The State of the Laundry Industry
The State of the Laundry Industry
e46: 7.5 TIMES Growth in 6 months in Wash and Fold
Randy of Columbus Express Laundry has been with Curbside Laundries for about a year and a half and shares his success story. Randy increased his revenue by attracting new business through prospecting and marketing. His success can be attributed to optimizing their website, advertising in places they service, and focusing on the customer experience.
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Welcome to State of the Laundry Industry with laundry and Matt, episode 46, 7 and a half times growth in just six months. I'm really excited to introduce Randy Roberts with Columbus Express la His story is just phenomenal. He's been with curbside laundries for about a year and a half, and his numbers are just off the charts. Your July was probably better than many laundries, most laundries do in Washington fold all year long. Your success is no accident, and that's one of the reasons why I'm really excited to talk to you. You approached this business deliberately with, with a plan, with a strategy. Just like to introduce Randy Roberts. Just curious, how did he get into Washington Fold and how did you get into the laundry business?
Speaker 2:So first of all, thanks for having me on. I appreciate that. It's kind of a weird story. I grew up and started working with my cousin when we were younger, 18, 19 years old. My career took me away to the corporate side of the business and I worked for, uh, an IT telecom company for, uh, 32 years. He went and did the small business side of it. He was sitting on my front porch one day and I said, Hey, I, I think I'm ready to do something else. And he said, well, I think, let me think about that, cuz I was saying, let me know if you know anyone. He came back a couple of weeks later and said, I think I've got this opportunity. And he talked to me a little bit about it and he said, just think about it for a little while. And I started doing some research, going online, doing everything I could to understand the business. And he came back a couple weeks later and, and basically we've been running hard at this ever since.
Speaker 1:Terrific. And was your main goal, was it the laundry side? Was it wash and fold? Just curious as far as what you focused on and did you start pick up and delivery right from the get-go?
Speaker 2:So we had an employee that was doing some wash fold prior to me being associated with the business. This had some legs on it and it could be a lot more. In doing so, wanted to change how the business was run fundamentally. So my responsibility, I'll look at it and call myself the Chief Revenue Officer. My job is to drive the business, to bring the revenue in, to create the new business through both marketing, prospecting, all those different ways that you can find new business. And he's historically been on the operations side of it. Since I've come on board, he runs the books and the operations and does everything that really he's best at in the business and, uh, guides me as to where we wanna ship the business to create more effectiveness. True. So it's been a very, very good partnership.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know what's interesting is being Chief Revenue Officer, you're focused on opportunities and there's so many operators that get stuck in the grind and we all get stuck in during the day-to-day tasks. I think that's a big reason for your success is you were just focused on the big picture. What is my goal and how do I get there? A lot of times we're just responsive because we're busy doing the day-to-day and putting out fires. So what would you say some of your big picture strategies are in terms of growing your
Speaker 2:Business? When I look at the business, I look at it as, there's two components to it. There's the business side of it and there's the residential side of it. And really what we're working to do through our website optimization, and first of all, you've gotta be found, right? So you wanna be proactive in how customers are able to get to you. So the presence and, and, and how you optimize the site for search is extremely important. We work a fair amount on that. We've got a, uh, a group that we work with there that we're pleased with, that we meet with on a monthly basis. Look at the results, where is it going, what are the things we should be doing? Some of the early things we found or we were advertising, marketing in places that we weren't servicing. You've gotta be able to sit back and look at it from that larger perspective instead of get stuck in that daily grind,
Speaker 1:You're bringing in one new customer per day in Washington Fold, which is just phenomenal. Where do you feel those customers are coming from? Is that website, is it advertising? What, what type of marketing mix are you looking at? It's
Speaker 2:A combination. You look at the one new customer today that sounds great. That's nowhere near where we want to be from a goal point of view, but it, it's a start and we're, we're pleased with where we are. What I'll say is at the end of the first year, my partner and I basically sat down and, and had a review of the end of the first year and I set a self-proclaimed target at the end of the first year to be at a revenue amount. And we exceeded that revenue amount on a monthly basis by 33% of what I wanted to be by the end of the year. It's exciting to look back on. It's not easy to get
Speaker 1:<laugh>, right? Yeah, it's a lot of details along the way and we have certain clients such as you that just brings so much to the table where we're just so fortunate to have you as a client of curbside laundries because your feedback is just so on point. There's a lot of big picture stuff, but I think some of the feedback is so beautiful because it's so focused on the customer experience and the customer journey and that's what we're all about. For example, we're you're doing some commercial business and our commercial invoices started with invoice number one and you said, Matt, that's just embarrassing. I don't wanna send out an invoice when that's invoice number one. It makes it look like we're brand new. It resonated. It's like that shouldn't be. So we updated for other clients, I'm sorry we couldn't go back in time for you, but that type of feedback, most owners would never pay attention to it. Or if they did, they'd be like, well, that's a one and done problem and in the future it'll self-correct as we do more commercial. I think that focus on the customer experience is one of your secrets to success. That's something it seems like you pay a lot of attention to.
Speaker 2:I can tell. Uh, most of the time when we have a new customer, I can tell who they are, I will look up where they're at. We have some customers that sign up as a residence when they're actually in a suite of a business building. Sometimes what we'll try and do is make sure we have an interaction with that customer early on. Meaning we'll reach out to them and say, is there anything special that you need with these services? Maybe you didn't sign up on the website for, so it, it's handholding initially, but the goal is it becomes a repeat business opportunity. Meaning if they're pleased with the service, they'll use it again and again and again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so genius because they're gonna remember that interaction forever for as long as they're a client and mm-hmm.<affirmative> so crucial because in a very few other operators or business owners have that in their standard operating procedures to reach out to clients and create that personal connection.
