agreement signing. Veterans get a 25% discount to $44,250. Existing PuroClean franchisees expanding to a second unit pay just $25,000. Conversion franchisees — restoration businesses rolling in existing revenue — can get fees down to $29,500 if they have sufficient prior-year gross receipts.

The all-in investment range splits based on whether you finance your vehicle and equipment or purchase them outright. The financed path (three months of payments only) runs $101,280-$137,145. If you buy your vehicle ($65,000-$67,000) and equipment package ($67,000) outright, you're looking at $226,280-$262,145. The financed approach is common — PuroClean offers indirect financing through their programs.

The vehicle is the critical equipment here. You need at minimum one job van; the industry-standard setup requires dehumidifiers, air movers, moisture probes, carpet extractors, and all the associated remediation gear. PuroClean bundles these into a designated equipment package through their approved supplier.

Ongoing fees: the royalty on mitigation services is tiered — 10% on the first $249,999 of annual gross receipts, dropping to 9% from $250K-$499K, and continuing down to 3% above $1.75M. Reconstruction services carry a flat 3% royalty. The catch: this tier structure resets to 10% on January 1 every year. So even a $1M/year operator starts each new year paying 10% until they rebuild momentum through the tiers.

The marketing fee is 2% of gross receipts (capped at $23,500 in 2026) plus a separate 2% local advertising requirement. Technology runs $500/month for the DASH job management software plus $25/month for compliance tracking software.

PuroClean's Item 19 covers 275 franchised businesses that operated a full 12 months in 2024 (out of 330 total franchised businesses).

System average: $1,049,780 in gross sales. System median: $612,588. That gap — average nearly $440,000 above the median — signals a heavily skewed distribution where a small number of high-performing operators pull the average up significantly.

The percentile breakdown is revealing. The top 10% (28 businesses) averaged $4,244,048 in gross sales, with the highest single business hitting $12,734,783. The top 25% averaged $2,777,173. The median operator (the 50th percentile) did $612,588. The bottom 10% averaged just $43,553.

Note that only 31% of businesses met or exceeded the system average — confirmation that the distribution is right-skewed. The typical PuroClean franchisee does between $400,000 and $800,000 in annual gross revenue.

At $600,000 in gross receipts, your royalty structure looks like this: 10% on first $249,999 = $25,000, then 9% on next $249,999 = $22,500, then 8% on remaining $100,002 = $8,000 — total royalty approximately $55,500 plus $12,000 in marketing fees. That's roughly 11.25% of revenue going to brand fees at median scale. Revenue does not equal profit — restoration margins vary widely by job type, labor costs, and insurance reimbursement rates.

PuroClean had 330 franchised businesses as of end-2024. The FDD's Item 19 notes that 16 businesses closed during 2024 (excluded from the revenue analysis), 33 opened, and 12 transferred. Net growth is positive but modest.

Importantly, PuroClean sits in the property damage restoration space — a category driven by insurance claims from water, fire, mold, and storm damage. This demand is largely non-discretionary: when a pipe bursts, the homeowner calls someone that week. That gives the category more recession resistance than most consumer service businesses.

The franchise is relatively young compared to Servpro (2,286 units) and ServiceMaster Restore (1,939 units). With 330 total franchised businesses, PuroClean is a smaller-scale alternative that may offer more territory availability in markets where the larger players are already saturated. The tradeoff is brand recognition — Servpro's green trucks are ubiquitous; PuroClean's yellow and gray trucks less so.

The annual royalty reset is the most important structural feature to model before investing. Even at $1M+ in annual revenue, you restart the tier structure at 10% on January 1. A franchisee who did $800,000 in December won't see the benefit of the lower tiers until they rebuild that same volume in the new calendar year. This effectively penalizes seasonal businesses or those with volatile job flow, and it means your effective blended royalty rate is always higher than the bottom tier would suggest.

The liquidated damages clause is unusually specific: if the franchise agreement is terminated due to your default, you owe the greater of $100,000 or the royalty and marketing fees from the prior 12 months multiplied by the lesser of five or years remaining on the term. On a 20-year agreement with 15 years remaining, that could mean paying five years' worth of fees in a lump sum.

The mandatory convention registration ($595-$695/year, with potential increases of 50% annually) and the IICRC certification requirements (several hundred to over $1,000 in training fees) are upfront costs that aren't always visible in the headline investment range.

PuroClean requires you to employ a competent accounting firm for annual financial statements due by February 15 of each year — an ongoing professional expense not included in the Item 7 range.