One Key to Success is Setting Fair Vend Prices

After having spent so many years in the laundry business, you’d think we’d know most of the answers by now. But one answer has always escaped us: Why do so many laundry owners and operators charge far too low prices for their vended services?

Do laundromat operators have a lack of common sense? Do they fear their customers, fear of competition, or is it due to their lack of business knowledge?

As laundry operators, aren’t we entitled to a fair return on our investment, and we all know a laundry does take a considerable investment of both time and money. Our vend prices need to be fairly set for both our customers and for ourselves too.

From scattered areas throughout the west we are getting reports where operators are raising prices. This is wonderful news for our industry as a whole. For unless a laundry can make reasonable profits, it will likely begin to deteriorate as a business and may become an eyesore. To keep laundries looking good takes money and time.

Dirty, dumpy and poorly equipped was the reputation coin laundries had for many years. It was never true of our industry as a whole, but that’s how we were portrayed in movies, books, television shows and ads.

Now we are featured in commercials and sitcoms as pleasant, fun places and that really brings a certain respect from the public that helps to increase the amount of potential customers.

It helps us all if our industry has a positive image with the public.

Despite the good news about rising prices, there are still too many coin laundry operators who charge far less than they have a reason to. Fifty-cent wash is too common in western metropolitan areas, especially southern California. There, the cost to do a load is 55¢ to 65¢ a load, with depreciation, rent, utility and miscellaneous costs figured in, but makes no provision for profits.

Had laundry washer vend prices risen as much as the other costs our customers face with inflation over the years, we should be charging $2.50 a load, or more. Instead, too many of us avoid raising prices out of a fear of our customers going to the competition.

As laundry operators, we must do what is right to attain business success. Without that, we are putting our own and our f-amily’s future welfare at risk.

Vend prices must create enough of a profit to bring us a fair return on the considerable investment that any laundry operator needs to make. In the first place, we go into business to make money and to help our families. We’re not a welfare agency to help customers do cheap wash. We are businesses that must make a profit to survive.

 

---