Look How Far We’ve Come. Another Point of View.

Together we are stronger.

This conversation has been simmering in our industry for a while now. Last week it boiled over again. Posts about who owns what. Talk of boycotts. People hunting for anything that isn’t “big” or “corporate” and swearing off the rest.

I understand the feeling. But after more than 40 years in this business, first on stages around the world, then as a studio owner, and for more than 30 years working beside dance teachers and studio owners, I’m going to offer another point of view.

These businesses are not the enemy.

🤝 They Are Part of Our Community

The companies getting the pushback didn’t show up to wreck anything. They showed up because they want to serve this industry. They see dance as something worth investing in.

Stop and think about what that means. When Angie and I started, nobody outside the dance world took a dance studio seriously as a business. Today, serious money looks at what we do and sees something viable and sustainable. That’s not a threat. That’s how far we’ve come.

Our industry grew up. The people buying in are a sign of it.

🔍 Don’t Villainize. Evaluate.

I’m not telling you who to do business with. Work with the family-run competition that’s been around 30 years. Work with the founder who still answers her own phone. Those are great choices, and there are more of them than ever.

What I’m asking is that we stop villainizing the rest, because size has never once told me how a company would treat me.

The questions that actually matter are the same for every company, no matter who owns it:

•             Are they serving your needs?

•             Are they receptive, and do they listen?

•             Are they delivering the product or service in an amazing way?

If the answer is yes, it doesn’t matter whose name is on the cap table. If the answer is no, it doesn’t matter how small or local they are.

📏 Bigger Doesn’t Mean You Lower the Bar

Because a company is bigger, or in some cases more corporate, doesn’t mean you sacrifice your integrity or your expectations. You hold them to the same standard you’d hold anyone. Higher, if anything, because they have the resources to meet it.

And let’s put one more rumor to bed. For a while the word going around was that bigger companies would homogenize teaching and stifle creativity. That every studio would end up running the same syllabus, the same recital, the same classes, like franchises.

We aren’t losing our artistry. We aren’t selling our souls.

Nobody invests in a dance studio to make it generic. They invest because of what makes it special: the teachers, the culture, the way a kid lights up walking in the door. Strip that out and you’ve destroyed the thing you paid for. Every buyer I’ve ever met understands that.

🚀 Think About What Your Studio Could Do

Here’s the part nobody in the threads is talking about.

Think about what your studio could do with an investor behind it. More outreach programs. Scholarships for families who can’t afford tuition. A real raise for your faculty and staff. New floors, new space, a second location you’ve been dreaming about for a decade.

Sometimes that’s exactly what drives these mergers and acquisitions: an owner who built something great and wants to do more with it than their own bank account allows.

And sometimes it’s the opposite. A studio is struggling to maintain or grow. It’s burning through cash. Selling is the best path forward to keep the doors open and the kids dancing. That’s not failure. That’s an owner making a smart decision for their community.

One size does not fit all. Some pass it to a daughter. Some sell to a teacher. Some sell to a group. Some never leave. Every one of those is a legitimate choice made by a capable adult who built something.

The only bad exit is the one you never planned.

📊 The Choice Has Never Been Bigger

Here are the facts the graphics leave out.

Put a number on it. IBISWorld counts about 14,600 dance studio businesses in the United States, and that count has grown roughly 2% a year for the last five years. Strip out the ballroom chains and the franchises, which together add up to a few hundred locations, and you’re left with more than 13,000 independently owned dance studios in the U.S. alone. Add Canada, where the major directories list another 2,000 to 3,000 studios, and you’re looking at 15,000-plus independent studios across North America.

And how many of those belong to investor-backed groups? The largest operates around 125 schools, and most of those are music schools, not dance. The other groups people name have a few dozen locations across every youth activity combined, or none in dance at all. Put every investor-owned dance studio in North America in one room and you’d struggle to fill a hotel ballroom. By the most generous count, they add up to less than 2% of the studios in this country. The other 98% are independent.

