Not Her Father’s Coin Laundry

By Bob Nieman | May 12, 2009

Emelie Fairchild is following in her father’s footsteps… after a few detours along the way.

For more than 20 years, Ray Broullire, owned and operated the successful Norge Town Coin Laundry in Iron Mountain, Mich. And, today, his daughter, Emelie, and son-in-law, Jesse Fairchild, operate a laundromat in the very same 1,500-square-foot storefront space in which Broullire built his thriving business decades ago.

However, despite practically growing up in the self-service laundry business in Iron Mountain, it wasn’t always clear that Emelie would be succeeding her dad in the business.

In fact, for a few years, there was quite literally no coin laundry business to pass down to the next generation.

In 1999, Norge Town Coin Laundry, which was an unattended store, was severely vandalized.

“That was the last straw for my dad,” said Emelie, who, at the time, had moved away from her hometown and was teaching high school Spanish. “The store was vandalized pretty badly, so he just let it go. He closed the doors. The clientele was down, and he just got sick of fixing things that couldn’t be fixed anymore. He was working other full-time jobs and was completely burned out.”

The popular Norge Town sat vacant for three years. Then, in 2002, Emelie and Jesse, also a Michigan native, moved back to Iron Mountain, with a plan to breathe new life into the venerable family business.

The Fairchilds completely renovated the laundry facility, with Jesse – who has a background in electrical engineering and still works full time for a defense contractor in the area – doing much of the work himself.

“We fixed the lighting and got it looking really nice,” Emelie explained. “We re-opened the doors that year, and started building up the clientele again. We started gaining people’s trust back.”

The family business was back in business again.

However, the store was still unattended, and the vandalism that eventually drove Ray Broullire out of the business was still an occasional issue, especially in the coin laundry’s restroom.

Then, one day in 2003, that vandalism turned into arson. Apparently, someone stuck a lit match or perhaps a smoldering cigarette butt into a small hole that had been made in the bathroom wall. The spark grew into a flame, and in no time at all, the wall, and eventually the entire store, was ablaze.

The laundry, which the Fairchilds had worked so hard to restore, was a total loss – a victim of the same type of vandalism that put Emelie’s father out of business just a few years earlier. However, Emelie and Jesse weren’t about to close the doors on their growing new business venture.

As they had done just one year earlier, after leasing the laundry building from Emelie’s dad, “we gutted it,” she explained. “We weren’t able to save anything. My dad had full coverage insurance, so we were able to completely re-do the store. We started with a brand new store when we opened the doors back up.”

The renovation from the fire took almost a full year. Jesse played an integral part in this process, setting up all of the necessary appointments and business meetings, researching laundry equipment, and getting the store back up and running stronger than ever.

During that renovation period, the Fairchilds, who have three children – Mia, 7, Will, 3 and Mariana, 1 – also had ample time to re-evaluate their past business model. As a result, when the laundry re-opened for the second time, it was with a new name, Washboard Coin Laundry, as well as brand new equipment and, most importantly, a new business philosophy.

“We changed the business a bit,” Emelie explained. “We were tired of being beat up. Today, you can’t leave anything unattended. We figured that, if we were going to do this, we had to do it the right way. That’s when we made the decision to have an attended store.

“This enabled us to offer other services, such as wash-dry-fold and drop-off drycleaning,” she added. “It’s a completely different store than it used to be. People enjoy those services. It’s a convenience world now, and we’re able to play into that a little bit.

“That’s where the cash is. Obviously, our coin business is good, too. But we couldn’t afford to run an attended store without the drop-off business.”

Today, the Washboard currently has five part-time attendants. And as a former teacher, Emelie Fairchild is a stickler for solid employee training.

“My teaching background has helped,” she admitted. “That’s my strength. I work closely with the girls and try to keep everyone on the same page as far as the services we offer and how we offer them.”

One of the growing services at the Washboard is its commercial laundry business. With Iron Mountain being somewhat of a tourist area, there are a few resorts located near the Fairchilds’ store – and these businesses have proven to be strong commercial accounts for the coin laundry.

“We also have a couple of cleaning companies that go into houses after fires or floods,” explained Emelie, who handles the pickup and deliver for the commercial segment of the business. “We take all of their laundry. And now that we offer drop-off drycleaning, we can take that, too.”

The Washboard charges $1 per pound for its commercial work, versus 70 cents per pound for residential wash-dry-fold. Overall, the Fairchilds’ drop-off clients represent about 15 percent of the couple’s total business.

The majority of the store’s walk-in business comes from Iron Mountain and the neighboring town of Kingsford, which together combine for a population of about 15,000.

“We get a lot of business from both areas,” Emelie said. “The self-service portion of the business is a little bit higher end. We keep our prices about a quarter higher than most laundries in town. Historically, that’s how this laundromat has always been.

“We get a lot of people who actually have washers and dryers, but they come in to use our machines because they’re bigger. We also have a lot of wells in our area, so some people don’t want to hurt their well systems with detergents or dry out their wells. And with the drought this season, we have a lot of customers coming to the store because they’re saving their wells.”

To keep a nice mix of walk-in, wash-dry-fold, commercial and drop-off drycleaning customers coming through their doors, the Fairchilds rely on a strong location in the heart of Iron Mountain’s business district.

“We’re on the first major intersection coming into town from the north,” Emelie said. “We get a lot of traffic. And I have my large washers right up front in the windows, screaming, ‘Use us!’”

The building that houses the Washboard, which is still owned by Emelie’s father, also features a home health office that is affiliated with the local hospital, as well as an office equipment store. Other businesses in the area include a gas station, an ice cream parlor and a bike shop.

In addition, the couple occasionally takes advantage of local newspaper and radio advertising, along with passing out flyers within their marketplace.

But, by far, the Fairchilds’ best marketing strategy has been their ability to cultivate a healthy dose of word-of-mouth advertising.

“I’m very friendly with my customers,” Emelie said. “Whenever I’m collecting my machines, I always give out handfuls of quarters to my customers and say, ‘This is my advertising budget for the week.’”

The store also features a Wash Club, where customers who use the laundry regularly are rewarded with a free wash after every 10 visits.

“People love getting something for free,” Emelie noted. “In fact, even a quarter makes a big difference.”

The Washboard can program its machines for special time-of-day and day-of-the-week pricing. For instance, the store offers a $1 cold wash on all of its machines from 7 to 9 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

“With the economy being tight right now, people are looking for any discount they can,” she said. “People seek that out. I knew that having those options on the machines would be good, but I didn’t know how good.”

The Washboard’s drop-off drycleaning business also has helped the Fairchild’s coin laundry business.

“It’s a whole other market,” Emelie said. “But when those customers see how nice the store is, they return with their comforters and sleeping bags.”

At the Washboard, the physical act of washing and drying clothes is not necessarily the main focus.

“We’re not just selling clean laundry here,” explained Emelie, who often offers free coffee and cookies to her customers. “We’re selling an experience. Our customers come in and want to have a conversation. They want the store to be inviting. They want it to be warm. They want it to be welcoming.

“Many laundries are so grim and down and dingy. They’re not bright. We know we need to have a bright, clean, inviting business.”

The store’s original owner would no doubt second that philosophy whole-heartedly.

“My dad is a very friendly, personable guy,” Emelie said. “He always said that you have to be around the store, show your face and let people know that you care about them. Treat them good and they’ll come back, he says. Never let anybody go out the door dissatisfied with their experience at your laundry.”

Emelie and Jesse Fairchild seem to be carrying on that particular family tradition quite nicely.