European Wax Center, Inc. is a franchisor and operator of out-of-home (‘OOH’) waxing services in the United States.
The company delivered over 23 million waxing services in 2024. The company’s portfolio of centers operated in 1,067 locations across 45 states as of January 4, 2025. Of these locations, 1,062 are franchised centers operated by franchisees, and five are corporate-owned centers.
The company offers guests hygienic waxing services administered by licensed, EWC-trained estheticians (t...
European Wax Center, Inc. is a franchisor and operator of out-of-home (‘OOH’) waxing services in the United States.
The company delivered over 23 million waxing services in 2024. The company’s portfolio of centers operated in 1,067 locations across 45 states as of January 4, 2025. Of these locations, 1,062 are franchised centers operated by franchisees, and five are corporate-owned centers.
The company offers guests hygienic waxing services administered by licensed, EWC-trained estheticians (the company’s ‘wax specialists’), at its accessible and welcoming locations (the company’s ‘centers’). The company’s technology-enabled guest interface simplifies and streamlines the guest experience with automated appointment scheduling and remote check-in capabilities, with a goal of making guest visits convenient, hassle-free, and consistent across its network of centers. The company’s well-known, pre-paid Wax Pass program makes payment easy and convenient, fostering loyalty and return visits. Many of the company’s loyal guests view it as a non-discretionary part of their personal care and beauty regimens.
In partnership with the company’s franchisees, the company fiercely protects its points of differentiation that attract new guests, build meaningful relationships, and promote lasting retention.
Differentiated Brand Experience
The company provides a comprehensive assortment of body and facial waxing services using its Comfort Wax formulation, which features a unique blend of the highest quality natural beeswax, combined with other skin-soothing ingredients for the most comfortable waxing experience. The company provides a line of proprietary pre- and post-service products, including ingrown hair serums, exfoliating gels, brow shapers, and skin treatments, which ensure the full benefits of the waxing experience are realized by its guests.
The company’s franchisees employ nearly 10,000 licensed, highly trained and knowledgeable wax specialists committed to delivering an exceptional guest experience. In addition to being licensed, every EWC wax specialist must successfully complete its proprietary training program to ensure consistency and quality of service for every guest. The company’s wax-focused education modules provide time-intensive training that substantially builds upon cosmetology licensing programs. The company views its training as a key competitive differentiator enabling guests to receive a consistent service delivery regardless of the wax specialist with whom they are scheduled. Through the delivery of personalized services and education about the benefits of regular waxing, the company’s wax specialists help strengthen guest loyalty to its brand.
Wax Specialists utilize disposable gloves to administer services and the company strictly adheres to single use wax applicator protocols (we never double dip the applicator blades in wax pots). The company’s wax suites are sanitized and disinfected after each guest visit. In addition, the company’s centers are equipped with multiple sanitary stations and its mobile app facilitates a contactless experience with self-check-in.
Whether the company’s guests move across town or across the country, its brand can serve their ongoing waxing needs with more access points than any other provider of OOH waxing services in the United States. The company’s Wax Pass program is portable across its network, and guests often redeem services through a Wax Pass across multiple European Wax Center locations. The company’s mobile app technology further enhances accessibility by enabling guests to easily book appointments online at a time and location most convenient to them.
The company’s in-center atmosphere is designed to be refined, clean and easy to use, with mobile app self-check-in available at all centers. The company’s lobby features an inviting product wall with take-home sampling. The company’s guests can choose to wait for their appointment in their car until a text alerts them to walk directly to their designated suite where their wax specialist awaits. The company’s iPad-equipped suites provide its wax specialists with detailed insights on each of their guests, empowering them to personalize product recommendations, for example.
The company encourages guests to schedule future visits on a regular basis and reward them for their use of its pre-paid Wax Pass program. Wax Pass holders and routine guests, who the company considers to be its core guests, visit the company more frequently, have meaningfully higher retention rates and represent its most valuable guests. Additionally, the company expects to further amplify its guest experience and drive retention with its EWC Rewards loyalty program.
Growth Strategies
The company’s strategies are to grow its national footprint across new and existing markets, continue to grow the company’s brand awareness and accelerate the company’s guest acquisition, and employ strategies to continue driving system-wide sales growth, such as increase Wax Pass adoption rates and drive greater guest engagement using data analytics.
Guests
Approximately 95% of the company’s guests are women, with its brand appealing to female guests across age groups, ethnicities, and income brackets.