Competitions tell the same story. According to DanceFinder’s 2026-27 season catalog, nearly 200 competition brands run in North America, putting on more than 3,400 events a year. The investor-backed groups everyone’s worried about own around 30 of those brands. The other 160-plus are owned by the families and founders who started them, and more than 50 of those belong to an association built specifically for independently owned competitions.

It’s the same across the board. Costume houses run by the people who cut the first pattern. Flooring, backdrops, software, curriculum, dancewear, fundraising and events owned by people you can call directly and reach on the first try.

If you want to work only with independent companies, you can do that today and for the rest of your career. There’s no shortage of choice in this industry. There’s an abundance of it.

There’s room for everyone. In my town there’s a Lowe’s, a Home Depot and a local hardware store, and I use all three. My favorite is the small local one. The guy knows my name and knows what I came in for before I say it. But I’m not boycotting the big guys because a corporation owns them. When I need something at 8 PM on a Sunday, I’m glad they’re there.

That’s all I’m suggesting. Keep your local favorite. Just don’t cut out the bigger option because of who owns it. Judge them on how they treat you.

That’s exactly why we built Assemblé and why we run the DTW Conference & Expo the way we do: a room full of companies you can look in the eye and ask, “Who owns you?” Every one of them will answer. So will we.

✅ Five Questions to Ask Any Company Before You Sign

Negative vibes don’t protect your studio. Questions do. These are the five we’ve used for 40 years with vendors, partners and buyers of every size. We used them on our own buyer, too.

1.          Who owns you, and will you tell me plainly?

2.          What happens to my pricing and my contract if you’re sold?

3.          Who do I call when something goes wrong, and will that person still be there next year?

4.          Give me three studio owners I can call who have worked with you for more than five years.

5.          What do you do for my studio that I can’t get anywhere else?

A good company of any size answers all five without flinching. Print it, keep it at the front desk and use it on everyone. Including us.

👉Download the Checklist here

And if you’ve never run the numbers on what your studio is worth, do it today, whether you plan to sell next year or never. It takes five minutes and it’s free!

Run the free Studio Valuation Calculator

Full breakdown of how studio valuation works:

Read How Much Is Your Studio Worth?

📋 For the Record

Since our names have shown up on some of these graphics, let’s set the record straight.

Dance Teacher Web, the DTW Conference & Expo, Studio 360 and Assemblé are owned by Angela D’Valda Sirico and Steve Sirico. No investors, no private equity, no holding company, no outside board.

After nearly 40 years, we sold D’Valda & Sirico Dance and Music Centre to Ensemble Performing Arts. Ensemble is an operating company. It owns and runs music and dance schools, as well as competitions and other services for the dance world, and the founder who started it still runs it today. Like most growing companies, it has had investor backing along the way. None of that told us how we’d be treated. The people did, and we vetted them with the same five questions above.

We’re proud of that decision. Our students kept their school, it still carries our name, and we planned our exit on our own terms. Since the sale I’ve consulted for Ensemble, as I do for other companies in our industry and for studio owners directly. They have no ownership, no role and no say in anything Dance Teacher Web does.

DTW has hosted sessions on how to sell a studio, including one with Ensemble’s founder. They’re still on our site. Owners asked how a sale works, so we put the answers in front of them, in public. That’s education. It’s what we do.

💪 Together We Are Stronger

At the DTW Conference and at Assemblé, you’ll meet family-owned companies, founder-run companies and companies backed by investors, all in the same room, all there for the same reason: to serve studio owners. We don’t hide that and we don’t apologize for it. Our job is to put as many good choices in front of you as we can. Yours is to pick the one that’s right for your studio.

This industry is big enough for all of us. Independent studios, family competitions, founder-run suppliers and well-funded groups, side by side, each held to the same standard: serve the studio owner well or lose their business.

That’s not a threat to our community. That is our community. And it’s stronger than it has ever been.

Questions? Ask me directly. I answer my own email.

Steve@danceteacherweb.com

Steve and Angie

Co-Founders Dance Teacher Web

 

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