Big Business Thinking

Regardless of one’s specific business, before you can decide how to most efficiently price your services, you need to know who your customers are, where they come from, and why they patronize your business.

You must understand the dynamics impacting both your customers and your expenses. You cannot intelligently pick a revenuemodel without knowing what your customers are thinking.

I have identified five types of customers to whom the laundry business provides a service. The first group consists of renters who have access to a laundry room that they simply prefer not to use.Their laundry roomhas some combination of a small number of machines, small-capacity washers, lack of ambiance or high price that drives these customers to a selfservice laundry. Formost stores, this is, by far, your largest group of customers.

The second largest customer group consists of those that simply have no choice where to wash other than a store. They are renters without access to laundry rooms; they are homeowners who do not have machines (though some may have washers, but not dryers); or they are a catchall of itinerants, tourists, students, RV drivers, etc.This is likely yourmost dependable group of customers.

Many stores get 90 percent to 100 percent of their business from just these first two groups. If your store is very close to a lot of dirty clothes that have no other place to go, thatmay be enough to make money. If not, you will have to compete for business like the rest of us.

Group three consists of homeowners with machines that still prefer the services of a laundromat for various reasons.They are dissatisfied with the size of their homemachines relative to the amount of laundry their family generates, or need to use your larger machines for a special reason, like washing sleeping bags and comforters, or their machines are broken for the time being, etc.