Part 2 of Claudia And Stephanie’s We Wash Laundry Company‘s Journey. They share some of their brilliant marketing techniques and the importance of having systems and procedures in place before you start! “What’s really important with this pandemic is people have determined what is important in their lives and where they want to spend their time. Laundry is not one of them and I don’t blame them. Get out with your family and friends and do things that actually matter.” ~Stephanie Staley with We Wash Laundry Co
[Transcript]
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Welcome to state of the laundry industry with Laundry “Matt”, episode 14, how to advertise, wash, and fold. This episode is the sequel and the features Claudia and Stephanie with we wash laundry company. He built a very successful laundry pickup and delivery service without a laundry mat. In this episode, they share some of their brilliant marketing techniques and the importance of having systems and procedures in place before you start. So you want to go over some of that, your advertisements, the first one, it’s basically three photos put together. It’s telling a story and it looks like somebody is relaxing, maybe drinking some wine or something cooler. And, and then the laundry is coming to the door and it’s like, the laundry is done. Easiest pie. You know, you just tap schedule a pickup. Just wanted to, you know, what inspired you on that? Or what was the messaging behind that?
Speaker 2: (00:59)
Well, we do just want to show how easy this is. Like your laundry day can literally take you five minutes and it’s a new lifestyle. And it’s really a lifestyle that I think with this pandemic and what has happened in the last year and a half as people have really decided what’s important in their lives and where they want to spend their time. Laundry is not one of them. And I don’t blame them, get out there and be with your family, your friends, doing activities or things that actually matter.
Speaker 1: (01:26)
Yeah, I think people would definitely have reprioritized and in a weird way, we’re busier than ever, because it’s harder to, you can’t have your kid just easily going to, you know, to acquire after school. Like things are just tougher, you know, less people are able to help out with pickups, you know, picking up your kid, you know, just because, you know, safety precaution. So our time is just so valuable. And I think just for Saturday, we, we need to figure out what can we outsource? And, and so that actually in another part that, that I love about that ad is it three parts? It tells the story and the audience is kind of putting the pieces together. You know, we’re, I think our minds just love connecting dots. You know, that’s what we do. And, and so you have like three, three dots in a sense, three stories, and, and then it’s using your audience to tell the story to themselves, it’s in their head, you know, and, and that’s not easy to accomplish. And I think you did that really, really well, where they’re putting the story in their head and then you, when you’ve got in their head and it’s a good story to tell.
Speaker 2: (02:28)
Well, when we first started marketing, we were doing a lot of like showing our black bags, which are cool, and everybody loves the black bags, but you know what? People really love the full, just see the actual final product. Like that’s what I can tell people all day long what we do, but that doesn’t sit as well as actually seeing the product. Yeah.
Speaker 1: (02:51)
You know, I did a whole podcast episode on that. The whole point of that podcast was he got to show like, what are you selling? And right. You know, there, if people are just, you know, if you’re selling ice cream, you want to show a picture of the ice cream, not how it’s made. You know what I said, you want to show the finished product. And I think, especially in the laundry industry, we sometimes forget that we’re showing off our, I was going to say, maybe because it’s like male orientated, you know, like, Hey, look at this washing machine over here, look over here.
Speaker 2: (03:18)
Honestly, what’s pretty about laundry bind. Let’s put it out dirty laundry. No, I know people are like, it’s so glamorous. We’re like,
Speaker 1: (03:33)
Well, and the other, the other picture I want to show as well. And I just think this one is great, is it shows mother the two kids and she comes out barefoot to pick up the laundry. So it’s like the laundry was done. She didn’t even have to put on her shoes. And I also love that. It’s multi-generational you got the kids saying, Hey, this is how a laundry is done. And I think mom’s pretty smart because she got it done in a Jiffy and she’s able to spend more time with them. And the kids get to see, this is how laundry is done, you know? And just, we were talking before the podcast started about your mentioning about even gardening and all these other different services that people outsource nowadays. And this is a perfect example, just even that touch of her, not wearing shoes, I think was genius because it just shows how easy is she just stepped out the front door.
