Originally posted -Mar 01, 2013
There are several ways to bridge the gap between doing “traditional” wash-dry-fold at your store and taking it a step further to offer your customers a more finished laundry product.
A lot of laundry owners have bridged that gap by adding commercial accounts. Others have taken their businesses to the next level by doing at least some of the work typically handled by drycleaners; after all, a good percentage of the work that goes to drycleaners today is simply laundered and doesn’t even go through the actual “drycleaning process.”
With the right care and the right detergents, we, as self-service laundry owners, can do some of that drycleaning work. We also can tackle some commercial accounts or perhaps offered enhanced variations on the normal wash-dry-fold products.
What are your options for adding some type of finished products to your mix?
You can start out with something as simple as ironing – just doing shirt laundry with a regular, traditional iron.
Of course, you also can purchase a commercial ironer, which will recover more quickly and produce more heat and a better-looking finished product. Commercial ironers are electric, so you won’t require a large steam plant. Typically, you can buy one for $1,000 or less – and you will have an extremely efficient iron, with which you can do a lot of finishing work. A commercial ironer is great for clothing, as well as for finishing napkins.
The next step up is a hothead press. These also are available in electric models, so once again there is no need to buy a steam plant. Most hothead presses will plug into a 110-volt outlet; however, make sure you’ve got the right current rating for that line, because some of them require a 20-amp line to the outlet. Simply put, make sure you’ve got the right electrical supply to operate your particular press.
A hothead press will open the door to more and higher-quality flatwork for your business. It’s a hard press, so it’s not something you would want for delicate garments, but it’s perfectly suited for heavy cotton garments. It will provide you with the ability to finish garments such as jeans and lab coats.
For example, in some markets, customers prefer heavily starched jeans. You could program one of your washers to inject starch during the last rinse, and you could produce heavily starched jeans with a hothead press. Some drycleaners are charging as much as $10 for heavily starched jeans because they’re so much work. However, with a piece of equipment like this, you could easily introduce that into your mix. An experienced press operator can do about 15 pairs of jeans an hour on a hothead press – that could add up to more than $100 an hour in revenue.
Hothead presses don’t take long to heat up or cool down, so you won’t face the cost that a drycleaner does when starting up his business each morning. Drycleaners must start this large steam plant to run all of their equipment, while you’ll just be starting one piece of equipment – and you can run it for only an hour or two a day… whatever your finishing business requires.
A hothead press makes even more sense for you if you’re already offering your customers drop-off drycleaning. If you’re a drop store, you’ve already got the business there; you’re just going to do a percentage of it in-house versus sending it out, which means you’ll now keep a larger percentage of the money.
The next step up would be to do what I’ve done at my store and invest in a flatwork press. If you do (or plan to do) a lot of commercial work, this is the way to go. In fact, my commercial business has grown exponentially, thanks to this piece of equipment. Now, I can offer ironed sheets and pillow cases, as well as hospital garments; scrubs come out fabulous on this piece of equipment.
Also with the flatwork press, I can easily handle napkins and table linens, so I can go after more business from small restaurants and catering companies. Plus, I have business relationships with local banks and basically anybody else who has display tables with table linens.
You can charge a good price for this type of work, because you will be able to do a better job than a drycleaner can, since most drycleaners don’t have flatwork presses. This piece of equipment is usually found in commercial laundries, hotels and other places that do a lot of flatwork – which most drycleaners don’t.
Although the flatwork niche is outside of the drycleaning realm, it’s something that the larger commercial laundries do a lot of. But, once again, our operations are different from the big commercial facilities. Laundromats aren’t designed to do the type of volume they do, but on the other hand, commercial laundries aren’t designed to take on customer-owned goods; they’re not financially structured to handle these smaller accounts. Therefore, it’s an ideal fit to add to your small commercial business, while possibly upgrading your prices and delivering a higher-quality finished product.
Flatwork presses come in electric, gas and steam models. The best and fastest-recovering presses are steam-driven, but you don’t necessarily have to buy a steam plant to add a flatwork press to your equipment mix. For example, I have a gas-operated press. So, there are options.
These machines come in several sizes. Every manufacturer has its own sizes and types. Before buying one, be sure to consider the different types of machines, the benefits of each, the daily maintenance required and the type of work you want to do.
A fourth option for tackling more finishing work is an industrial drycleaning machine, more commonly referred to as a suzy. This piece of equipment doesn’t press garments – it steams them. It will enable you to do a variety of items; however, it won’t provide a hard finish like a press will, instead you will get a soft, wrinkle-free and still very professional look. On a suzy, you can do everything from golf shirts and lab coats to dresses – anything that typically goes over the top part of the torso.
One drawback of a suzy is that it requires an air compressor and a small steam plant. There are smaller electric steam generators available.
I’ve just outlined four simple ways for you to add finishing to your current wash-dry-fold business and upgrade your operation. Of course, each one of these machines is special and, like anything we do, training and time operating the equipment will greatly enhance an employee’s performance. For that reason, I personally limit my ironing and pressing work to just a couple of employees, who have invested the time and effort to become truly proficient at these skills.
As simple as the manufacturers have made these pieces of equipment, using them is still a skill – and your attendants need to build up those skills.
#WashDryFold #Laundry101 #PlanetLaundry #StoreOperations #TheLaundryDoctor #CommercialAccounts #CustomerService #Public #Article #BusinessManagement
