Hitting ‘The Mother Load’

By Bob Nieman | Oct 27, 2009

Coin laundry robberies aren’t all that unusual. And, unfortunately, a laundromat getting hit by thieves twice in just under two years wouldn’t raise many eyebrows.

What’s more, most laundry crooks are after the cold, hard cash in the washers’ and dryers’ money boxes, as well as in the bill changers. And they usually leave quite an extensive – and expensive – amount of damage to the store and its equipment.

Not so at The Mother Load Laundry, based in Beaver Bay, Minn., which has been knocked over twice since opening in December 2007.

The laundry “bad guys” who targeted The Mother Load wanted… actual laundry.

“I have security cameras in the store,” explained owner Ellie Korpi. “And twice I’ve had people steal from me. But, both times, I looked them up on the cameras, and I tracked them down and asked them for my stuff back.

“I have purple towels in the restroom,” she continued. “Somebody stole them because they’re Minnesota Vikings colors. In the other incident, a customer had left a large blanket and a sleeping bag in the dryers, so I took them out, folded them and left them on the counter – but some other customers came through and stole them.

“I just had to go to their house and say, ‘Those aren’t yours. Can I have them back?’ And they gave them to me. They’re still customers, and we’re still friends. That’s the end of it.”

Clearly, Beaver Bay – population 175 on the north shore of Lake Superior – is not your typical laundromat market, nor is The Mother Load your typical coin laundry. And Ellie Korpi is definitely not your typical owner.

Korpi and her husband, Jim, opened The Mother Load on December 31, 2007. The store name is quite appropriate, given that both co-owners have strong ties to the mining industry prevalent in the area.

“Jim is the plant operations manager for Northshore Mining,” Ellie said. “He goes between here and a mine that’s about 70 miles back in the woods. My background is all in construction and mining. I worked construction for eight years, and then I was hired by the mining company and put in 16 years there, until I lost my job because of an inoperable back injury in 2004.”

But she wasn’t ready to retire. So, Ellie Korpi, who works part-time at the local post office, began looking for entrepreneurial opportunities in Beaver Bay.

During this time, she and Jim had decided to demolish their small house and re-build a larger one on the same property. As the new house was being built, the Korpis lived in a small shed on their land.

“We lived in there for about seven months, and while we were doing that, we were without a washer or dryer,” she explained. “That’s when I realized the need for a nice, clean laundromat. Plus, it was something I could do myself. I wouldn’t have to hire employees. It would be a good job for me. And, if go fishing or something, Jim could always babysit the store for me.”

As fate would have it, the perfect location for the Korpis to put their laundromat plan into action became available a couple of years ago.

“It had been an existing restaurant supplier called Lake Superior Sausage,” Korpi explained. “It’s just across the road from my house, and I even worked for the owner at one point. He made sausages and sold them to restaurants and tourists. People came from all over the world to buy his stuff.”

Unfortunately, the owner died in a skiing accident, and his wife was eager to get out from under the 10-year-old, 1,200-square-foot building.

“I can keep an eye on it from home,” Korpi said. “It’s only 100 yards away. His widow sold it to me in the fall of 2007. The paperwork went through in October 2007, and we started on the renovation right away.

“He had large walk-in coolers and freezers, as well as big stainless steel sinks,” she added. “I had to sell all of that stuff – all of that came out. The only things that we left were the restroom and the furnace. Everything else was gone.”

One issue arose from the fact that the building features in-floor heat.

“We needed to hammer out the floor in a couple of spots, through the tile and the concrete,” Korpi said. “We dug down about five feet in two spots to install larger drain traps. Also, we anchored our larger machines into the concrete, the existing slab – and we hit the in-floor heating tubes seven times during the process.”

However, for the most part, the transition from Lake Superior Sausage to The Mother Load Laundry was a smooth one – partly because Korpi had a strong team working on the new store.

“We put my dad in charge,” she said. “He dealt with all of the contractors. My dad, Buck Thompson, was a construction man for many years, and he’s millwright by trade. He’s done it all, and he kept everybody on the ball.

“My family has a strong construction background. In fact, my brother, Gary, is the building inspector, so he kept us on the straight and narrow, too. There was no getting done with something and then realizing it wasn’t going to cut it.”

