How many turns are tooooo many?

[ChuckB]

I just love talking to brokers, new MAT developers, etc.. Thanks to a great deal of input from this board, I have now developed a "what if" spreadsheet to analyze water usage, washer/dryer ratios, price impact on turns, etc.

All of which brings me to may point. There would seem to be a point, in the real world, that "turns" reach their maximum.

Using some of the developer's gross sales numbers, their ratios of use for various size machines (TL, F25, F40 & F50 lbs), their suggested prices and allowing for seasonal fluctuations, I got "turn" rates as high as 11 on top loaders.

Now I don't know how fast the machines are at washing (would love input saving me from getting out my stop watch.) but 11 turns for each and every TL each day for a month seems excessive to me.

What do you experience in "turns" on your high profit washes?

Is there a natural smoothing of the numbers that happens, meaning instead of having TL =11, F25 = 5, F40 = 4, & F50 =3 the customer migrate to available equipment and the final ratio looks more like TL=8, F25=8, F40=3, F50=3?

[Gary C]

I would think anything over 10 would cause problems. On some weekends my 40# will do 10 turns. The problem I see is over crowding at the mat hence unhappy customers or someone like me comming in and building a new mat close to you. That's what prompded me to build the one down the street had waiting lines.
I really don't think I want the problems that to many turns bring.
I like money but it's not everything.
Gary

[Lar Hylobates]

Turns become a problem at 6-12 depending on the layout of the store.

If you have an older store with 4' to 6' wide walkways, fronts facing each other or any of the other screwed up scenarios, your turns will cap at 6 before customers have trouble.

A newer, better designed store with 8' wide isles or wider and a nice mix of machines could see 10 turns with little difficulty.


I think it is sake to say that turns above 6 are exceptions and very nice stores. The average laundry business is probably hanging in 3 to 5 TPD.

To answer your last question, in my store I find the TPD per type of machine to have steadied out quite a bit, but I have also done quite a bit of balancing the machine counts and my store is definitely at capacity, possible forcing customers to use whatever is available.

I would be wery wary of believing in any distributor projections, especially above 3 TPD. If you need 9 to make money you need to pass.

Good luck monkey.

[pete f]

those brokers sure can show you how to make money with a spreadsheet. If you are in a very dense population maybe 5-6 turns a day, if you are urban maybe 3. That may mean 10 turns on Sunday and 2 turns per day on Wed, Thur and Fri....10 every day? that is beyound anything I have seen, maybe someone else can verify a number like that. This is why they like to sell alot of machines and make the store huge... 10 turns times 40 washers is $$$$$$$$$$$$$ you are rich!

[ChuckB]

Originally posted by Hylobates Lar

I think it is safe to say that turns above 6 are exceptions and very nice stores. The average laundry business is probably hanging in 3 to 5 TPD.

The sense I get out of your reply is "turns per day" could be an excellent management tool. Manipulate the prices on your machines to spread the wealth, when you reach your "turn per day limit" raise your prices!

[Lar Hylobates]

Ahhh..to be young and ambitious again.