Centers
The company had a leading portfolio of centers operating in 1,067 locations across 45 states as of January 4, 2025. Of these locations, 1,062 are franchised centers operated by franchisees, and five are corporate-owned centers.
On average, the company’s centers are approximately 1,200 to 1,600 square feet, with six to seven wax suites, and are typically staffed with one wax specialist per suite, in addition to one or two guest service associates. The company’s centers are designed to provide a seamless guest experience from the moment its guests walk in to the moment they strut out of its centers. Upon entry, guests are greeted by a friendly service associate in a clean and modern lobby. The lobby offers refined colors and textures that align with the European Wax Center brand ethos. The company’s guests can self-check-in through its mobile app, which increases the swiftness of guest intake while allowing its team members to focus on servicing guests.
The company’s centers are committed to industry-leading hygiene and safety standards. Once checked-in, the company’s guests enter a private, sanitized waxing suite where wax specialists offer a personalized experience. In-suite iPads provide its wax specialists with detailed insights on each of their guests, empowering them to provide ‘concierge-like’ services, such as personalized add-on services and product recommendations, driving increased guest spend. After each service, the company’s guests are encouraged to test its retail products with samples from its touch-free sample bar, promoting its transaction attachment rate.
The company continuously evaluates and enhances its center layout, imagery, and cost build-out to ensure it has the best experience for its guests, which drives continued robust financial performance for its franchisees.
Services and Retail Products
The company offers its guests a variety of elevated body and facial waxing services focused on the most critical areas of their bodies needing hair removal. The company also offers skincare retail products to ensure that the full benefits of the waxing experience are realized by its guests.
Services
The company’s waxing services are administered by licensed wax specialists who are employed by its franchisees. In addition, prior to performing the company’s services, its wax specialists go through a rigorous, proprietary EWC training regime. Continuous training education is also a part of the company’s ongoing operating plan to ensure the highest quality service can constantly be delivered across its network of centers. The company’s wax specialists utilize its Comfort Wax formulation during the waxing service. This wax product features a blend of the highest quality natural beeswax, combined with other skin-soothing ingredients, and is co-manufactured for the company by suppliers in Europe. Unlike other wax formulations, its wax is designed to specifically attach only to hair, not skin, providing a differentiated and more comfortable waxing experience.
Retail Products
The company’s centers sell a comprehensive assortment of proprietary EWC-branded retail products that allow guests to maintain healthy post-wax skin between visits. These products are specifically tailored to enhance the services the company provides. The company’s products are dermatologist-tested and are formulated without parabens, mineral oil, phthalates, hydroquinone, triclosan, formaldehyde, and gluten. The company exclusively distributes these retail products to its franchisees for sale in-center and sells them direct-to-consumer through its website. The company offers approximately 39 full-sized SKUs in its branded product portfolio.
The company partners with two leading co-manufacturers in North America to coordinate the manufacturing of its retail product offerings. While the company’s suppliers support it in formulation, sourcing, manufacturing, package development, safety testing, and quality assurance, the company owns all of its retail product formulas and leads the new product development processes to align its innovation capabilities with its strategic priorities.
Marketing Support
Based on the company’s deep guest understanding and longevity in the OOH waxing market, the guest data that the company owns, and the partners it has selected, the company has developed an effective marketing strategy that is designed to promote awareness and consideration of its brand by new guests and encourage retention by existing guests. Through additional testing, the company is optimizing its creative ads and channel presence to become increasingly efficient in driving incremental reservations.
The company employs a variety of marketing tactics to build awareness of, and create demand for, its brand, and the services and products it offers. The company has implemented sophisticated data-driven marketing practices in the support of this framework and deploys the dedicated marketing funds contributed by its franchisees across its portfolio of marketing initiatives.
The company provides strategic recommendations, as well as support to ensure that franchisees’ marketing both aligns with the company’s national brand and allows them to make decisions that are most appropriate for their local market needs.
Franchise Platform
Franchising Strategy
The company’s asset-light franchise platform delivers capital-efficient growth, and its footprint expansion is supported by robust unit-level economics.
The company has shifted its mix to include more multi-unit developers to build a strong funnel of licenses and currently works with both large and small developers from within its franchisee network to ensure a consistent and efficient growth as it continues to scale.
Franchise Agreements
For each of the company’s franchisees, the company enters into a franchise agreement stipulating a standard set of terms and conditions.
