Meet Jennifer. She introduced Laundry Pickup and Delivery to a small town. Customers love the product and service. The key is raising product awareness. People in Bowling Green Kentucky had no idea that Laundry Pickup and Delivery was a thing, but thanks community outreach, a Curbside Laundries website, and an amazing social media marketing campaign, the people in Bowling Green got hooked on the service. And they Love it!
JRae Laundry:
JRae Laundry Service in Bowling Green Kentucky:
She's Valiant Podcast (Women in Business)
Women in Business Podcast
Show notes
0:00 Intro
0:29 Retention Business
1:04 Getting Started in Laundry
2:00 Designed to Grow
2:45 Starting Wash and Fold
3:30 The Wash and Fold Process
4:10 Mass Customization of Individual Orders
4:40 Social Media Advertising
5:50 Community Outreach
6:55 Women in Laundry
8:00 Sponsoring Community Events
8:45 Introducing Laundry Pickup and Delivery
9:30 Laundry Ambassadors
9:45 Press Releases
11:00 Best in Class
Click here to see a demonstration of the Curbside Wash and Fold & Pickup and Delivery solution
Follow Curbside Laundries on Twitter
Join the Laundromat Community on X
Meet Jennifer. She introduced Laundry Pickup and Delivery to a small town. Customers love the product and service. The key is raising product awareness. People in Bowling Green Kentucky had no idea that Laundry Pickup and Delivery was a thing, but thanks community outreach, a Curbside Laundries website, and an amazing social media marketing campaign, the people in Bowling Green got hooked on the service. And they Love it!
JRae Laundry:
JRae Laundry Service in Bowling Green Kentucky:
She's Valiant Podcast (Women in Business)
Women in Business Podcast
Show notes
0:00 Intro
0:29 Retention Business
1:04 Getting Started in Laundry
2:00 Designed to Grow
2:45 Starting Wash and Fold
3:30 The Wash and Fold Process
4:10 Mass Customization of Individual Orders
4:40 Social Media Advertising
5:50 Community Outreach
6:55 Women in Laundry
8:00 Sponsoring Community Events
8:45 Introducing Laundry Pickup and Delivery
9:30 Laundry Ambassadors
9:45 Press Releases
11:00 Best in Class
Click here to see a demonstration of the Curbside Wash and Fold & Pickup and Delivery solution
Follow Curbside Laundries on Twitter
Join the Laundromat Community on X
You are in for a real treat. We're gonna be speaking to Jennifer who introduced laundry pickup and delivery to a small town. And her numbers, while they speak for themselves,
Speaker 2:We are the first ones to show up in our town with this. We do like the nice things and, and this service coming to town was huge. People love it. They love it.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited to introduce Jennifer from J Ray Laund . She's from Bowling Green, Kentucky and she's done a phenomenal job with branding, loving the customer. I, I gotta say, we are in the retention business and a big part of being in a retention business and developing customer loyalty is your brand and part of that is connecting with your customer. And Jennifer's just done a stellar job with that and we'll be going over that. And she's been with us for just about one year and has had tremendous growth. So both the in-store is basically double what it was when she first started with us, or overall wash and fold business. And the pickup and delivery has just jumped up significantly. So I'm really excited to hear about that growth and how she's dealt with that growth and how she's nurturing her business. So I'd like to introduce Jennifer and I'm just curious as far as like how you got into the laundry business.
Speaker 2:Hi Matt. Well first thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I know this is a little strange, but my brother and I, for probably the last 20 years have talked about owning a laundromat. He is in Virginia, and as you said, I'm in Kentucky, so we have not purchased a laundromat together, but I saw an opportunity and my community and so I did purchase it. It's just kind of been something that I've been looking forward to for a long, long time.
Speaker 1:Were you working full-time during this time?
Speaker 2:It's kind of interesting. I actually own two other full-time businesses, one of them being a commercial cleaning company. So the laundry really did fall right into place with the commercial cleaning company as we also, as you know, tend to commercial clients on a laundry side. So it really was a great marrying of businesses and my decision to name the laundromat in that company, j Ray , the cleaning companies, j Ray commercial cleaning. So it really did, it worked out really well.
Speaker 1:We have a client also in the cleaning business, Peter Low with LA a Gogo . And he was saying that the cleaning business and the laundry business, you wouldn't really expect to be so similar. I guess they're both cleaning. Yes . But the actual business model has a lot of similarities where mm-hmm . <affirmative> , it's built for retention where people mm-hmm <affirmative> , you keep the old customers and you also bring in new customers. And you said the business is designed to grow because it's kinda like a gym in a sense. You keep your existing businesses and you bring in new people, but I think unlike a gym, I think the retention's higher <laugh> , at least for me. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , like I , I have good intentions beginning of the year, but things happen. When you bought the laundromat, did you start off doing wash and full ? Did you add that later on? The
Speaker 2:Laundromat actually had wash and full drop off services and they had a fair amount at the time when we purchased the laundromat, they were doing the laundry, pricing was per load. So we actually changed a lot probably about a month after we took over was we went from per load to per pound obviously, and then implemented the , uh, curbside software, which exponentially helped the process. It was no longer on little tickets, handwritten take to various places around the laundromat. So there was already a wash and fold system there. It just was definitely upgraded when we came in with the software.
