This is not a post that will sell you on expensive business insurance, or try to sway you into investing in experimental technology that’s supposed to tell you if your commercial washers and dryers are leaking.
Rather, it is a cautionary tale regarding one of the costs of starting a laundromat that might be unfortunately overlooked.
Naturally, you’re going to want to keep costs down, right? The less you can spend on buying or building an entirely new facility, the better.
Considering the simplicity of the profit equation, that makes sense. The lower the costs are, the more profitable the venture will be.
But one part of that equation is revenue. Without that, it doesn’t matter how high or low your costs are. A business model that is just cost will not survive long no matter how low you can engineer them.
Now, granted, you’re going to need to spend no small sum of money to purchase an existing laundromat. If not, you’ll need to renovate, build an entirely new facility, or perhaps even lease. The initial investment will be high to open a laundromat.
Then you’ll have to outfit the facility with commercial washers and dryers, buy commercial laundry supplies, invest in insurance and in any maintenance, upgrades or repairs that are needed,
So, considering the fact that most estimates suggest the costs to start a laundromat range from as low as $200,000 to as high as $500,000, or even considerably higher, why would you be looking for greater expenses?
Because, no matter your business plan, you need customers, that’s why.
Enter marketing and advertising for your laundromat.
The Hidden (but Welcome) Cost to Start a Laundromat
While marketing is a variable expense (it can realistically be as expensive or as affordable as you want) without effective outreach you won’t have any new customers. Unless, perhaps, you buy an existing laundromat with an established clientele.
Consider the more likely scenario in which you’re literally building a new laundromat or installing a facility where previously there wasn’t one.
Sure, you might get a few stragglers, but don’t expect locals to magically become aware of the new services in town. If you don’t get the word out, you’ll be racking up costs without earning revenue very quickly.
There are lots of ways to market your new laundromat, but probably the two best channels are digital and traditional.
On the digital front, probably the fastest way to get new eyes on your business is social media. If you create a business account and post on local facebook pages, that’s one way to go about it, and can be very low cost, effectively free if you do it yourself.
As for traditional marketing methods, this is one rare area in which door-to-door marketing still works. Send out flyers and put them on the doors or cars of people in your neighborhood. It’s low-cost, will spread the word, and might not result in a lot of conversions, but at least wasted spend will be restricted almost entirely to those in your target market.
No matter how you look at it, and what the ultimate costs to start a laundromat are for your model, don’t overlook marketing spend or you’re not going to turn a profit as quickly as you might have.
