Art Jaeger owns four vended laundries in California: Valencia Express Laundry Center, in Valencia; Simi Valley Laundry Center, in Simi Valley; Santa Clarita Express Laundry Center, in Santa Clarita; and The Oaks Laundry Express Laundry Center, in Sherman Oaks. Throughout his 21-year laundry career, he’s become well known in the industry for his insight and outreach related to helping others find success as laundry owners. Here, he shares five tips for vended laundry success.
- Operate a customer-service oriented store. This means your laundry is fully attended with empowered, trained, helpful team members. It also means that customer problems and questions are resolved immediately, not in a few days.
- Maintain a clean, safe and well-lit environment. This speaks for itself. People will not visit your store if it doesn’t check the lit, safe, clean boxes.
- Layout and equip your laundry to successfully add additional services, such as wash/dry/fold and pickup and delivery. To do this, you need to plan for additional storage space, a point-of-sale system that tracks customer laundry and alerts them when it is completed, and sophisticated equipment (washers, dryers and sometimes ironers). Your distributor can help you design your space for additional services, even if you don’t intend to launch them right away.
- Differentiate your store from the local competition, apartment building laundry rooms and home washers and dryers. How do you do this? Through your equipment selection, amenities and services. Most laundries, apartments and home laundries are equipped with small washers and dryers less than 35 pounds of capacity. Get large-capacity equipment (80- to130-pound capacities) to take on bigger, bulkier loads. Customers line up for the big washers! Get high-speed washers that cut the time it takes to complete laundry. Customers love saving time! Choose equipment that works with ozone to sanitize laundry. The Continental high-speed washers I own allow me to introduce ozone automatically and upcharge for it! Set your store apart with customer-friendly amenities not offered at other laundries or in centralized apartment laundries. What’s important to customers? Plenty of tables and seating, TVs, charging stations, WIFI, children’s area, vending machines, video games, massage chairs, etc. Offer more services to customers than your competition, including wash/dry/fold, pickup and delivery, drop-off dry cleaning, etc.
- There’s no better way to do both 3 and 4 than by using the highly innovative Continental Girbau equipment. I always update and upgrade by investing in equipment that differentiates my laundries from the competition and allows me to offer wash/dry/fold and pickup and delivery. Continental Genius Series Washers, view them on this quick video, set my stores up for success!
Genuis Washer Features & Capabilities
High-speed, soft-mount washers that achieve spin speeds reaching 450 G-force. The typical laundry has hard-mount washers that reach speeds from 100-250 G-force. The Continental high-speed washers cut drying time in half, which means customers notice the difference and wash, dry and fold laundry in less than 60 minutes; dryer usage decreases for big savings in natural gas; and customer rotation rates are quicker so laundries can serve more customers per day for more revenue per day.
- The 10-inch touchscreen user interface on Genius Washers is unique in the industry.Customers love it. It’s waterproof, scratch resistant and clearly illuminates cycle options. It can also serve double duty as a marketing platform.
- A 360 Vision corner status light lets customers know the status of their laundry loads with a quick glance. It’s located on the top corner of the washers and illuminates in different colors based on the status of the load.
- There are also “Extras” – additional add-ons selected by customers to customize the wash process. Storeowners can design unique “Extras” to fit specific customer needs. I offer an “Extra Prewash” and “Extra Ozone.” When a customer selects an “Extra” the vend price elevates by $.50. The “Extra Ozone” option provides an additional ozone rinse into the washer at the end of the wash cycle. The ozone sanitizes the laundry. Each “Extra” generates more revenue opportunity and brings peace of mind to customers.