Speaker 2:I'd rather them tell me now what we've done wrong as opposed to have 10 customers find out something we did wrong.
Speaker 1:Right. They're gonna complain somewhere so the, it's either to you and then you could correct it or they're gonna go to Yelp,<laugh> and so
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. I'll tell you a funny story. We have a client that's been with us for forever and this client went on vacation and actually sent texts over of their family on vacation so that I could share it with the team. Nice. Those connections are deep and wide and they're, and the intent is right, we want to service them in a way that they feel like they're part of the
Speaker 1:Family that's as personal as it gets. Shows you care about them and you do, and vice versa. If there's a relationship before there's a problem, then it's a lot easier to resolve because everybody's on the same side. They're all have the same goals.
Speaker 2:What I tell the team is, every day we've got a hundred chips on the table and when we mess something up, they take those chips away and they may take five of'em away at a time. They may take one of'em away. If you mess up bad enough, they take 50 of'em away and you never get that next chance. But our job every day is to build those chips back up on the table so that we have a hundred on the table
Speaker 1:Every day. That's awesome. Reach
Speaker 2:And every
Speaker 1:Interaction. That's great. Just curious as far as why you went with curbside laundries that you seem like type of person does their research? Curious as far as your motivating drive?
Speaker 2:Couple different things. One is we, we really wanted to protect our brand. So we wanted to control the customer experience. We wanted them to see us and not some third party that we may not be able to control. Owning the process and the customer interaction from a picking it up and delivering it is super important to us. The drivers are really all they see. So if they see us and it's a good reflection upon us, then it's a great experience. And if they see something from the driver and it's a bad experience, then that's what they're going to remember from us. So if you do everything right and the driver drives through their front yard and does a donut<laugh>, that's a bad experience, right? So you can do everything right, but that one, one thing will really get you off the track. Why do we picks curbside? Many reasons. Probably too many to list the software, the search engine optimization that's contained within the website. The website, the buildout for that. We saw significant value in that. This is a logistics business. Laundry just happens to be the product that we deliver. How we communicate with the customers during these interactions so that they see the technological side of it and feel at ease with it. They know when it's been delivered. They know when it's been picked up. So all of those little things that may be taken for granted are a significant component to the customer experience, which is really what we're focused
Speaker 1:On. It's so insightful because a lot of times people are making their decision off of a checklist, doesn't have this, doesn't have that, and they're missing everything you just mentioned, which is what is the customer experience, what does it look like from the customer's point of view? And that's really everything. Imagine judging a laundromat by a checklist versus what is the experience of when you walk in the door, what does the customer see and fill and sent over a photo of the 300 pound order from a client. That really just illustrates to me why it's important to charge by the pound versus by the bag. If that guy was charging by the bag and say like, you're charging 50 bucks a bag or whatever it happens to be, you wonder have got that$600 order. Were you expecting that size order? Does that happen? No.<laugh>. Okay.
Speaker 2:No, we probably had a van at that point. I'm not certain We had our second van then, but the driver was out. It was a very snowy day. We had a customer that called in and said, I've got this laundry, I need to get it picked up. I was in the area and said, you know what, I'll just stop by and grab it. So I have a four door sedan and I, I went and grabbed a bag off the porch. There was two or three on the porch and the person came to the porch and said, well, I've got more. Do you have bags being in this business? I have laundry bags in the car at all times. And so I went back to the trunk. I said, how many do you need? They said, probably about four to five minutes.
Speaker 1:<laugh>, I think you can't prepare.
Speaker 2:Said, oh, no problem. And I'm thinking, where am I gonna put all this? Ultimately, I got it stuffed in the car. You can see in the picture that I'm the only thing in there. You can't change lanes, you can't do anything with it. I'm cautious now when some a new customer calls and says, Hey, I need something picked up. I don't show up in my car. I show up in one of our
Speaker 1:Vans. Yeah, you never know. And that kind of goes back to you're talking about brand and people's experience with the laundromat may just be, you know, the software and the driver and you also don't know how much laundry they're gonna give you. Taking, setting the table for that. What are your thoughts regarding Uber? Was that something you ever consider like DoorDash or Uber for pickup and delivery?
Speaker 2:No, not really. I mean, we've had discussions with people who are doing that and that may fit a need to control that customer experience. That's just not something we're willing to take a risk on. In addition, I'd say that the 15 minute pickup, the 15 minute delivery model, I'm not certain that that's something that enables us to scale the business the way we would like to,
Speaker 1:Because then you're just picking up one order at a time. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And the secret to making money is running a route. You know, imagine a newspaper route. Could you imagine a newspaper company making money if they deliver one paper, go back to the printing, press deliver a second paper. I mean, it's just silliness.
Speaker 2:It's not a model for success in our eyes. Now for others, if they, they choose that and they believe that's the way they can make money, I say more power to them and, and I, I I support it. I we're, we're not interested in that
Speaker 1:Model. One thing I wanted to show was you sent over videos of the folding machine that you have and it just looks ridiculously good.<laugh>, I was really impressed. It looked like you've got doing different types of garments in there, from shirts to sheets to towels. You do not wanna miss the next episode. So click like, or subscribe. We're gonna find out if the folding machine lives up to its height, can it transform your operations? Stay.