The company’s franchise agreements set forth the requirements franchisees must comply with, including but not limited to, its standard operational policies and procedures that govern the provision of services and use of suppliers, and require franchisees to purchase specified products from the company and/or designated suppliers. Franchisees are required to conform to the company’s established operational policies and procedures relating to, among other things, quality of service, training, center design and decor, and trademark usage. Outside of these operational policies and procedures, the company does not control the day-to-day operations of franchised centers, including but not limited to, employment, benefits and wage determination, establishing prices to charge for products and services, business hours, personnel management, and capital expenditure decisions. However, the franchise agreements afford the company, as franchisor, certain rights, including, but not limited to, the right to approve locations, suppliers, and the sale of a franchise. Additionally, the company’s field personnel make periodic visits to franchised centers to ensure that they are operating in conformity with the operational policies and procedures for its franchising program.
Franchise Support Services
The company values its strong partnership with franchisees and is committed to their collective and individual success. To support their growth and operational excellence, the company provides comprehensive support services, including pre-opening guidance, guest experience training, and ongoing operational support.
Pre-opening support:
Site selection and approval: The company works in partnership with its franchisees to adequately vet prospective new center locations ahead of any initial investment. Each franchisee is responsible for selecting their location but must ultimately obtain approval from the company.
Before a franchisee opens a new center, the company provides comprehensive support designed to help them succeed. This includes coaching on the site development process, covering strategies for working effectively with local municipalities, architects, and general contractors. Franchisees also participate in a robust training program and receive guidance on pre-opening marketing activities to position their center for a successful launch. Additionally, the company conducts business reviews with each franchisee to align construction timelines with recruitment efforts, training schedules, and pre-opening marketing plans, ensuring every center opens with strong momentum.
Guest experience support:
Wax training: The company requires an intensive six-day training program for all new wax specialists, as well as continued learning opportunities to keep all wax specialists performing at the consistent, high-quality standards for which the company is known. Training is conducted by a corporate or peer trainer both in-person, as well as virtually. Franchisees also appoint in-house trainers who are expected to maintain an ongoing training system for wax specialists and other associates within each center.
Industry-leading hygiene protocols: The company uses new gloves for every wax service, and its tools are soaked in disinfectant. The company uses new paper for each bed and new waxing sticks for each dip (no double-dipping ever). The company also deep cleans high-touch points and has contactless check-in for its guests.
Ongoing support:
Marketing and consumer insights: The company’s centralized marketing strategy, primarily funded by contributions from its franchisees based on a percentage of gross sales, net of retail product sales, as defined in the franchise agreement, allows it to leverage its scale in media buying and utilize its proprietary guest insights to maximize brand awareness and consideration.
Uniform Point-of-Sales System: The company leverages a consistent Point-of-Sales system, which includes a guest-facing application, across its entire network, which is easy to adopt and results in a streamlined approach to ongoing technical support for its franchisees.
Procurement and supply chain: The company’s operating leverage and its scale allow it to procure the highest quality products at lower prices than smaller independent waxing-focused operators, benefiting its franchisees.
Performance management: The company’s team of Franchise Business Consultants works closely with its franchisees across regional territories with ongoing managerial support, including ongoing business reviews, per-center brand health and voice-of-customer measurement, and additional one-on-one support as needed.
These support services allow the company’s franchisees to focus on the day-to-day operations of their centers and to provide high-quality services that its guests have come to associate with the company’s brand. The company also participates in a Franchise Advisory Council, through which it collects continuous feedback from its franchisees to enhance its offering, business model, and support services, and to ensure that its franchisees have an open channel of communication with the company.
Governmental Regulation
The company, as a franchisor, is subject to various federal and state laws, and the Federal Trade Commission (the ‘FTC’) regulates the company’s franchising activities in the United States.
Intellectual Property
The company owns or has the rights to use certain trademarks, service marks and trade names that are registered or for which registration applications are pending with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or exist under common law in the United States. Trademarks that are important in identifying and distinguishing the company’s products and services include, but are not limited to EUROPEAN WAX CENTER, EWC, WAX PASS, and COMFORT WAX. The company also owns domain names, including its primary domain www.waxcenter.com.
Suppliers
The company depends on two key suppliers, Perron Rigot, SAS, and Grupo DRV—Phytolab S.L., to provide the company’s Comfort Wax to its franchisees, and two key suppliers, Goodier Cosmetics, LLC, and Batallure Beauty LLC, to provide branded retail products to its franchisees.
History
European Wax Center, Inc. was founded in 2004. The company was incorporated as a Delaware corporation in 2021.
The Analyst Price Target shows the analysts’ low, high, and average target at a glance.
