Leveling the Playing Field

John Um wanted to make sure small business owners could get fair pricing and access to reliable suppliers without needing to have significant buying power. As a leader whose career spanned several major retail and e-commerce companies, he had seen firsthand how hard...

Staying Fierce: Haley Gould Finds Perfect Fit in Vended Laundry

Haley Gould is the Director of Partner Success for HappyNest. She manages an internal team while leading more than 100 partners across the United States building a successful pickup and delivery operation in addition to running their laundromat business. A consummate...

Metrics That Matter

Profit, Performance, and Planning in Vended Laundry The laundromat business is like most businesses in that you need to do a lot of things right to be successful. But how do you know if it’s working? According to successful owners, you just need to look at the...

Startup to Scale

How Western State Design Has Been Helping Laundry Businesses Thrive for More Than 50 Years For more than five decades, Western State Design has been a leading provider of turnkey laundry solutions across the vended, on-premises, and commercial/industrial markets....

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Dude, That’s a Totally Gnarly Laundromat!

Jan 26, 2015

Originally posted - Oct 11, 2013 Jason Dodge – who owns Milwaukee Laundry & Tanning in Milwaukee, Wis. – has been in the self-service laundry business since 2007. And, until recently, his store has looked pretty much like every other laundromat in town. However,...

The Future of Water

Jan 26, 2015

Originally posted - Apr 24, 2014 Water covers approximately 70 percent of the Earth's surface. However, less than 1 percent of that is available for human use – such as agricultural, domestic, commercial, industrial and environmental needs. To make matters even...

The X Factor

Jan 26, 2015

Originally posted - Dec 26, 2013 Detergent. Besides water, natural gas and electricity, it's perhaps the hottest commodity at your self-service laundry. Whether you sell it in your vending machine or over the counter, or simply prefer to let your customers bring in...

Headlines

Garment Machinery President Named to Laundrydealer.com Board

Justin Oriel, president of Garment Machinery Co. in Needham, Mass., has been named to the Board of Directors for Laundrydealer.com. "Justin has been a big champion of our commercial laundry world and the technology behind it," said Laundrydealer.com President Ilan...

CG West to Host Vended Laundry Profit Symposium

Continental Girbau West will host its 3rd annual Conference of Champions Profit Symposium on May 13-14 at the company's headquarters in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. This event - which will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days - will focus on growing vended laundry profits...

Wash with Wally: Offsetting High Water Costs

Also, Identifying Stains, Replacing Water Heaters and More... I own two self-service laundries, and the utility costs are killing me. To save money, I'm thinking about decreasing the water levels and perhaps eliminating one of the rinses on my washers. Is this a good...

Building Relationships

Here are Three Ways to Develop a Rapport with Business Owners Who Can Help Grow Your Commercial Accounts Service Once you've decided to commit to breaking into the commercial accounts segment of the laundry business, the most important factor to realize this that you...

Are You Making Your Customers Work Too Hard?

Like all businesses, self-service laundries succeed or fail for a myriad of reasons. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to interview scores of laundry owners - and, when I do, I always ask them why they think they either have succeeded or perhaps not done so...

Is a Wash-Dry-Fold Service Right for Your Store?

Previously Published Nov 21, 2013 Two years prior to opening Beverly's Laundromat in Los Angeles, I visited more than 400 laundries throughout the U.S. and Canada to assess how I could exceed customer expectations in a very competitive market. With pen and survey in...

Continental Creative Services Reaches Milestone

Continental Creative Services, a subsidiary of Continental Girbau, will celebrate its 10-year anniversary in 2015. CCS is a marketing communications company that provides marketing, advertising and public relations services to Continental distributors and their...

CG West to Host Spring Service Schools

During March and April, Continental Girbau West will hold several vended and on-premise laundry service schools at its headquarters in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. These service schools are free. The schedule is: • March 21 (9 a.m. to noon): The EH020 Service School will...

Electrolux Selected for UN Global Compact 100 Index

For the second consecutive year, Electrolux has been included as a constituent in the Global Compact 100, a stock index composed of companies that have signed the United Nations Global Compact. The GC 100 is composed of a representative group of companies with "strong...

California Apartment Association Appoints WASH Sales Manager to Chair Greater Fresno Division

WASH Multifamily Laundry Systems, headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., has announced that David Jackson, the company's district sales manager, was recently appointed advisory board chair of the California Apartment Association's Greater Fresno Division. In this role,...

CG West Announces New Vice President

Tod Sorensen has been named vice president of Continental Girbau West, a Continental Girbau subsidiary distributorship based in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. Sorensen – a laundry industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience related to distribution; management;...

Don’t Do This!

The 4 Most Common (and Costly) Mistakes Laundromat Newbies Make "Some of us learn from other people's mistakes; the rest of us have to be the other people." – Zig Ziglar Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or someone looking to be their own boss for the very first...

This Month's Issue

Green is Good Business: Green Operations Increasingly Important to Feed Consumer Demand
Women In Laundry: Lee Ann Geurts Loves a Challenge
Store Profile: Kings Laundry Kicking it in Los Angeles
Untapped Growth Opportunities
And More…

THE LATEST ON LAUNDROMATS

Industry News

Excellence ’18: ‘Renewed, Revitalized, Reimagined’

Excellence in Laundry Host Ups Its Game, As Conference Attendees Look To Do the Same Closed to guests since Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc across southwest Florida last September, the Naples Grande Beach Resort – which will host the Coin Laundry Association's upcoming...

Laundry Pro Announces Annual Expo and Open House

Laundry Pro of Florida will hold its annual Vended Laundry Expo and Open House on February 28 in Lakeland, Fla. This year's theme is "Come Buy with Me"- a play on words borrowed from the Frank Sinatra classic, "Come Fly with Me." As a result, the aeronautically themed...

Springboard Celebrates First Year, Announces Upcoming Software Update

Springboard, a cloud-based software management platform for laundry owners, is celebrating its first year in business. Since the company's launch in January 2017, Springboard has licensed its software to more than 60 store owners in 23 states. "The feedback and growth...

Remember Excellence in Ojai?

Two years ago, nearly 200 of the nation's leading laundry owners and industry executives joined their peers for two days of networking and progressive educational sessions – all set amidst the tranquil beauty of Ojai, Calif. On May 18, 2016, Coin Laundry Association...

Rental Market Report: Number of Renters Drops in 2017, But Overall Changes in the Rental Landscape Remain

For more than a decade, the number of American households that rent has expanded year after year, sometimes by more than a million renters annually. However, last year, the explosion of renters in the wake of the foreclosure crisis began to fade - for the first time...