Most Franchises Show You Sales. JETSET Shows You What the Owner Keeps.

Dan Lorenz | September 22, 2026

The Zorzee Report | Issue #18 | Boutique Pilates, Part 3 of 4

Note: figures are from the JETSET Franchising, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document (issued April 17, 2026), cited by Item.

Club Pilates showed you what a studio sells. Last week's issue on the category leader ran on a $987,810 average in gross revenue, and like nearly every franchise filing, it stopped there. Sales, not profit. What the owner actually keeps was left for you to model.

JETSET Pilates does the thing the category avoids. Its Item 19 prints studio-level profit. The average reporting studio produced $349,103 in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), an average margin of 29.0%, on average revenue of $1,137,299, the highest in this series (Item 19). It even shows the spread on the profit: a low of $160,566 and a high of $683,183, margins from 19.0% to 45.1% (Item 19).

A franchisor willing to print what an owner keeps, with a range, is rare enough to stop and respect. Almost no filing in the category does it.

This issue is how to read a number that good: what it actually says, what it costs to get in, and whether a young, fast-scaling system holds it up.

Gross revenue tells you how much moved through the register. It says nothing about what reaches the owner. That is why most Item 19s stop at sales: the number looks big and commits the franchisor to nothing about cost. JETSET went further and disclosed the cost side, so you can read a margin instead of guessing one.

The disclosed margins are strong. A 29.0% average and a 27.7% median mean a typical reporting studio kept roughly 29 cents of every revenue dollar after operating costs (Item 19). On the revenue mix, memberships carried 43.7% of the average studio's income, packages 25.8%, and third-party platforms like ClassPass 21.3% (Item 19). That last figure is worth a pause: more than a fifth of the average studio's revenue rides on an outside platform that sets its own economics, which is durable demand and borrowed leverage at the same time.

Read the profit the other way. The margin runs from 19.0% at the low to 45.1% at the high (Item 19), a spread wide enough that "29% average" is a poor planning number. Underwrite a new studio to the low, near 19%, and you have a business. Underwrite it to the average and assume you have missed. Plan to the floor, not the mean. That discipline matters more here than in a filing that never shows you the spread at all.

The disclosed profit reflects the franchisee studios that reported for the full measurement period (Item 19). It is an early cohort, because the franchise itself is young. JETSET opened its first Miami studio in October 2010, but it only began franchising in April 2022 (Item 1). The concept has a fourteen-year track record; the franchise has three. This Item 19 is the first the franchise has published, and it is a strong one.

The system is growing fast, and the filing is honest about how much of that growth is still on paper. JETSET had 35 franchised studios open at the end of 2025, plus five company-owned, up from sixteen total a year earlier (Item 20). Its own Table 5 then lists the agreements already sold: more than 170 franchise agreements signed but not yet open, 34 in California and 30 in Florida alone (Item 20). The company's own announcements tell the same story more recently: by mid-2026 it reported about 70 studios open against more than 400 territories sold (PR Newswire, June 2026). Open or signed, the ratio holds. The brand has committed several studios for every one it is running.

A pipeline is not a failure, and a fast-growing young brand should have one. It is the number to interrogate, though, because of what usually sits behind the gap. A studio rarely stalls because the franchisor won't let it open. It stalls on the operator's side: finding a location that actually works, signing the lease, financing and building it out. That is slow, ordinary work, and it is why a brand can sell a territory a year or two before a studio runs in it.

Read the gap as a timeline, not a verdict. The number to pin down is the real one, from signing to first class. The category is instructive here: Club Pilates' parent drew an FTC order and several state consent orders over how it described that timeline, and the honest figure is almost always longer than the pitch.

Ask JETSET for it directly. Of the agreements signed more than two years ago, how many are open, and how long did the ones that opened take from signing to their first class? Ask the operators on the Item 20 list what the site search and the buildout cost them, in months and in rent. That answer prices your downside better than any margin in Item 19.

A single JETSET studio runs $543,440 to $752,375, of which only $66,000 to $69,000 goes to the franchisor (Item 7). That is a higher floor than Club Pilates, which you can read side by side, and roughly double the category's typical liquid-capital ask, around $200,000 (Athletech News). You are paying more to open a smaller, higher-revenue room, and putting more of your own cash at risk to do it.

