From Clean Cars to Clean Clothes

By Bob Nieman | Aug 24, 2010

When Jack Bailey opened his first laundromat just over a year ago, he wasn’t exactly new to self-service, cash businesses. In fact, he has been in the car wash business since 1983.

Today, Bailey owns and operates five car washes – two of which are in-bay automatic facilities, with the other three being coin-operated self-serve establishments.

However, a few years ago, Bailey noticed an opportunity in his hometown of Dumas, Texas, to also open a self-service laundry.

“In our market, we had some older laundries, and it was a need that needed to be met,” Bailey said. “Plus, there were some similarities between coin laundries and car washes. I could see that.

“The first thing I did was join the Coin Laundry Association, just to get some information. I started receiving The Journal and began reading about the industry. I knew the business end of how to make it work, but I just didn’t know what I was biting off on the laundry end.”

Bailey – who also enjoyed a 30-year career in commercial aviation, which included a charter service, a flight school, an airplane dealership and crop spraying – is clearly not someone to overlook the details of any new business venture. And, having averaged more than 1,000 hours per year in the air, he’s also not afraid of hard work.

“We spent a year and a half in our travels, researching the laundry business,” explained Bailey, who retired from flying in 2000. “I would talk to any laundry owner I could get to stop and talk to me – from Casper, Wyo., to San Antonio, Texas. Coin stores, card stores, different equipment. It was really nice, as in any business, to find someone who’s been in business a few years – and I would just walk in and visit with him a little bit.”

Bailey asked all of them the very same question: If you could rebuild your store, what would you do differently?

“I made notes, and then we took all of the good ideas from the people we visited with and compiled them – everything from the width of the aisles to the mix of equipment,” Bailey said. “There are a lot of things to consider, and many that you wouldn’t know about unless you had been in the business a while.

“That saved me a few hard lessons. Those guys being so gracious to share their time saved me a lot. We compiled our information and we built our store accordingly.”

But before he could build, Bailey needed to find just the right location for his new laundry business.

“In these smaller town markets, you have to look and see what’s available,” he said. “It’s almost cost-prohibitive these days to buy an existing structure with all of the asbestos abatement and other regulations you have to comply with. For me, it just didn’t make sense to buy something and have to tear it down.”

Fortunately, Bailey discovered a perfect piece of property available in Dumas’ central retail business district, right on Main Street.

“We’re on a busy street,” he said. “The entire town drives by our location, so that was a good spot for us. We’re across the street from an Auto Zone auto parts store, as well as a Dairy Queen. We have a Sonic in the other direction, about a half a block down. Basically, we’re in the mix of where things are happening in town.”

With his research completed and his loan secured, Bailey, who served as the general contractor for his laundromat project, got the architect busy on a design for the future Jack’s Express Laundry.

One interesting aspect of the laundry’s equipment mix is the fact that the various sizes of washers are spread throughout the entire store, Bailey noted.

“Typically, you’ll see all of one size washer in a row, with all of the sizes grouped together,” he said. “We did this to a point, but we also wanted to create a store where, if someone was using a 40-pound unit and also had the need for a 20-pounder, that customer wouldn't have to go down a different aisle to do so. Therefore, we made most sizes available by creating a mix of different sizes all in one aisle. At first, some see it as confusing, but once the customers get used to it, they find it very convenient.”

Also during the construction phase, Bailey was keeping an eye toward future expansion.

“We’ve got four bulkheads,” Bailey explained. “We have folding tables on the back side, but while we were installing our plumbing, we put in all the drains and everything else we would need so that later, if necessary, we could actually go in there and just set more machines.

“Actually, I slightly overbuilt to where the demand is just now starting to catch up to the point where we’re pretty much where we need to be,” he added. “But, if we ever need to expand, I have allowed for that. We’ve got our electrical in there, and our water and drains.”

Overall, the entire seven-month project cost just under $1.1 million.

