One Mississippi, Two Mississippi… Three Mississippi

By Bob Nieman | May 11, 2009

Dan Santini had been in the coin laundry business for a few years when he decided to branch out and purchase a second store.

That second laundry was located in coastal Pascagoula, Miss. However, Santini’s timing couldn’t have been worse.

Or, in some ways, better.

He had just picked out the laundry’s new equipment mix when Hurricane Katrina struck.

“Thank God they hadn’t shipped any of that equipment yet,” said Santini, whose only other laundry at the time was located a few miles inland in Escatawpa, Miss.

Unfortunately, when the storm hit in August 2005, both of Santini’s stores sustained water and roof damage. But seven days later, with a cardboard sign announcing they were open for business, Dan and his wife, Laura, opened the Pascagoula store.

“We worked literally through the night for a week,” Santini recalled. “One day we worked 30 hours straight to get new equipment up and running. This was all done without closing – right in front of the customers. It was insane, but we had no choice – people were desperate to wash their clothes.”

Santini and his staff put up temporary knee walls and did one bulkhead at a time.

“We were operating with only 20 percent to 30 percent water pressure, but customers were waiting in line. No one else was open. It was extremely important to us and to the community.”

It’s a community that Santini has been involved with for a long time, as a real estate investor. Today, he currently owns a 16-unit apartment complex in the area, as well as 18 houses that he rents out – not to mention three self-service laundries.

In fact, Santini’s first coin laundry, in Escatawpa, came about by accident, as a result of his real estate dealings.

“In 2001, I got a deal on some houses that happened to have a laundry on some highway frontage,” Santini explained. “It had been there since the ’60s. It was rundown and unattended. It was just a typical old laundromat.”

Being rather heavily involved in the real estate business, Santini also runs a small construction business and is quite handy himself. As a result, he quickly began remodeling the Escatawpa location – gutting it, upgrading the electrical components, installing central air conditioning and heating, and, of course, adding all new washers and dryers.

The hard work and investment paid off, and soon Santini was looking to grow his single laundry business into a “chain,” recognizing the potential for updated, attended laundries in southern Mississippi. And Hurricane Katrina only solidified Santini’s decision, as he clearly saw the need for strong, well-run businesses in the communities he had been investing in for more than 15 years.

So, as soon as life settled back into a normal rhythm after the storm, Santini set his sites on building a third laundry in Moss Point, Miss.

“Moss Point is the first town inland, which is only a couple of miles from my coastal Pascagoula store,” Santini explained. “And I’ve got my little ‘country store’ in Escatawpa just six miles from Moss Point.”

But, unlike the first two, this would be a new laundry, not an upgrade of an existing store.

Aside from the advantageous geography, Moss Point, with a population of about 18,000, also offers “perfect” demographics for a self-service laundry, according to Santini.

“I had been eyeing a building there for about a year,” he said. “After the storm, it became available. It was a 3,000-square-foot building that used to be a glass and mirror shop, and 2,000 square feet of it was a warehouse, which was perfect. It was a blank blueprint for me.”

Santini purchased the building and then – like he had done with his two previous laundries – the 37-year-old entrepreneur went to work on the facility.

“The front 1,000 square feet were two small offices,” Santini said. “So we took one side of it and made it the wash-dry-fold area, where we have our own wash-dry-fold equipment. The other side is a front entrance and lobby area, where I have my vending machines.

“The back end was wide open,” he added. “I’ve got 2,000 square feet of just equipment. My aisles are almost eight feet wide. I can’t stand a cramped laundry.”

In addition, Santini added central heat and air conditioning, put in extra insulation throughout the building and installed a side entrance to his store. The Moss Point laundry, called Incrediwash (as are Santini’s other two stores), also features a card system, a security system and cameras, a children’s play area, a number of televisions, and ample folding space and seating.

The entire renovation project, which cost about $750,000 including the equipment, took nearly a year to complete. “In the aftermath of the storm, everything was just incredibly slow,” Santini said. “But we did it right.”

In June of this year, Santini finally opened his third laundry.

“People appreciate the investment in their community,” Santini explained. “It’s a community that hasn’t been invested in by anybody for a while.”

