One Man’s Junk… Is Another Man’s Small-Business Idea

By Bob Nieman | May 11, 2009

Larry Belfer is quick to tell you that he’s an idea guy.

“My business strength is that I can take a piece of junk and turn it around,” claimed the 53-year-old New Jersey entrepreneur. “I’ve been doing that for more than 20 years.”

Belfer discovered his Midas touch in the early 1980s, when he arrived in Atlantic City as a newly minted Penn State graduate with a marketing degree and a desire to run his own show. After a stint with Resorts International, Belfer decide to strike out on his own.

Ironically, at first he was considering opening a coin laundry, but then a different opportunity came knocking. And it was a chance for the young man to resurrect a small piece of Atlantic City’s colorful past.

Back in 1884, as demand for additional beachfront space in Atlantic City rose, the famed Boardwalk grew. This expansion led to the invention of what would soon become a city staple, the rolling chair.

It was a canopied chair designed to be pushed from behind, and it made traveling the length of the ever-expanding Boardwalk easier for wealthy vacationers.

“The chairs on the Boardwalk were big in the 1920s and ’30s, when Atlantic City was in its heyday,” Belfer explained. “In fact, it was the second largest business in the city at the time, other than the hotels.”

However, by the 1960s, the quaint idea of the Atlantic City rolling chairs had fallen out of favor. And, by the 1970s, the rolling chair business was dead.

Fast-forward to 1984. Enter a young, aggressive Larry Belfer, who doesn’t know – or care – that the rolling chair business is dead and probably cannot be brought back to life.

“I took the junk,” he said. “It cost only about $4,000 to pick up these chairs and, in all, about $10,000 to $20,000 to get into business, once we repaired them.

“Basically, I turned 100 pieces of junk into a thriving taxi business,” Belfer added. “When I took it over, the business was non-existent. We brought it back. Of course, the advent of the casinos at that time really helped out. We provide a great taxi service between the casinos.

“It was perfect timing for it. The city was coming back, and it ended up being a very lucrative business for quite a number of years.”

Although the rolling chairs are again fixtures on the Boardwalk to this day, the man who helped catapult this business back to the forefront in Atlantic City sold his chair business about four years ago.

His success had created some perhaps predictable competition, which Belfer didn’t feel like battling. After all, over the years, he had also built up some thriving real estate holdings within the city, which enabled him to branch off into the bar and nightclub business.

Not surprisingly, it was a certain piece of real estate that Belfer purchased back in 2003, with the initial thought of opening another bar, which ended up being South Beach Laundromat – the businessman’s first foray into the self-service laundry industry.

“It had been a bar,” he explained. “But it had been closed down for about 15 years. I was going to re-open it as a bar, but the neighbors were really against another bar in the area, so I decided to investigate the laundry business again.”

So, about 20 years after he first looked into getting into the coin laundry industry, Belfer finally decided to take the plunge and turn the now-vacant, 1,900-square-foot former nightclub into a first-class laundry facility just two blocks from the Trump Plaza Casino.

Belfer wanted to open a business that would best serve the burgeoning Hispanic community. “It seemed like the right idea,” he said. “We are located in a lower-income area, with a mainly Hispanic clientele.”

Although competition is rather fierce in this particular section of Atlantic City, with five other self-service laundries within a mile of South Beach, Belfer feels he made the right move.

“We went through with the idea, because we felt the neighborhood could support it,” he explained. “And it has.”

In early 2006, Belfer and his own small construction crew began work on the project that would turn a vacant nightclub into the state-of-the-art laundry that stands there today.

“It took us six months,” he said. “I have a small crew, and my guys did most of the construction. Of course, we had to bring in outside help for the plumbing. But, all in all, we put a nice store together.”

In all, the laundry cost approximately $330,000, according to Belfer. The building was $70,000, with the equipment costing $160,000 and the renovation running about $100,000.

“I had a good price on the building,” he explained. “I buy things and then come up with ideas how to use them.”

Belfer opened the doors to the new South Beach Laundromat in September 2006. Since then, he has built a steady walk-in customer base by catering heavily to the Hispanics living in the neighborhood.

“We try to cater to the clientele that’s coming in the door,” he said. “And that’s about 75 percent Hispanic. We also have African American, white and Asian customers. We’re a very mixed society down here in Atlantic City. But the majority of the clientele is definitely Hispanic.”

South Beach’s marketplace is a mixed zone area, which features a lot of apartments and low-income rooming houses without laundry facilities, as well as several small businesses gearing toward the Hispanic community, such as restaurants and neighborhood grocery stores. In addition, one of Belfer’s bars is just up the street from the laundry.

To get the word out about his new laundry, Belfer blanketed the area with flyers heralding his new business. However, he said that most of his business has come from good old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising.

“We’re right in the middle of the neighborhood,” he said. “All you have to do is open up and give a good product – and people will talk. But perhaps our biggest advertisement is the fact that our attendants are Hispanic.”

South Beach has three Hispanic attendants, who are bilingual.

“We make our customers feel at home,” said Belfer, whose laundry business is open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. “We have a jukebox that plays predominantly Spanish music. Our televisions are regularly tuned to Spanish-language programming. And our vending machines are stocked with items geared toward the Hispanic community.”

In addition, South Beach Laundromat is air-conditioned and features bilingual signage.

“We try to make it as comfortable as we can,” Belfer said. “It’s better than doing your wash at home.”

Thus far, Belfer’s strategy has enabled him to capture a decent share of the market. However, because of all the competition, the business can grow only so much, according to the first-time store owner.

“We educate our customers about the equipment,” said Belfer, explaining how South Beach is different from some of the other laundries in the marketplace. “Our place is a little more spacious. And we’re attended all the time.”

In addition, South Beach has a loading and unloading zone in front of the store for the convenience of customers looking to drop off their laundry. Plus, Belfer has arranged for parking down the street.

“Most of the customers are within walking distance,” he added. “But some do come by car.”

More than a year into his first coin laundry venture, has Belfer encountered any surprises?

“Not being in this business before, I expected a little more volume than what I have,” he admitted. “There’s more volume here in the summer than in the winter. We didn’t know what the summer would give us, but we did a little better this summer. And this winter has been better than last winter. But we’re not at our goal yet.”

Just give him time. After all, Larry Belfer knows a good idea when he sees one.

“Hey, I take junk and make it into something, just like with the rolling chairs.” Belfer stated. “I don’t buy stuff that costs a lot of money. I buy things that are cheap. I look for opportunities that nobody else is taking advantage of. That’s what I do.”