Originally posted – Oct 04, 2012
All five of my laundromats are strictly self-service operations – no wash-dry-fold service, no commercial accounts, no coffee shop.
I do just one thing… and strive to do it very well.
As small-business owners, we get offered all types of different opportunities. Over the years, I’ve been presented with everything from buying more rental units to partnering in a ceiling tile cleaning franchise. And, whenever presented with such a business opportunity, I always ask myself, “What can I do better than anybody else in the world?”
Right now, that’s being a self-service laundry operator. I may not be the best yet, but that’s surely the direction in which I’m pointed.
It is very easy to become distracted and lose focus of the ultimate goal. When a new idea or opportunity comes along, our natural tendency is to think the grass is greener on the other side.
Drop-off laundry service – much like rental units, a franchise opportunity, a coffee bar or even a commercial accounts laundry service – is an entirely different business. Yes, these all can marry nicely within the self-service laundry environment, given the right store in the proper marketplace. However, make no mistake, they are very separate businesses. As such, they have entirely separate business plans and business mentalities.
Because I’ve chosen to focus on just one aspect of the coin laundry business, my attendant training is so much less complex. We target cleaning; we focus on maintaining the store; and we emphasize, above all, taking care of the customers. Period.
Seeing as we’re so streamlined, we’ve been able to adopt a business philosophy of excellence. We’ve ingrained a mentality that we will do all things with excellence – from superior customer service to keeping our stores spotless. Of course, that becomes harder and harder to achieve for laundry owners who continually add more and more separate businesses and distractions for their attendants. It drops more responsibility on everyone’s shoulders. It’s simply more moving parts on which to pay attention.
What happens when you have an attendant who is really good at keeping your store clean and taking care of the customers, but is not into making a good hot cup of coffee? Or is not particular about doing wash-dry-fold?
All of your attendants are going to have strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, those weaknesses may be magnified if you’ve got eight separate businesses running inside your laundromat.
One of the keys to success in the coin laundry business – or any business, for that matter – is providing a positive, consistent customer experience. It’s about branding who you are and making sure that your customer’s experience is a quality one every time he or she walks into your store. And the simpler you can make your operation, the easier it will be to control that experience.
There is an art to doing the same thing over and over, day after day. It doesn’t happen without a conscious effort to provide excellence. The simpler the task the more difficult it is to think of it as excellence in a day-to-day operation. We easily get tripped up into thinking, “I must do more!” In actuality, less is more.
This is an expensive business – even more expensive than it was when I got into it just a few years ago. The $50,000 and $60,000 mistakes I made back then are now $150,000 and $200,000 mistakes – those will put you out of business. The margins are so tight that a laundry owner can’t afford to make a mistake. It’s got to be right.
However, as you complicate the operation, you complicate the potential of keeping that experience a positive one, and then you create an increased opportunity of irritating your customers.
And, remember, negative comments travel much faster and farther than positive feedback. So my advice is to keep your operation basic – and do what you do incredibly well.
Keep it simple… and make it excellent!
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