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The first install pays for the lights. The rehang is nearly pure margin.
A 120-foot roofline at $5.50 a foot with a wreath and timer is a $760 job — and a two-person crew running 3 jobs a day for 45 working days turns that into a $102,600 season. This calculator prices the job, then prices the season, and shows why year-two rehangs are the business.
Installers use it to price the season: 120 ft at $5.50 is a $760 job, and 3 jobs a day for 45 days is a $102,600 six-week sprint.
The national band for professional install with commercial-grade LED, custom-cut cord, timers, and takedown included runs $5–$8 per linear foot for first-year installs, with $4–$5 for rehangs once you own the customer's stored lights. The first-year premium is not margin-grabbing — it covers the material (a 120-ft job carries $150–$250 of lights and cord) and the custom cutting. Never price against the big-box DIY kit; you are selling commercial C9s, exact-fit cord, a timer, takedown in January, and storage — a completely different product that happens to also be lights. Quote per foot, present as a flat job price.
The economics are extreme because the season is short and the product is leased: a single 2-person crew at 3 jobs a day grosses roughly $100,000 in 45 days at a $760 average ticket, with labor, insurance, and material as the only real costs. The killer feature is the rehang book — every customer you install this year is a $480–$600 nearly-pure-margin job next November, so year two doubles revenue without doubling marketing. The risks are real though: it is ladder work on frozen roofs (insurance is not optional), the season dies if weather closes December, and cash flow is back-loaded into 6 weeks. The operators who win book rehangs in October before the previous season's lights are even down.
The channel that outperforms everything else is your existing customer base if you run any other home-service business — landscapers, pool services, and pressure washers dominate this niche because the truck, the ladders, the insurance, and the customer list already exist, and the season fills their dead quarter. From zero: yard signs on completed jobs (every install is a billboard in a neighborhood of identical rooflines), Nextdoor and local Facebook groups in September–October, and HOA boards — one HOA approval can be 40 identical jobs. Google Ads works but the CPC spikes in November; the operators printing money stopped buying leads by year three because the rehang book refills the calendar itself.