Affordable Egress vs Budget Blinds

A single-location business with a dormant filing is not a franchise market—it's a ghost town. Affordable Egress has zero franchised units, so your total addressable market is one owner-operator. Even with an approved-supplier model that lets you sell direct to units, there’s no one to call. The dormant FDD signals the concept isn’t actively growing, making it a dead end for recurring software revenue.

Budget Blinds gives you 1,355 franchised locations, a current FDD, and a healthy $775k AUV. That AUV and a low 3.5% royalty mean operators likely have budget for back-office and marketing tools. Yes, unit growth is slightly negative, but existing scale overwhelms that risk. The real tradeoff is terrain: franchisor-controlled procurement forces you to win a corporate deal rather than selling unit by unit. But a single yes from the franchisor unlocks the entire system—a far better bet than a wide-open field with one player.

Verdict: Budget Blinds is the only viable target here. TAM and budget outweigh procurement lock-in by an order of magnitude.