Bob:

Do you have any great ideas for marketing in a middle class neighborhood from a small, clean, meticulously maintained and middle price store that was recently reopened. It is currently turning 1 cycle per day. My objective is to raise vend cycles and launch WDF ASAP. We have been putting out 800 flyers per week. Any ideas that may help.

SB

thewashingwell@yahoo.com

I live in a small (1400 pop) town , county seat (4500pop) in entire county in SE kansas . I have a 2 bay SS carwash and thinking of adding SS laundry inplace of one carwash bay. It will be the only laundry in the entire county. will have to keep overhead low because of small population. USDA will help secure financing and I project that I can do this for less than 20K. it will be on main street across from only c-store and gas station. our electric rates here are .11/ KWH, water is high and Gas is throuh ATMOS energy. need to know how to project initial sales and initial charges for washers / dryers any help will be most appreciated. Also what would the initial number of washers and dryers be ?

Bob,

Well-written article. I have one slight correction though. Since our utility expense also includes fixed utility usage such as lighting, heating and cooling utilities; overall utility usage per customer may decrease slightly as the number of customers increases.

Larry

I was in a 2 year old, 4,000 sf, low priced laundromat last week. I was shocked to find 20% of the dryers, about 50% of the top loaders and a few of the front loaders out of service. In addition, the stainless steel fronts of the dryers and front loaders were severely tarnished.

This is a good example of how low vend pricing removes an owner's incentive to maintain high standards and good value for his customers. When low vend prices provide little or no real profit; an owner will soon direct his attention elsewhere - perhaps at another business that he owns - and conditions at the laundromat deteriorate rapidly.

When every laundromat in a market strives to be at or near the lowest vend prices, they all eventually become mirror images of each other and nobody wins - not even the customer.

Larry Adamski