3 Trends from 2026’s IIBT

How do we make money? Are we doing better than last year? And what should we be measuring against to know the business is actually healthy? Every shop owner runs on some version of those three questions, and none of them can be answered in isolation. A score only means something when there’s another score next to it.

That’s the whole point of the IIBT (INNERGY Industry Benchmarking Tool). It’s free, it’s anonymous, and it’s built specifically for millwork and custom woodworking businesses. This year set a record: 148 shops across the U.S., Canada, and Australia/New Zealand submitted their 2025 numbers. In the U.S., median revenue came in at $6.5 million, down slightly from last year, with a median of 31 years in business. Here’s what stood out.

 

Trend 1: High-profit shops earn almost 2.5x the margin, and it has nothing to do with wages

 

The median U.S. shop keeps $7.50 of every $100 in operating EBITDA. The top 25% keep $17.80.

 

The easy explanation would be that high-profit firms pay their people less, but the data says no. Across every role surveyed, pay between average and upper quartile firms lands within about 4% of each other, which is noise. The gap comes from productivity: how much work moves through the shop with the team they already have.

 

Trend 2: Most shops still lose money on installation. The best shops profit from it

 

For the median U.S. firm, installation brings in $12.70 of every $100 in revenue and costs about $13 to deliver. That’s a 3% loss on every install. Installation has historically run at break-even for this industry, so most shops aren’t even losing sleep over it.

 

Upper quartile firms are running install at nearly 23% margin. Not break-even. Profitable. The data doesn’t say the top firms found some install trick nobody else knows about, but it does prove install can carry margin instead of eating it. If install is still the part of the job nobody wants to look at, that’s exactly where to look.

 

Trend 3: Revenue per employee separates the shops that are keeping up from the ones falling behind

 

Here’s a 30-second self-check. Multiply your headcount by $226,000 and compare it to your actual revenue. That’s the U.S. benchmark for a 40-person shop (the number climbs slightly as firms get larger), and upper quartile firms run about 13% above it per person.

 

One more thing the data killed: the idea that bigger shops are automatically more productive. Doubling in size only adds about 2.5% in revenue per person, so if the number above surprised you, the fix probably isn’t hiring.

 

Want to see where your shop stands?

 

The 2026 IIBT goes deeper than three trends: income statements by shop type, performance by revenue quartile, and where profit is actually made across plant-processed work, buyout, and install. The shops in this data get to answer those three questions at the top with real numbers instead of gut feel. When the next IIBT opens, participate. Less than an hour of your time buys you a benchmark you can’t get anywhere else.