I know where my dry only customers are coming form

[Kari]

Per my previous post I have been having a lot of Dry only customers over the last 6 plus months and it gets to be more all of the time.

There is a guy down the street that sells rebuilt washers for 50 dollars. That is the amount some of my customers spend in one week with me. So I can not blame them for buying a washer.

The guy travels all over Central Florida picking up junked washers and rebuilding them. He sells them for 50 dollars and a 30 day warrenty. One of my customers worked for him and told me he sells about 20 plus a week. In a town of 900 house holds that is a lot.

He has only been in business for about 9 months and we are really seeing/feeling the results and it will only get worse.

Actually there are two people that have this type of business here but one in particular that I am concerned with.

Any one run into this type of issue?

[Laundry_king]

I don’t really think this should be an issue. No matter how you look at it these people have to do one load at a time.
While at the Laundromat one can knock out all there loads at ONE time.
That is why all locations are not equal.
Market this idea of doing all your wash at once, not one load by one load.

You seem to have a lot of obstructions in your way that bother you.

Just wait till the next Laundromat opens in this small town--- D'oh!

Keep it clean and all the machines running they well come

[Kari]

You seem to have a lot of obstructions in your way that bother you.

Just wait till the next Laundromat opens in this small town--- D'oh!



Hey this website is all about getting the oppinions of others in the biz. That is what I am doing. If I did not have questions / concerns on certain situations I would not be visiting this site. So forgive me some of us are new to the biz and have to learn somewhere/somehow.

Sure I am still making money off of my Dry only customers but before they bought this washer from this guy I was making a whole lot more off of them washing.

I like your idea of marketing the fact that you can wash everything all at once instead of load by load. I always looked at it that way and discussed it with customers but never really thought of it as a marketing strategy.

[Kitty]

Every laundromat should be marketing this simple concept. People having limited time these days laundromats should market to consumers showing and proving the value of the laundromat convenient services. There is a core amount of consumers currently not coming into a laundromat on a weekly basis that you could capture. You may not get the same people week to week but you may get them to return from time to time. The object is to target this group of busy people with overloaded laundry at home that will prefer to do the laundry themselves in your establishment to save time. Maybe the key is to have a Weekend Warriors Wash Card for the patrons that will only be utliizing your store on a periodic basis with MEGA LOADS?

Laundromats have changed quite a bit from five - ten years ago, any laundromat that maintains state of the art efficient machines in a bright and clean establishment shouldn't have any trouble coaxing a family away from an entire weekend chore to a reduction of a few hours in their establishment with the right marketing and advertising campaign.

[David]

Well, you could post a NO DRY ONLY sign on the front door and call the cops if they violate it, but I think that's a little dramatic, don't you? :)

All joking aside, Kitty's right, marketing is the answer.

[CharlieS]

I guess I don't get it. I price my dryers for profit, I have an adequate number of dryers, so why do I care if someone only wants to dry.

If you can, add some dryers, take the money.

Charlie