"got the CO"

[pete f]

Friday I go from spending money to making money. What an adventure, even for me. My whole project was scrutinized by a magnifying glass. It has to do with the city trying to show no racism, so you are not allowed one inch of slack because them then the "other side" would howl. A story for a paper or TV, but for now, as soon as I put up about $500 worth of signs, like stop signs at every exit, etc I am cleared for take off. Of course I will be the only commercial or public building for 10 blocks with STOP signs at the exits, but the city lawyers were afraid if I did not have them they would get sued if someone did not stop while exiting on the road and got run into. I even had to put one in the alley exit.. real traffic danger there... I thought they taught that in driver ed, to stop before entering a highway... Not kidding, I am not making this up, this is the last of many tales I have yet to tell. I Will try to shoot some cam pics because my regular camera ones won't post.

[Kitty]

Congratulations!

[mike]

Pete f,

Congrats !

May your next municipal problem be crowd control !! :-)

[Gary C]

Congrats, I hope it goes really well for you. It's so much work to get it up and running. It's amazing how we are forced to dumb down everything to the biggest idot. :)

Gary

[Chuckels]

Congrats on finishing! I have been working 8 weeks straight on a paralell remodel project 2200 sqft, ESD mag card, Wasco washers and dryers. I am about to finish and also look forward to seeing some income too.

Best of luck.

Chuckles

[marty]

Congratulations Petef! Is this your 4th mat? How long did it take you to build your empire from the purchase of your first mat? I'm just starting out with the purchase of my first and am trying to do some mid-term planning (the next 10 years) to hopefully allow me to quit my finance consulting day job and be in full-time business for myself. I figure it will take 3-4 mats to get me to where I need to be.

Once again, congrats and good luck. Always find your comments on this board insightful.

[MrsNewMat]

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!! and Good Luck.......

[pete f]

thanks for all the well wishes.. spent all day at the new one, am tired but very happy. This is my 5th mat for anyone counting, I sold one a couple years ago, so now have 4 total. We opened today without license from the city, seems after we had all finals and thought it was done for a CO we found someone had to come and view the building so that it met comuninty standards..I had a sign I would open april 1 so I did anyway, got the CO around 4pm but no time to get the occupational license, so opened anyway around noon. I was putting together the R& B carts, really planning on Monday now, and a lady pops her head in and asks if we are open, I say, sure, come on it. Her and her husband start carting loads of stuff in, I mean loads. I gave her a $10 card, they put about another $40 on it. Soon after another person shows with a huge amount of wash. It went like that the rest of the day. It was fun. We had a survey, a short form for people to fill out, depending on the answer they got $1, a $5 or $10 card. Most ended up with a $10 card, and all put more money on it.I took them to the VTM, showed them how it works, most put money on the card that I just gave them. I was worried about a card system, acceptance, etc. What really blew me mind was a girl came in to dry only, a small amount. I asked her if she normally did wash and dry or dry only, she said they wash at home and come and dry, so I offered to take her $1 cash and I would start the dryer with my card, figure she did not want a card. I started the dryer, took her dollar, gave her change. She then went over to the card machine and bought a card and put money on it anyway.
Marty-- I bought my first mat in 1996. I bought one about every 6 months until I had 4. This mat took about 1 1/2 year to complete, it was a tear down and redo situation and I ran into many problems along the way. I can't really say what I could have done differently, what I may have lost in time I saved in doing much work myself, in the end was near budget. The key would be location, and the price. It has to be economicaly feasable in a big way with high estimates on cost and low estimates on income. About 1 mile away sits an empty ) by empty I mean shut down) new large mat that is to big for the marketplace with very high rent in an area of single family housing, not very good demo's. They got consumed by seminars and bigger is better. I had people waiting in line to use my 50# washers today. I have 2. My theory still stands, better to have to many customers than to many washers.

[Coinwash]

Well said pete f

Go for it........

[Andy]

nice job Pete, I wish you success.

[pete f]

these were snaped on the second day I will put up before and after later.
If Jonathan allows, and anyone wants, I can post a series of the of the build out process. Anyone who makes a Contribution of $50 or more to coinwash I will send a CD with all the pictures. I have everything from plumbing to drywall, it gives a detail look at the amount of work involved and the process.

CLICK HERE TO GO to Contributions-----THANK YOU (http://www.coinwash.com/index.php?section=store)

[Coinwash]

Thank you Pete f

We are looking forward to seeing what and how you did your laundromat.

Thank you for your time Sir and thoughts.

Coinwash.com Staff and Jonathan

[gjnic]

Congrats petef. If it's any consolation, its nice to know that the city inspectors seems to be ignorant to us all. As you well know, the rewards outway the hoops we jump through to open.

[Anonymous]

Pete good luck on the new store. What machine mix did you use ?

[pete f]

Pete good luck on the new store. What machine mix did you use ?

All maytag
2 50# 6 30#, 3 25#, 9 18#, 4 tops.
11 stacks, 1 50 single

I bought the new turbo wash model, which works great, but customers did not like it. they want to see water. I raised all the water levels to normal, so much for saving another 15% on water/sewer bills...the turbo wash was set for a very low level, it doesn't work in the real world.

1650 sq ft store.

