Wash Dry Fold Workshop Recap Pt 1. Over two hundred laundry owners congregated in Chicago to discuss the latest business practices to offer a superior product and grow their businesses. Learn how to step up your wash and fold product, find out how culture and awareness are accelerating the growth of laundry pickup and delivery. Make your customer the HERO and the money will follow.
[TRANSCRIPT]
Welcome to the State of the Laundry Industry with laundry matt , episode 39, the C Wash Dry Fold Workshop Recap part one. Today I’m gonna be talking about the Wash, dry and fold workshop, brought on by the Coin Laundry Association. And a big shout out to Nika and Danielle for putting together just a phenomenal event. So this was three days, two nights we flew into Chicago, and just to let you know what a big deal this is, at curbside laundries, we put together a client appreciation dinner. So we had dinner, drinks, education, and that was like putting together a wedding. So I could only imagine what it would be like to put together three days, two nights, and to handle all of the logistics. And the event was a huge success. I think people walked away with learning so many different things. And I’m gonna be talking about my highlights, you know, my memory, my recollection of this, but I’m confident you talk to anyone who went there and they’re gonna have different memories or different recollections or things that were meaningful to them. So this is all just from my perspective, but there, there were just phenomenal speakers and people who are doing it, which is a world of difference than people, than just being theory. And I’m really glad the Coin Laundry Association is taking a focus on wash and fold , because I think in the old days there’s such a big focus on buy more stores, buy more machines. There’s a whole group of us who wanna maximize each opportunity. And I think the way to do that is through wash fold and pickup and delivery. At our laundromat, we gross over a million dollars a year just in wash fold . So we know this is a huge source of revenue. You know, we used to just tout our success at supered, but what’s really neat now is we’re able to show the success of different clients of ours using our software, doing pickup and delivery, doing washing , fold , fold. And to start things off, Brian Wallace interviewed Brian Henderson and Sharon Brinks about in-store washing fold . And one of the takeaways is everybody’s really stepped up their game. You know, it’s no longer just tickets on triplicates. Now we’re, everybody’s got like a professional washing fold system. We’re not just hacking it together. And the customer’s expectations have also gone up as well. It was just about five years ago that was fold was an afterthought, is a way to help subsidize the cost of your attendant. But now was , fold is a primary income source for many people, and you’ve gotta treat it as such. You have to deliver top-notch service. Speaking of delivering top-notch service, Paul Pettifer , so he’s the owner of Laundry , laundry World , and he talked about commercial accounts and one of his experiences he had was he saw some of his commercial clients that were doing the self-serve. He had some butchers who would bring in these aprons with red blood stains in them. And when after they laundered it, the results were not that great, they still had red stains on them. He said, Hey, we could wash ’em fold for you if you like, save yourself a lot of time. And they said, sure, that sounds great. And so he did it and he did a better job than they did, but there was still red stains on there and they weren’t happy. And he had an aha moment that here he did a better
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Job than they did. But the expectation when a quote professional is doing it for you, and they’re paying for the service, they want it done better, they want it done right. So he had to up his game and really learn the chemistry of how to really do a good job in wash and fold . And he did. The takeaway was, wash and fold is a service business and you need to deliver a superior product. And even during this wash fold conference, they even had hands-on folding, learning from the best on best ways of folding different types of garments. And there’s no right way of doing it, but however you do it, make sure you have a consistent experience. Because if one person’s folding this way and another person’s folding that way, you’re going to get people requesting specific launderers. So it’s good to be like McDonald’s and just have a consistent experience no matter when or who the actual launder is. So eyes on the following panel for pickup and delivery, it was a lightning round , so it was question after question after question, and it was a little bit of a blur. But the one part I do remember is I was asked, are we in the first quarter or the second quarter or third quarter, fourth of pickup and delivery, where is it going? Has the market been saturated? Is it still growing or is it leveled off? And my response was, it’s still growing. And the reason being is two factors, one is culture and one is awareness. So culturally, I