The ongoing fees carry floors, which is where a slow stretch bites. The royalty is the greater of 7.5% of monthly revenue or $1,000, and the brand-development fund is the greater of 1.5% or $150, both charged weekly (Item 6). A percentage falls when your revenue falls. A floor does not, and it costs the most in the weeks a new studio can least afford it.

Territory is better here than at the leader, with a catch worth reading twice. Under a development agreement, JETSET grants an exclusive sub-territory, but only until you open a studio in it. Once you open, the franchisor and others may operate in that same sub-territory without restriction (Item 12). The protection covers you while you build and expires the moment you succeed. Read plainly, you are protected as a developer and exposed as an operator, which is the reverse of what most buyers assume they are buying.

JETSET is run by people who have built fitness franchises before. Bertus Albertse has been chief executive since the company's inception in March 2022. As of the filing, Item 2 also lists him across the Body20 electro-muscle-stimulation group, as chairman and president of its international and South African entities and chief executive of its IP-holding company, and as Brand President of Jabz Boxing from 2021 to 2023. That is an experienced multi-brand operator, running a franchise that has sold agreements for only three years even though the studios behind it are not new.

Item 3 is short. JETSET discloses no litigation that must be reported (Item 3). Against Club Pilates' portfolio of federal and state regulatory settlements, that is a clean record and a genuine point in its favor. It also carries an honest asterisk: a system that has franchised for only three years has not had the years it takes for disputes to surface, so read the empty Item 3 as low litigation history rather than proof of a spotless system. The validation pool is the same story. Thirty-five operators is a real call sheet, and a short one. Call as many as you can.

Read the filing as a bull and JETSET is the most transparent economics in the category. It prints profit, not just sales; the margin is strong and disclosed with its range; the revenue is the highest in the series; the litigation record is clean; and the people running it have scaled franchises before. For an investor who wants to underwrite to a disclosed margin instead of guessing one, no other brand in this series hands you as much.

Read it as a bear and the same filing is a promise a three-year-old franchise has not yet had to keep at scale. The economics are excellent, but they come from an early cohort in a system still building out its first few hundred studios, with higher capital at risk, fee floors that bite in slow weeks, and a territory that stops protecting you the day you open. A young system carrying that much signed-but-unopened pipeline is not a red flag; it is the thing to watch as it scales.

The operator this rewards is specific. Someone with the capital to clear a $543,440 floor and carry the fee minimums, the discipline to plan to the 19% margin rather than the 29% average, and the habit of validating a young system by phone before signing rather than after. JETSET shows you more than anyone in the category. The open question is whether it keeps producing that number as it scales, which is exactly what operator calls are for.

Part 4 is the last of the three, and the opposite of this one. It is the smallest brand in the series, barely a dozen studios, and its Item 19 does not disclose a profit figure. It does not disclose a revenue figure either. It discloses nothing at all, which is legal, and which changes the entire job of evaluating it.

A brand that shows you its profit and a brand that shows you nothing sit at the two ends of this category. Part 4 closes the series at the far end.

If you are looking at JETSET, or any Pilates brand, that is what I do. I have read every FDD in this series. I can tell you in 15 minutes whether the numbers support the pitch. My consulting costs you nothing. Book the Free Zorzee Clarity Call.

Want the full read on JETSET Pilates? The complete dossier, all five signals and the numbers straight from the 2026 FDD, is on Zorzee: zorzee.com/dossiers/jetset-pilates/free.

See Club Pilates vs JETSET Pilates side by side.

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This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this issue constitutes financial, legal, or investment advice. I am not a licensed financial advisor, CPA, or attorney. FDD data cited is sourced from the publicly available JETSET Franchising, LLC 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document, issued April 17, 2026. Item 19 EBITDA figures are disclosed for ten franchisee reporting studios and are not a projection of your results. Past performance does not predict future results. Individual results vary. All data should be independently verified. Consult qualified legal, financial, and franchise professionals before making any investment decision.

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