Speaker 2: (04:25)
Yeah. And you know, what would typically have been probably a six to eight hour laundry day with children and all the laundry that comes with them turned into literally what, two, three minutes to bag it up, throw it at your front door and then a total of what, five to 10 minutes to have the children put it away. So, yeah, I mean, on our social media, we try to incorporate the kids as much as possible because you know, we are, um, setting up our kids for success in life. And we both work really hard and our kids work hard, our husbands work hard. And so we’re not going to let our kids get away with not doing chores around the house. So becomes their chore. It is their chores. So they don’t get to just, um, not help out around the house. You’re going to put your laundry away. You’re going to put it away the right place. Cause it’s already done. So just put it away. So,
Speaker 1: (05:18)
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Love it. And then you guys visited supersedes before you started the, your company or maybe at about the same time. And I was just wondering what inspired you to, to do that and like what your takeaways were after you visited our family laundry mat. And if you could just kind of walk us through that.
Speaker 2: (05:36)
So we went down to visit super sets in. The reason being is honestly, there’s not a concept like yours here in the Midwest, like we previously mentioned. So it was more so we had it in our head, how it would play out. But really honestly, we hadn’t physically been able to see how it would play out. So we wanted to get a lot of the behind the scenes as far as what does it look like when the delivery driver goes out and picks up laundry? How are y’all able to tag them? Um, how are you able to keep track of whose laundry belongs to who all the way down to, if we’re going to bring this concept back to Iowa, how do you fold? I mean little things as how, you know, we want everything to look very, very neatly and all the exact same way. So we took folding lessons from your launders they’re at super sets. They’re so great. We tried to talk him into moving to Iowa. It was a lot of background, just gaining more knowledge and information to actually, you know, make it real life. What does this actually look like? But we still had no idea. Even after we left, he did a great job. You guys made it look really easy. Really did. That’s all I’m going to say.
Speaker 1: (06:56)
What were some of the learning, I guess, you know, some of the challenges, you know, once, you know, rubber hits the road and you’re actually,
Speaker 2: (07:03)
Oh my gosh, this is so funny. So when we very first opened, we hit it off with a 50% off like new customers. And we had a certain number available for each route, oh Lord, help us. And we had two staff members with us and we thought we got out, we got this, got it. We got this. Oh, Matt. I remember I was the driver, you know, cause we had a laundry and a folder. That’s all we needed. I was the driver. And I remember calling staff and saying, well, I hope you don’t have plans this evening or tomorrow morning because we’re all night long. This van is full to the roof. And you know, as much as we were like excited to get the new business, it was also like sinking in and hitting us. Like who’s going to do all this laundry here.
Speaker 2: (07:53)
We are the two moms who despise doing laundry and want to come up with this great concept. And guess who was up literally through the night till six 30, the next morning, Washington folding laundry us with our two employees. Yeah. I mean, we cried, we cried. I remember it like it was yesterday. I backed the van into the garage bay door and open the back and Steph just started guys, what did we just get ourselves into? And here was a worst part. We would filled up our routes for an entire week, for an entire month. So when we had these customers, you know, who we offered the 50% off to take gain, um, momentum and to get business, we guaranteed a month. So they had to commit to us for a month. So we had to commit to them for a month. So it was like, who’s going to do all this laundry for an entire month. I mean, we both went home and slept. Maybe three hours got right back up, got right back up and did it again. Yeah. So yeah. And that first week we got a lot of phone calls about mixed up clothes. I mean, things that we hit, we learned some really hard lessons in the first couple of weeks because we really had never done this before. And the training with you guys was great, but you are a well operated well-oiled machine and we needed to figure out our,
Speaker 1: (09:20)
Well, I’ll tell you how to supersize. There’s this one order. And I didn’t put it through the software. I just said, because they’re a well-oiled machine. Like we’re doing like 70, 80 pickups a day and I figured they could handle this. I got to be careful. It was totally my fault. I just got to say that because I didn’t fit the order through the machine or, you know, through the software. And so I just, you know, just, Hey, could you make sure you deliver this to so-and-so they’re expecting their laundry back. And that order never got delivered. And it’s like, oh my gosh, like how that happened. And it’s because when you are, it’s all about systems. And, and I went outside of the system. So well-oiled machine also means there’s a system in place. It’s really hard to create a system on the fly. You know,
Speaker 2: (10:04)
You have to follow the procedures that we put in place,
Speaker 1: (10:09)
Stay tuned for next week’s. We wash laundry company. Finally also please subscribe and tap. Like it really helps us out. If you’d like to learn more about the croup side, laundry softwares and website solution that made this all possible. Please go to curbside laundries.com. See you next time.
