Sell Out And Retire, Or Keep Making Money

Recently, the staff of the News received a phone call from an operator who had been in the laundry industry for over twenty years. What he wanted to talk about was whether it was smart to sell his laundry business and kind of retire and kick back. His laundry is profitable and has relatively new washers, so his service problems aren’t too difficult. The neighborhood of his laundry is one of the more densely populated in his area. Like almost everyone in our industry, he complained that there are too many competitive coin laundries in the area, but as we said, he’s still very profitable. He wanted to know what we felt his laundry might be worth. We went through the income and spoke about how much of his personal time the business took. We also talked about how it affected his attitude. He still enjoyed it. The answer was obvious, but the phone conversation still took almost an hour. He agreed that it was far better for him to keep the laundry rather than sell it. Although in his sixties, he wanted to stay active, even if he was kind of retired. He had made a lot of friends, both among his customers and a few friendly competitors. We didn’t change his mind. All we did was serve as a sounding board for him to talk over the idea. When he heard his own answers to the questions, he felt better about staying in the coin laundry business. In fact, he sounded just as excited about our industry as if he were brand new to it. When you enjoy doing something, it’s always a much more exciting and easier thing to do. His decision could have been a different one had he not been making good money. If his equipment were causing him a lot of problems and he wasn’t doing so well financially, his attitude could have been less enthusiastic and it is likely he might have decided that selling was the right thing to do. The point of this story is that the coin laundry business, like most other types of -businesses, can be a real thief of time. Running a laundry can sap your energy and give you a bad attitude about life. Or, it can energize and enthuse you. Over the years, our observation has been that those who are having fun do the best job of running their business. It’s hard to have fun if your equipment is junk and gives you lots of problems. It’s tough to be upbeat when you’re not making much money. If a laundry is not paying for your time, or is paying very little, it’s difficult to stay enthusiastic. Those who keep their laundries bright, clean and cheerful with good equipment are likely to be the happy laundry operators. Those who maintain equipment in excellent working order are likely to earn the most. How about you? Are you happy and still excited about the laundry biz? We hope so.