Managing a Vision… Securing a Legacy

By Bob Nieman | Apr 27, 2009

In 2006, David Hinkle’s dream of upgrading the family’s self-service laundry and drycleaning business was about to become a reality. In August of that year, he broke ground on what was to become a state-of-the-art, card-operated store – a 3,000-square-foot laundry showplace in Riverton, Wyo.

Tragically, Hinkle never saw his dream take shape, as his life was cut short by a plane crash while the store’s foundation was still being laid.

But his dream didn’t die on that fall night in 2006.

His children would never let that happen.

“I came home for a visit on the weekend before my dad passed away,” said his daughter, Sarah Hinkle, who was living in Cheyenne, Wyo., at the time. “He passed away on the following Wednesday evening, and I never left. All three of us kids went to work on Thursday – and that was that.”

Sarah’s grandfather, Joe Hinkle, began the family’s drycleaning and laundry enterprise in 1946, with a store called American Laundrymat and Drycleaning, located in Lander, Wyo., which is still open and run by the family to this day.

David Hinkle joined his father in the early 1970s, working in the family’s uniform rental business. And, by 1994, he had taken over the entire operation from his dad, eventually converting that store to a card system in the late 1990s and, over the years, adding a second American Laundrymat in Riverton, which is about 30 miles north of the original laundromat and drycleaning operation in Lander.

“Our Riverton store had been around for a long time, and it was in dire need of being either renovated or replaced,” Sarah Hinkle explained. “Instead of repairing it, my dad purchased a lot next to a Wal-Mart about 10 years ago and held onto that property until he could build a new Riverton location and close down the other store.

“When he passed away, the plans were already made,” she added. “Everything was set. However, it was just dirt, with a little bit of the foundation that had been started.”

Sarah’s brother, Jess, was already working for Eagle Uniforms, the same uniform rental operation where his dad got his start in the family business. And her younger brother, Cale, who had taken a year off from college to do some traveling, cut his plans short to take over where needed.

The first order of business was to finish the Riverton laundry.

“My dad did a beautiful job of planning this store,” Hinkle said. “He did a beautiful job of talking with the contractors. The biggest issues during the build-out phase were just minor construction hang-ups, and that was just because of the inexperience of me and the contractors. None of us had ever done a laundromat before.”

Perhaps the most interesting snag during the construction phase occurred one day when Hinkle and her district manager, Bobbie, pulled up to the Riverton site to see the building that would house their new laundry painted a bright pink.

Clearly, not what David Hinkle had in mind.

“The color my dad picked out was supposed to be a dark red brick color, and when we got there, it was the color of lipstick,” she laughed.

Despite a few hiccups, in August 2007, almost exactly one year after David Hinkle first broke ground on his Riverton dream project, American Laundrymat held its grand opening.

“Everything was laid out for us,” Sarah explained. “I made a few changes that I’m sure my dad would have made anyway, if he had been there at those points in the construction process.

“All in all, he is completely responsible for this store – it’s his layout, everything. I just picked out some paint colors and floor tiles. It is his vision and his legacy. I just followed through with the plans.”

American Laundrymat, which features about $325,000 worth of laundry equipment, according to Hinkle, is located in a three-storefront strip mall that the Hinkle family owes. They lease the other two retail spaces to a Verizon Wireless store and an Advance America cash advance business.

In addition, the store is located in the heart of Riverton’s newer business district, according to Hinkle. As a result, American Laundrymat is surrounded by other small retail operations, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, banks, car washes and a host of busy destination businesses.

“It helps that we are right next to Wal-Mart,” Hinkle added. “We mention that fact in every ad that we run. We’re blessed to be where we’re located.”

What’s more, based on the laundry’s location, the Hinkles have customized the business around the particular clients within that marketplace. For instance, the oil industry is huge and very active in and around Riverton.

“We get a lot of riggers who come in to wash their greasy work clothes,” Hinkle noted. “So we have specific washers and dryers designated for them. We have a whole wall of 45-pound dryers just for them.”

Moreover, the attendants at American Laundrymat will offer the oil workers a “secret mixture” created through trial and error over the years, which has proven near-miraculous in cutting through grease and oil stains.

“It’s top secret,” Hinkle laughed, refusing to give up the recipe despite extensive prodding.

Riverton, a community of about 10,000 people, is located just off the 2-million-acre Wind River Indian Reservation. Therefore, the vast majority of the laundry’s customer base consists of Native Americans from the Arapaho and Shoshone tribes who live on that reservation.

“We have a lot of Native American culture around us,” Hinkle explained. “And the remainder of our clientele are just your average small-town people, ranchers and farmers.”

To attract this diverse mix of customers, Hinkle has done a lot of newspaper and radio advertising. In addition, she recently purchased a package of television spots that will be airing in the near future.

Of course, Riverton’s original American Laundrymat, which was closed when the new store opened last August, had been around for many years. And, if one considers the first American Laundrymat location in Lander, the Hinkle family has been doing business in the region since 1946. As a result, word-of-mouth advertising also is very strong.

With a card system, Hinkle has the flexibility to run monthly specials, giveaways and other marketing promotions designed to drive customer traffic through the door.

“We give away a lot of stuff,” Hinkle said. “It’s just a matter of getting them in there to see the store and use the card – and then they’re happy.”

And the store’s customers have had very little trouble getting up to speed with the card technology, according to Hinkle.

“Teaching them is the key,” she said. “You need to make them feel comfortable and make it not a big deal. In fact, the people we thought would be the most resistant to it – the seniors – love it. There’s been no backlash at all. We’ll take them through the entire wash process the first time with their cards.”

With two competing coin laundries within two miles of American Laundrymat, the card system has proven to be a great advantage and a nice way to differentiate the business from the other stores.

The Hinkles have done so in other ways, too – including an eight- by eight-foot children’s play area, wireless Internet access, arcade games, flat-screen TVs, “football nights,” bingo, and discounts for the military, law enforcement officers and seniors. In addition, both stores offer drycleaning; the Riverton store features a drop-off service, with all of the production done in Lander.

“But the first thing,” clarified Hinkle, who employs four laundry attendants, “is that we want to offer a clean, quality store and first-rate customer service.

“We just do what we can daily to make it work and hope that it works out,” said Hinkle, who hinted that she and her brothers are already looking to take the American Laundrymat brand statewide and beyond in the near future. “Our biggest strength is that we all have each other and we have the staff that we have.

“I don’t think it’s us – it’s the team that we have… and the fact that we really would like not to fail.”

It’s clear that failure in not an option for these third-generation entrepreneurs. And it’s perhaps just as clear that it was David Hinkle who set his children up for success at a very early age.

“He was always teaching,” Sarah said. “It was a daily thing. He was very good about telling us that he believed in us and that he loved us. That’s the most important thing. He was a teacher.”

From the way they have managed his vision and secured his legacy, the inherent teacher within David Hinkle would clearly give his daughter and sons an A+ for American Laundrymat.