Season one is seasonal-only, by design
Phase 1 is the seasonal line — lower capital, lower regulatory risk, no licensing gate. It proves the crew and the ops before any capital touches the permanent line's open question. Numbers below are a model to argue with, not a forecast.
Cold-start benchmark, adjusted for a warm database
Christmas Lights HQ's published financial blueprint gives a cold-start 3-tier model. Team Armored isn't cold-starting — it has ~52,000 roofing contacts, a known roofline per contact, and an existing trust relationship. No source anywhere quantifies a warm-database conversion multiplier — that's this plan's own reasoning, not a sourced figure, so treat the "Team Armored" column as a hypothesis to validate against real Q4 booking data, not a promise.
| Scenario | Cold-start jobs | Cold-start revenue | Team Armored read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 14 | $21,000 | Floor, even with zero database advantage |
| Mid | 36 | $70,200 | Realistic target — matches the 75-install capital tier |
| Aggressive | 83 | $186,750 | Needs only ~150 paid leads to convert at this rate — plausible against a 52K-contact base even at a low conversion rate, unproven |
Why the aggressive tier isn't a fantasy
CLHQ's aggressive tier requires converting roughly 150 paid leads out of a cold, purchased audience. Team Armored's warm database is ~350x that size and starts from an existing trust relationship, not a cold ad click. That doesn't guarantee the conversion rate holds — it's the argument for treating 83 jobs as reachable, not for assuming it.Sources: Christmas Lights HQ — Business Plan / Financial Blueprint
What each scenario costs to inventory
Extrapolated from Christmas Lights HQ's per-job material ratio (~$2,000–3,000 covers 15–20 jobs), not a source-published table — flag as directional, not confirmed. Excludes tooling Team Armored already owns (ladders, trucks); includes labeled storage totes, a clip pole, voltage tester, GFCI adapters.
What's left after materials and labor
| Line | $/ft |
|---|---|
| First-year retail | $5–10 |
| − Wholesale material | −$1.10–1.70 |
| − Install labor (piece rate) | −$0.80–2.00 |
| Gross margin, year one | ≈ 46–75% |
| Renewal retail (labor only) | $2–5 |
| − Install labor (piece rate) | −$0.80–2.00 |
| Gross margin, renewal | Thinner $/ft, no material cost, no CAC |
The real target is renewal rate, not year-one revenue
A landscaping-company case study (Naylor Landscape Management, an established operator adding holiday lighting) reports a 75% renewal rate. Year one is customer acquisition; the business's real economics show up in year two, when material cost disappears and CAC is already sunk.What Phase 1 revenue doesn't include
This page prices seasonal only. It does not include any permanent-line revenue — that's Phase 2, gated on the licensing question in Risks & Gates. If a fraction of season-one seasonal customers convert to a $4,000–6,000 permanent job once Phase 2 opens, that's straightforwardly additive — but it's not counted in any number on this page, deliberately, until the gate clears.