Of course, Ellie’s own background in the construction industry – which includes drilling, blasting and surveying in such places as Texas, Michigan and the Dakotas – has provided her with solid connections as far as equipment and knowledge are concerned.

Once the construction phase was finished, Ellie’s sister, Vickie, and her friend, Lori, put the finishing touches on the new coin laundry’s décor – filling the store with antiques, homey decorations and other quaint, laundry-related items, such as hand-sewn curtains pulled back with clothespins.

All in all, the construction and equipment costs for the three-month renovation project totaled approximately $185,000.

Located between Duluth and Thunder Bay, Beaver Bay is extremely tourist-oriented. But that doesn’t necessarily make The Mother Load’s business seasonal, because there is something going on there year-round – camping and fishing in the summer, hunting in the fall, and skiing and snowmobiling in the winter.

“They don’t all necessarily do their laundry at my place, but they do hit the restaurants, bars and the state park, and those people bring their laundry to me,” explained Korpi, whose unattended laundry is open 24 hours a day. “I don’t pick up or deliver for these commercial accounts, because I work part-time for the post office and, if they need me, I’m going to go work there. But I can come home from the post office and do laundry at night.”

The local state park brings its bedding to The Mother Load, and the store also gets business from area resorts and restaurants.

“I charge as many quarters as it takes to wash and dry the items, plus an extra $4 a load for labor and soap,” she said.

As for the laundry’s walk-in business, the store attracts some of the many tourists, as well as Beaver Bay residents who don’t own washers and dryers. Plus, The Mother Load has proved quite popular with loggers, miners and other working in the area for extended periods.

“And, lately, there has been a terrible rash of people’s washing machines breaking down,” Korpi said, with a chuckle. “It’s been awesome.”

To keep her washers and dryers turning, Korpi has actively markets The Mother Load with a number of promotions.

“After I had been open for a year, I offered a week-long anniversary special where customers could bring in their laundry, and I would do it for just for the price of the quarters is required to run the machines.”

After deer hunting season, Korpi provides a special wash-dry-fold service in which customers can bring in their wool hunting clothes to be washed, line-dried and packed away in cedar boughs.

“You can take them home, and just put them away until the following deer season – and they smell like cedar instead of soap,” said Korpi, who estimated that she spends about 30 hours a week working in her coin laundry.

Also, every Wednesday The Mother Load features reduced vend prices on all of its double-loading machines.

Despite all of her marketing efforts, Korpi still considers word-of-mouth advertising to be her “best friend – far and above.”

“This area is full of little towns scattered in the woods and along the lake,” she noted. “And we hunt and fish and snowmobile. So, we snowmobile to all of these little taverns, and we know everyone. And when customers go to their restaurants or taverns and want to know where they can wash their clothes, every one of them sends them to my place. You wouldn’t believe it. It’s just absolutely awesome. Word of mouth is my very best friend, right down to the owners of the grocery stores and the woman who sells the fishing licenses.”

To keep that positive word of mouth coming, Korpi does her best to differentiate herself from the competing laundry in town, as well as the laundromat in neighboring Silver Bay, about three miles away.

“What brings my customers here is the fact that my place is super clean,” she said. “It’s really nice. I’m down there six times a day cleaning it. I can see it from my house, and I can see when I’ve got customers. I’ll get down there and clean up after them. I keep the grass cut in the summer. And, in the winter, as it’s snowing, I’ll run over there and plow out the parking lot after every two or three inches.

“I pay close attention to cleanliness and maintenance. I have quick response to my customers’ concerns, and most of them know that I live right next door.”

And Korpi’s customers have grown to appreciate the extra effort Ellie puts into The Mother Load.

“It was really slow at first,” she admitted. “I’d go three days without getting a customer, and that was hard – making those big equipment payments and looking at an empty parking lot. It took a while for people to find us.”

But, as business began to build, Korpi noticed that some of her customers were leaving her short notes, telling her how just much they enjoyed doing their laundry in her store.

Eventually, Korpi put out a notebook to encourage her customers to share their thoughts.

“I’m already on my second notebook, and you wouldn’t believe the beautiful things that people write,” she said. “It’s just awesome – and they come from every state in the union and almost every province in Canada.”