Even though ratios work for dryers I do not really have enough for the wash capacity of the store. After a week or so now, I like the mix.

[Anonymous]

Do you have extra room to add machines as needed. I think you have a winner on your hands and will need more machines

[Bob]

Congratulations Pete!

Your store really looks great. My store is very similar. I have 1500 square feet. My machine breakdown is:

3 top loads
9 Wasco 20s
8 Wasco 30s
3 Wasco 40s
2 Wasco 75s
10 30 lb. stack dryers
3 50 lb. dryers

I have been open for just over 1 year and business is great. I would like to have two more 30 lbs. and one more 40 lb. The dryers would be able to handle it. Right I have a little more dry capacity than wash. I chickened out and cut back the extra washers and wish that I hadn't.

Good luck. I know that you will do well.

Bob

[Maywood2]

Hi Pete. Your store is about the same size as the one I'm thinking of opening (in a storefront I own). What would your thoughts be of this mix (Wascomats):
(12) 20-lb front-load
(4) 40-lb front-load
(4) 55-lb front-load
(2) 75-lb front-load

(11) 30-lb double-pocket stack dryers
(2) 75-lb dryers

(It'll be in Pennsylvania, mostly low-income area.)
You're my hero on here... :) so I'd appreciate your insight.

I may have to trim a little, because of budget; was thinking of either dropping one of the 55's or one of the 40's, or one of each; or maybe taking 3 or 4 of the 20-lb's out and swapping them for top-loaders (with vend prices high enough to make a profit on them). Thoughts?

Thanks!
John

[SuperMat]

Maywood, read the previous post in regards to chickening out, and wishing he hadn't. If cuts are necessary, I would look elsewhere first. Try to save $ in areas that don't generate your income. Cut backs on washer/dryers is a cutback in the ability generate revenue, your main revenue stream. If there are no other options but to cut machines, I would cut largest ones first. I have (22)20#,(18)40#,(11)60#, and (4)80# washers. For the month of July the 20# are turning at 8per day. The 40# at 7. The larger machines are busy all weekend, but dont get as much use during the week, and get about 1/2 the turns on average. The 20#'s and 40#'s are my workhorses. I am not a fan of tops, and they are rarely used in my area. I couldn't comment on them. You may want to start a new thread on this subject.

[pete f]

Hi Pete. Your store is about the same size as the one I'm thinking of opening (in a storefront I own). What would your thoughts be of this mix (Wascomats):
(12) 20-lb front-load
(4) 40-lb front-load
(4) 55-lb front-load
(2) 75-lb front-load

(11) 30-lb double-pocket stack dryers
(2) 75-lb dryers

(It'll be in Pennsylvania, mostly low-income area.)
You're my hero on here... :) so I'd appreciate your insight.

I may have to trim a little, because of budget; was thinking of either dropping one of the 55's or one of the 40's, or one of each; or maybe taking 3 or 4 of the 20-lb's out and swapping them for top-loaders (with vend prices high enough to make a profit on them). Thoughts?

Thanks!
John

Sounds BIG, sort of. I don't believe in big, I just like to make money, but I am geared towards my local market. I would never put a store in with that mix in my market, even though there are a huge number of power washers around. . I would need much more info to really give good advice. One problem I see you have a dryer problem already. If you are second guessing already you may not have figured everything corectly. This is not an easy biz to make money off the start, but that is required to make it worthwhile. We ran the numbers on my newest store, the real esate part is doing a 10% CAp rate based on 20% revenue for occupancy. The mat portion is around a 7x payback right now. I consider it OK, but not a barn burner. I have noted it is a smaller store with a card system, in a somewhat tough area, I sleep well at nite. I think the store would be closer to a 5x payback if I used cheaper equipment and used coin, but I may lay awake all nite worry about getting hit.. This would make it hit perfect ratios. I would rather sleep well and take a couple extra years to re-coup. Given I still don't have a sign yet , the ratios may change for the better in time if we ever decide to do any promotions.. I also take into account the land values and real estate as a big plus, not really counted. This whole thing did not happen by accident or dealer seminar.

[Maywood2]

thanks guys, for the input. The Wasco distributor is a big fan of larger machines -- says they get the people in and out, without bottlenecks. But I'm second-guessing him for 2 reasons -- the cost of equipment is larger than I thought, and the build-out cost is ALOT larger than I thought. So the numbers start to break down, if I'm a little pessimistic on the TPD average (4 TPD gives me slightly better than break-even on cash flow, with a 5-year loan repayment; I'd need 5 TPD to make a decent cash return.)
Since the store doesn't have a parking lot (just street parking, which can be tough to snag), I'm thinking alot of people aren't going to want to walk 75-pounds of laundry to my store...
So for cost and parking reasons, I'm thinking of maybe leaning toward more smaller machines -- what the distributors would probably call a "neighborhood laundry" -- thinking that would lower the buy-in cost and maybe result in more TPD? Does that sound right, that TPD would be higher for a smaller machine store (tops and 18-lbers and 30-lbers, and maybe two 60-lbers)?

Thanks again for your thoughts.
John

[mr_soap]

I think 5 turns is very optimistic I hope you do that
but do not figure the finances base on that 3-1/2 to 4
more realistic.