‘At the Heart and Soul of Humanity’

By Bob Nieman | May 12, 2009

Susannah and Lary Robinson’s lives were already pretty hectic even before they decided to open a self-service laundry.

Lary is surgeon. Susannah is a freelance writer who specializes in Florida’s high-end real estate market. And the couple has three sons who keep their personal time as jammed up as their professional hours.

Enough said. This couple was looking for a business opportunity with a nice return and some flexibility.

“We actually researched it for a couple of years,” said Susannah, who runs the store on a day-to-day basis. “We were looking for ways to expand our income and not necessarily have all of our eggs in only a couple of baskets.

“In 2002, we started looking at apartment buildings. However, we also were combing through the local newspapers for different types of businesses for sale.”

One of the businesses they researched were, of course, laundromats – visiting several stores for sale (and some not on the market) in and around the Tampa Bay-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.

“We came to the conclusion that, for a similar investment in an apartment building, we could purchase a laundry and generate an even higher return,” Robinson said. “Plus, it’s a less-intensive business than retail, for example, where you have inventory to stock and you’re purchasing ahead for different seasons. We really didn’t want to have inventory. We wanted something that was a little bit lower maintenance, and in comparison to restaurants and retail stores, a laundry is definitely on the lower maintenance end. It’s not without its challenges, but it certainly has less labor and more flexibility.”

The next step the Robinsons took was to attend a seminar by Statewide Laundry Equipment in Tampa. In addition to some valuable business management advice, this educational session provided the couple with an inside track on a new laundry that Statewide was preparing to build in Tampa.

That new store would eventually become the couple’s long-sought business opportunity – Laundromart on Bearss.

“The store that Statewide was planning ended up being in an area that was close to where we live, as well as being in an incredible area demographically,” Susannah said. “So we jumped.”

When the Robinsons came on board in 2003, the distributor had already selected the strip center in which the store would be located and was in the beginning stages of hammering out a lease.

The space itself was a 4,700-square-foot former nightclub that had been vacant for about three years.

“We finished negotiating the lease and were very involved in the design and layout of the store,” said Robinson, who began work on Laundromart on Bearss in February 2004. “Having been a bar, it had a dancing pit in the middle of the floor – a cement pit had been carved out. We had to fill that in. In fact, we completely gutted the place and started over. The only things we kept were the restrooms. We just refurbished those.

“A lot of older laundromats are designed like tunnels or caves,” she added. “When we laid out our store, we did it on a diagonal. All of the machines and even the ceramic tile are on the diagonal. It gives the store a more spacious, open feel.”

In August 2004, after a six-month build-out phase that cost just under $300,000 (not including the laundry equipment), the Robinsons new laundry venture was ready for business.

And, thanks to the local government, the couple was up about $20,000 even before the first customer’s load finished rinsing.

“In Florida, they have tax-incentive areas,” Robinson explained. “And our store is located in an ‘enterprise zone.’ There are areas where the city, the county and the state are trying to improve the area, so they give tax incentives for businesses there. We actually received a number of tax incentives in that regard.”

The Robinsons received money back on the tax portion of all of the materials that were used in the build out, as well as for the taxes that were paid on the equipment. Furthermore, the couple earned a job tax credit on two full-time employees for their first two years in business.

“We found out about the tax incentives through our local Small Business Development Center,” Robinson noted. “Most states have one. They’re usually affiliated with a university.”

However, it was more than just the tax incentives that attracted the Robinsons to their current laundry marketplace.

“Our area is heavily Hispanic,” Robinson explained. “It also has a lot of older apartments. We actually have a great mix of customers from all over the world.”

In fact, the international feel at Laundromart on Bearss is so pronounced that the Robinsons have begun to hang flags in their laundry, each one representing the store’s customers and the different parts of the world from where they originated.

“I think we have 37 countries represented now,” she said. “This started off as just a laundromat, but it’s really become more of a community gathering place where you happen to do laundry. We have regulars who are almost not even customers anymore. They’re friends who we get to see on a weekly basis. We’ve celebrated marriages and cried about funerals. It’s been remarkable. It’s at the heart and soul of humanity.”

The Robinsons laundry business also is at the heart and soul of the area’s business district, surrounded by apartments and a number of thriving destination businesses, including fast-food restaurants and supermarkets.

To differentiate themselves from the four other coin laundries within their store’s bustling, two-mile market radius, the Robinsons did a lot of advertising in the beginning.

“We were new,” Robinson said. “It wasn’t like we were just under new management and people knew we were here. We needed to say, ‘Hello, here we are!’”

Robinson said she discovered that the most effective vehicles for getting the word out about her particular business were coupons in local, weekly mailers and ads in the local university directory, since the store is located near the University of South Florida.

The couple advertises its drop-off laundry business separately.

“Because we’re a new business, wash-dry-fold has been our greatest area for potential growth – and our greatest challenge,” Robinson said.

She added that the store has been able to attract a few commercial accounts, such as massage therapists and chiropractors, but the majority of their drop-off business has, thus far, come from individuals.

Beyond advertising, the Robinsons have been able to separate their business from the competition through top-notch customer service.

“It all boils down to customer service, and everything spirals out from there,” said Robinson, who employs four attendants and a full-time manager. “I train our attendants that we’re not in the laundry business. We’re in the business of taking care of people. This includes not only our customers but our employees as well – no one is left out. We have a very specific policy that the customers feel taken care of.”

But, first, Robinson had to learn how to best take care of her employees.

“There has been a lot of growth from my own standpoint in learning how to work with people,” she said. “Anytime you’re dealing with people, it can become a variable.

“A lot of businesses tend to micromanage their employees, to babysit them. Sometimes that’s because there aren’t measures in place – checks and balances to keep everything straight and on the up and up.”

At Laundromart on Bearss, everything is on the up and up – and things are looking up for the three-year-old laundry business. The business is running so smoothly that Robinson has been able to back off of the brutal 100-hour workweeks she was putting in at the store during the early days. Now, she’s cut back to about 10 hours a week in the store, which leaves her more time for her writing career, as well as her family.

Meanwhile, Lary Robinson currently puts in a few hours in the laundry every weekend.

With this new-found “free time,” might the Robinsons be mulling over a second laundry purchase?

“We are very satisfied and content with this store,” said Robinson, whose laundry is open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to midnight on weekends. “It has been a good experience. When we first opened, we started looking at a second one right away. But at that point, it was a little too early. After all, we had just gotten our feet wet with this one.

“We continue to look, and if opportunities arise, we evaluate them. For right now, nothing has come up. Then again, we have a great measuring stick. We have an awesome store demographically. Money-wise, it has done very well, and it’s a very high bar by which to measure other laundries.

“Quite frankly, when we begin looking at other possible stores for us, we end up saying, ‘Well, it’s not as good as ours.’ And until we see another one that measures up, we’re very content with what we’ve got.”