A Russian scientist who came to the US to give lectures in the early 90s first came across Inc magazine, which was aimed at small and medium businesses. The magazine made such an impression that he passionately wanted to start his own business. Soon, having abandoned pure science, he opened a programming firm in the US with a focus on applications in his specialty.
Less than a decade later, the company he headed went public and, despite subsequent difficulties, earned its founder a seven-figure fortune. Talent and luck are certainly important, but the magazine opened up new opportunities for him. It is not known whether the man donated money to the magazine when he became a multimillionaire, but he freely acknowledges the role of Inc. in his decision to start his own business. Articles can be not only a source of useful information, but also an incentive to entrepreneurship.
Any business that helps people make their lives easier and more enjoyable has great prospects. US experience shows that a self-service laundry can become an extremely successful type of business and bring huge profits.
Laundries in private homes
In the US, laundry services in various forms are as much a part of business as the telephone. It is as standard as having a sink or heating. The idea of washing by hand in the US seems to be about as popular as eating without knives and forks. Standardization of the idea of machine washing gives life to a variety of businesses. Thus, in America, according to official data, there are 116 million homes, approximately 106 million of which have washing machines.
Not a single individual house has been built there for decades without a specially designated place for a laundry room. It is a closet with electricity, pipes and space for a washing machine and dryer, or a small separate room, often without windows. The choice is not whether or not there is a laundry room in the house, but only its size and location. The typical design of an American house assumes bedrooms on the second floor, and common rooms (kitchen, dining room, living room, etc.) on the first. In the standard version, the laundry is on the first floor - this is obviously technically simpler; A more elite and expensive option is to place the laundry room on the same level as the bedrooms.
According to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, more than 7.5 million washing machines and about 7 million dryers were sold in the United States in 2002, and it should be noted that sales have increased by 50% over the past 10 years.
I think the public and the manufacturers of self-service laundry equipment should lobby for the adoption of regulations that require that new housing not be built without a special place for home laundry. The cost of apartments without this important element with the same total area will be significantly lower in a few years, because such a layout imposes restrictions on lifestyle.
Laundries in the entrances
Apartment buildings in the United States also have individual laundry rooms in apartments or common ones in the basement of the entrance. Thus, to wash clothes, you do not need to go far.
Entryway laundries include a closed room, the keys to which are held only by the residents of the building, in which several washing and drying machines are installed; they are paid for in coins (one wash or dry - from one to one and a half dollars). But these are industrial machines, and they can be loaded with many kilograms.
The creation of such laundries and the work in them are very simple. In many cases, the owners of the house simply allocate a room for these purposes and transfer the installation and maintenance of the equipment to a separate company. One of the largest such companies in the United States is Maytag. It started with one laundry and in 50 years has grown to the level of servicing 825 thousand washing and drying machines, providing more than a million washes per day for almost 6.5 million families. It is easy to see what the statistics mean: a family does an average of one load of laundry per week, and each washing machine does about three loads per day (I assume the number of washers and dryers is the same). It is easy to see that the turnover of this company must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
One of the models of the Maytag company is that the owner of the house provides the premises in which the company puts the machines, collects the coins itself and pays him a certain amount regularly. At the same time, the machines themselves have a sign indicating where to call free of charge if the machine does not work, so the owner does not have to worry about checking the functionality of the machines, but only needs to monitor the cleanliness (rent always assumes that cleaning of common areas, including stairwells and laundry rooms, is included in the rent).
Automatic laundries
I have never heard of traditional laundries in the US (although they may exist somewhere), where you have to leave your laundry for several days. Firstly, it is inconvenient - you have to come twice; secondly, it is significantly more expensive, because additional people are involved; finally, the laundry becomes unavailable for some time and can get mixed up with someone else's.
The service, when laundry is picked up and returned after some time, is standard for hotels, but not for everyday life. A typical service is an automatic laundry, where washing is done in the presence of the user. These machines are called coin laundry in the US (coin - coin, laundry - laundry), or laundromat (from the words "laundry" and "machine"), the Russian equivalent would be "stiromat", hardly a good name. Although the lack of good names makes it difficult for the business to develop quickly.
According to the Coin Laundry Associations, today in the US there are somewhere between 30 and 35 thousand such automatic laundries, whose annual revenues amount to several billion dollars. One estimate of the industry's profitability in the US is $6 billion a year.
The question may arise: where do you get coins for laundry? The standard coin used is a quarter. You can ask for a quarter roll at any bank or store - a stack of 40 quarters worth $10 each, wrapped in paper. Another popular solution is to use cards similar to phone cards in laundries, which you can add money to through another machine, paying with paper bills.
It is worth placing this idyll in historical context. The first washing machines began to be patented in the United States in the mid-19th century; the first electric washing machine appeared in 1908. Public laundries arose in the United States in the late 20s and early 30s, but then you had to hand over your laundry and receive it after some time; This was done by special people. Laundry machines have become popular in the United States since the 1950s, when reliably operated machines became available. The first slot machines were very profitable. The owners opened several dozen laundries a year. However, the industry went through a crisis when it turned out that the service was insufficient (from dirty premises to broken machines; vandalism and theft also created many problems).
The industry has passed this phase, and now laundries have high-quality service (probably specialized companies handle repairs) and attract customers with additional little things - from TVs for those waiting for laundry and playgrounds to video rentals and shoe repairs.
Criteria for a modern laundry:
- very close to the house, preferably no further than the same entrance;
- payment for individual washing, not by weight;
- the laundry will be ready in an hour and a half, not in a few days.
This type of washing should be several times cheaper and infinitely more convenient than handing over laundry for more than a day.
A laundry service has the great advantage of being easy to start, as it can be started with minimal investment and pay for itself immediately. To start such a business, it is enough to have a washing machine and a dryer in the apartment, go around to the neighbors and tell them about the prices. Then, if necessary, you can hire inexpensive staff on an hourly basis.