Moss Point is a “very blue collar” town with a median income of $15,000 to $18,000, according to Santini. The Incrediwash store is surrounded by apartments and government-assisted housing, with most of the laundry’s customers in the 20- to 40-year-old range. Nearly 60 percent of the store’s walk-in clientele are African-American, with an additional 30 percent being Caucasian and about 10 percent Hispanic.

The stand-alone Incrediwash building is located next to a church and across the street from a daycare center and a computer repair business.

“We’re on the main artery through town,” Santini said. “But there are no big supermarkets or big investments in Moss Point. It’s a lot of small businesses.”

Among those small businesses within Santini’s marketplace are three other self-service laundries.

To make sure he gets his fair share of the laundry business, Santini has aggressively advertised his newest location.

“When I first opened, I ran full-page ads in the local newspaper,” he explained. “I spent a small fortune on advertising. The first two months I hit the newspaper heavy. I also advertised on a local radio station – 100 spots per month.

“I also did a lot of flyer handouts. And I put $5 on a couple hundred cards and handed them out around town. That works amazingly well when you can tell people there is already money on there.”

Incrediwash also advertises on a city map that’s distributed by the local chamber of commerce. And Santini recently signed a contract with a company that creates tabletop advertising in local restaurants.

“I’m big into advertising,” he admitted. “I think word of mouth works better than anything, but you’ve got to do more than just rely on word of mouth.”

Beyond advertising and marketing, Santini, who employs 15 staffers between his three stores, makes sure that Incrediwash is immaculate and always well lit.

“We have way more room,” he added. “Eight folding tables, four TVs, a kid’s play area, full vending, drinks, snacks, video games. We offer wash-dry-fold, drop-off drycleaning, pressing and alterations. These are things most stores around here don’t offer. And my attendants bend over backward to help the customers.”

Furthermore, Incrediwash, which is open from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, also is developing a healthy commercial business, which includes a large contract with the U.S. Navy.

“There is a Navy barracks here,” Santini explained. “And we do probably a couple thousand pieces of linen a week for them, in addition to some other hit-and-miss type commercial work for the local power companies.”

Together, with his wash-dry-fold service, Santini’s total drop-off laundry business accounts for between 20 percent and 25 percent of the store’s income.

“It’s gravy money as far as I’m concerned,” Santini said. “It pays 100 percent of my payroll and then some.”

However, perhaps the biggest thing that sets the Moss Point Incrediwash store apart is the fact that it offers free drying to its washing customers.

“We have X number of ‘drys’ set up per washer, based on the size of the washer and the average dry time,” Santini explained. “It started as a promotion. But I have found countless benefits to it, and I’m almost 100 percent certain that I’m going to keep it permanently and do it at my other stores also. We’re in the process of going to cards there, too.”

The leading benefit to come from his store’s free-dry program is next to zero customer complaints about his dryers.

“Customers tend to overload the dryers and then complain that the machines aren’t working properly,” Santini laughed. “Well, it’s free now. They don’t have to worry about pinching pennies.”

Santini also have discovered that his customers actually become more efficient when the drying is free.

“They don’t babysit those dryers,” he said. “They don’t check them every two minutes, opening them up to check the clothes and slowing down the process. They put the clothes in, and when the time is up, they take them out. I get people in and out faster with free dry than with people who are paying.”

Lastly, Santini says that his free-dry customers appreciate that control it gives them over their laundry budgets.

“When they walk in the door, they know what they’re paying,” he said. “The way drying has been done traditionally, they don’t. You never know how much it’s going to cost to dry.”

And apparently Santini’s free-dry philosophy hasn’t hurt his business.

“I didn’t think this store’s business would grow anywhere near as fast as it has,” he marveled. “Even with the free dry, within the second month, we far exceeded our expectations, with just the washers. I thought it would take six months to get to where I am already – starting from scratch with a new store.”

How big does Santini envision his Incrediwash chain becoming?

He’s already hunting for a fourth location. “I have everything under a corporation, Incrediwash, LLC,” he said. “My goal is to have my stores identical in look and color scheme. I want customers to know that when they walk into an Incrediwash that they’re going to get the same service regardless of where they are.

“I’m extremely ambitious and customer-oriented,” he added. “I don’t just look at the bottom line. I believe in taking care of the customer, if I truly want to get back what I feel I deserve.”