think you could look around and you know, we are entering more and more of a service industry, we’re entering more of people expect and want people to do stuff for them, whether it’s shopping, whether it’s delivery, whether it’s driving, there’s all sorts of services to do stuff for you. So you could save time. And that’s just the direction our culture’s going. And I don’t see that going anywhere. So culturally that is on our side. So that’s gonna be driving pickup and DA delivery and wash and fold because that’s a major chunk of time that’s being spent by everybody every week. So the second part is awareness. And I still think awareness is low. Granted, it’s higher than it’s ever been for laundry pickup and delivery. But if you go ask a random person, did you know laundry pickup and delivery is a thing, they’re gonna say, no, I had no idea. But that sounds really cool. So I, I see both culture is on our side and awareness has nowhere to go but up. So I think those two things are very, very powerful. One of the speakers was Dave Coyle . He’s the owner of In the Bag Cleaners. And one of the things he talked about is the hero’s journey. And the hero is your customer. And you wanna set your customer or the hero up for success. You know, you don’t want to embarrass them and you want to help them be successful. So I’ll give you an example, and this is something that is just sole core to us at curbside. And I’m not just saying that because, because he talked about it, you’ll see it everywhere inside of our advertising and even our banner at the Clean show. So we describe curbside laundries at Smart software that optimizes your customer’s journey. Now
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The, the customer’s journey begins even before they start looking for washing fold . It’s after they place the order, it’s when they get to your website, what happens after the order. It is everything. And you wanna make sure it’s right. I mean, you can look at the customer journey even when they walk into your laundromat is are you setting them up for success? Are you helping them achieve their goals? Or is your operation, everything is hair on fire and you’re trying to put out fires and it’s not organized. So in a way, just having your software and washing fold organized through a system that helps with the customer journey. So if they ask you any questions or have any issues, you are able to help them out from the get go . And I’ll give you another example of the customer journey and our focus on that is , years ago we used to print out through our software the receipt and attach that to every order. I mean, that’s how everybody did it. They would slap the triplicate ticket on it. And so we were kind of fancy because it was printed out and, and so it looked real nice , but it still showed the dollar amount. And here’s where that becomes an issue. And Kuda embarrass the hero. So now we get into pickup and delivery. We got these nice printed receipts attached to each order, and it’s not always the person who placed the order, who picks the order up from their front door. And what would happen is either the kids or the spouse sees that the dad or mom spent $75 on washing fold . And they said, you spent 75 bucks on laundry that could embarrass the hero. You want the hero to be a champion. And so what we did is we re , we replaced the receipt with a ticket that just described the services offered such as 30 pounds of washing fold , two dry clean shirts, you know , that type of thing. And then we discreetly email the receipt to the customer. Now when the spouse or children see the the laundry, they go, wow, dad, great job on the laundry. And it looks better than ever. And that’s a way of treating your customer with respect and setting them up for success. I’ll give you another example. Say like you’re doing pickup and delivery and the customer doesn’t leave their laundry out, so you charge them a late fee. Well, how did that situation happen in the first place? Because you really don’t want to charge them a late fee unless absolutely necessary. In our software, we send out an email the day before we even allow them to reply, skip sk i p , they only have to text back , skip. Then our software’s updated and we don’t make a drive out there. So if you don’t have a system in place and you drive all the way out there, you’re gonna wanna get compensated for your driver’s time, gas, et cetera . But it’s better. You don’t really wanna make your money off the hero’s failure to cancel a pickup . You wanna make it so easy for them. So that situation never comes up in the first place. So rather than just looking at things as revenue opportunities, it’s better to look at things from the point of view of is this a good experience for the customer and how do I make it better? Stay tuned for part two of the Wash Tri-Fold Conference recap in which we’re gonna be talking about how to scale your business. Don’t forget to click like and click subscribe. And if you’d like to learn more about the curbside, laundries, wash and fold point of cell and pick up and delivery solution, go to curbside laundries.com. See you next.