“I was thinking we were going to do it for $800,000 to start with, but there were just too many things that creep up on you,” Bailey said.

Of course, that prime real estate upon which the 3,500-square-foot Jack’s Express Laundry is located came with a hefty price tag.

“I probably paid the most that has ever been paid for a piece of property of that size in this town,” Bailey laughed. “But I wanted it. I thought it was critical that I be in this location, and that ran up the cost of the project a bit.”

However, for a parcel in a strongly Hispanic market, populated by a large number of renters and in the middle of a number of other thriving destination businesses, Bailey thought the price was justified.

“With the car washes, we tried to pick the proper locations, and then the business advertises itself,” he pointed out. “When you’ve got the proper traffic flow, it works out well. Ideally, if you could pick a location, you want to be just past a stoplight on that same side of the street. We’ve done that with a few of our car washes, and it works. I don’t need to spend a ton of money on advertising because people see us.”

To promote his laundry business, Bailey ran a few ads in his local newspaper. In addition, he placed flyers in all of the surrounding hotels to drum up some wash-dry-fold business.

But, for the most part, he let his strong location and positive word of mouth spread the word about his new store.

What’s more, Jack’s Express Laundry is a card-operated facility, which has helped set it apart from the competition and has provided Bailey with a number of managerial and marketing advantages.

“There is not another card store within 300 or 400 miles of me,” said Bailey, who employs three full-time attendants and one part-timer at his laundry. “In fact, some people had never heard of it. So, our attendants had to really work with our customers.”

When the laundry first opened in August 2009, Bailey gave everyone a card at no charge.

“To get them started, I didn’t want the customers to feel penalized because they were using our new facility,” Bailey explained. “So, we gave them a card, showed them how to load that card and away they went. Pretty soon, you could see the repeats coming in every week. They would come in, go right to the exchanger, load their cards, and wash their clothes.”

Bailey’s card system allows for a number of marketing opportunities and makes it easy for him to implement price increases by penny increments, rather than by quarters as with traditional coin-operated laundries, which has enabled him to adapt quickly to changes in utility rates.

Bailey has offered “free dry” days and time-of-day pricing specials, both made easy through his programmable washers and dryers. Furthermore, during the first few months of operation, he periodically gave away groceries, toys, a soap basket filled with laundry detergent and softener, and various laundry supplies along with free laundry cards with credit already loaded on them to be used at his laundromat.

“The strongest thing that we did, during the first six months, were those prize drawings,” Bailey admitted. “Being on a card system, we just randomly picked a card number, and we would give away everything from a laundry basket full of supplies to a free laundry card with $25 on it. And the winner and I would have our picture taken, and we would post it in the store. We had a winner each month.”

Beyond the card technology, Jack’s Express Laundry has set itself apart from the crowd with its water quality as well. Being located in an area known for its extremely hard water, Bailey installed an eco-friendly water softener system, which enables his customers to use up to 50 percent less detergent than would typically be required in this particular area, while increasing the quality of wash these customers receive.

“Coming from the car wash industry, I knew how important the water quality is and, therefore, made the decision to put in water softeners,” said Bailey, whose store is open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. “The entire laundry is a soft-water store. It requires only half of the soap, and the clothes get cleaner. Soft water just has the ability to clean better.”

And cleaning clothes – pure and simple – is the main focus of Jack’s Express Laundry. From the efficient equipment layout to the card system to the water softeners to the prime location, Bailey has invested his money on a facility designed to ease and upgrade the clothes laundering process in Dumas, Texas.

“We have soda and snack machines and a couple of televisions,” Bailey said. “But I don’t have a single video game in here. And I probably wasted some floor space, but we have huge folding areas for our customers to work at.

“When I was doing my research, I had a couple of laundry owners say, ‘I really think you need to decide what business you want to be in.’ That struck home with me. This is what we chose to do.”

One year and counting, it looks like Jack Bailey made a wise choice.