This California laundry owner had been in the business for a long time. He had purchased the business from its second owner, so it had been open even longer. The laundry had been open long enough to finally need to replace the old dryers. He chose newer stacked units, replacing the eighteen 30 pound dryers in the laundry for twelve more efficient stacks.
Not only did he increase the businesses drying capacity by adding six pockets, but he also ended up with a lot of extra space that totaled approximately 80 square feet. At first he thought he would use the space for future dryers, then he remembered the creative ideas he had when he first bought into the laundry business.
At the time he bought the business, he had hired attendants to watch over things and take care of customers. At the beginning he had looked at doing fluff & fold and drop off dry cleaning to help defer costs for attendant wages. He soon concluded that there wasn’t enough space in the laundry to be able to offer the new service to his customers.
Now, with the extra square footage he gained with the dryer change out, he had that room, and he was still paying for the help anyway. All he needed was the proper paperwork and a few shelves and racks for hanging finished clothes. He also needed a more professional looking counter space.
The owner brought in contractors to wall in the space and build a Dutch door with a nice counter top. He added a scale and found a dry cleaner willing to do the service and then they were ready to go. Now they were set to do the new business, and were expecting a bunch of new income.
Both he and his attendants were excited at the prospect of this new service. They thought they would be swamped.
All they really forgot to do was advertise what they were prepared to do for the customers. So in the first few weeks, they got almost no business at all, either cleaning or drop off laundry. The owner thought some more and decided to go around town to see how other laundry operators were doing things.
He noticed that attendants at those other laundries actually spoke to customers and promoted the drop off business. He also saw that they had promotional signs and posters on the walls.
The owner and his manager began to research and found a source where they could buy signs. They bought and posted signs from one of the major suppliers, saying, “Do your wash in four minutes, two to drop off and two to pick up”. They also bought a series of ads in one of the local flyer publications. He bought the ads for one month. It wasn’t magic, but at least some orders finally started to come in.
It took the laundry nearly one year to get the cash flow sufficient that the owner could feel that he made a wise choice to go with adding drop off cleaning and laundry services. Within two years he wondered how he ever could be in the coin laundry trade without offering this service.
If you’d like to be in the drop off laundry and dry cleaning business, but don’t have enough room to do it, maybe you should consider an investment in new dryers yourself. If you do, you’ll not only increase your dryer cash flow, you will benefit from the extra income provided by doing drop off cleaning and laundry. It really works! | 