Speaker 1:It's funny you mentioned the process and how important that process is. And most laundry owners, we developed curbside to match our process, which took 10, 20 years to develop ourselves. You know, it wasn't just we designed software, it was like we already had the process in place, but we needed to digitize and automate it. And I just saw on Facebook somebody's talking about where they have to pay the customer thousands of dollars to replace their laundry. And there's three different reasons that situation would never have occurred with curbside laundries. So what happened was the customer dropped off their laundry and usually they have it delivered. And in this situation, they wanted to pick it up so they delivered it to the dress, the person was away, they never got the clothes, and it should never have been delivered in the first place. And the first question curbside Laund has asked the attendant is, is this pickup and delivery <laugh>? You know, so it's mm-hmm . <affirmative> , you know, if you don't have all those little details, it's like mass customization of individual orders. You know, everybody's orders different from the detergent to this. You know, if you wanna build your brand around loving your customer and listening to them and taking care of them, it's not just what you say. It's also what you do to back it up. And, you know, that's kind of where we see having the right process in place. Yeah. I noticed on your web presence and your Facebook posts, and I encourage everybody when laundry owners, you know , when you see some good posts by fellow laundry owners, give it a thumbs up, you know, if if it's good, encourage it because it helps them. Like they spent a lot of time developing that messaging. Mm-hmm . And creativity. And it goes a long way if you click, like it helps, it helps other people. Like you see the advertisement as well or the messaging. And I think a big part of Facebook advertising is just to raise awareness that this type of service exists. You know, one of the things I really like about your messaging is you talk about, you make it seasonal, you know, if it's football season, you're posting stuff about football and keeping the uniforms clean, cheerleaders, you know, make the bright white, you know, you , you , and then you're making messaging for residential folks and you're also making really good messaging for everything from salons to, you know, spas, you know, well , you know, all those type of things. And I was just wondering if you could expand on, you know, your social media strategy or how that's helped you?
Speaker 2:Sure. When we first started working this plane in our head anyways , we contacted a local marketing company and spent about $10,000 with them. And it got us nowhere. So we actually are part of a women , uh, networking business group. And one, well , several of the women in there use the service already. But we had talked to one that was really into social media and we barter with her, we do her laundry and she does our social media. And it is, there's nothing like a mama four that can put forth the effort and energy into the social media to really make it relatable to other people either in business 'cause she does have a business herself or in on the residential side with kids and cheerleading uniforms and all the things that she's dealing with at home . So that's really been, we just wanted to be relatable. We wanted people to understand that we understood. And my partner and the business, JB and I are both women. We both have children. We both understand how to rent a household and laundry's a huge part of that. We really just wanted to relate to the people. And it's working, it's working really well.
Speaker 1:Not to be sexist or anything, but the <laugh> , I'd find the best branding is done by the female owners in the industry. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , I mean, there's something where just connecting with the audience and realizing that's an important part of the business. You know? 'cause you're not connecting with your customer. Then the customers. They could sense when there , when there's love. And you mentioned you've got a , a podcast. Who's the audience for that and what is that all about?
Speaker 2:I have a podcast called She's Valiant. And it is basically a , uh, a podcast that interviews other women in business. We talk about the hard things that, that women kind of go through. It is very women oriented , and I know this industry isn't necessarily that, but it has been my, my life outside of laundry, I guess is , um, coaching women and doing some other things like that. So yeah , it's called Chiefs Valiant. It's, it's a project I'm super proud of.
Speaker 1:And that's fantastic. And I've seen you do like speeches or so to other, you know, women business owners and , and you've sponsored different things through j Ray LA with that mm-hmm . <affirmative> . And I was just wondering as far as like bridging that connection, if that's something that's helped out.
Speaker 2:It has actually helped out. We do sponsor, especially in our community, we try to sponsor community events in any opportunity to set up a table, to be there to talk to the people. We were in a Mardi Gras parade, we had our big j ray laundry van decked out and had a good time doing that. We, we just try to kind of get involved in the community stuff. And some of that does get pretty expensive, but for the most part we, you know, we just try to kind of show up and talk it up everywhere we go. We do sponsor, like I said , we are part of a women's business group locally, and they have opportunities to sponsor the meeting. So we did that and was able to get up and speak to them about our services. And that's pretty much how we've become more known in our community. And the big part too of where we live is pickup and delivery for laundry did not exist here. We are the first ones to show up in our town with this. We, we run , we are a college town and we have probably about 80,000 residents in the city limits. We think we're big, but we're not, you know, so we do like the nice things and, and this service coming to town was huge. People love it. They love it.
Speaker 1:Oh , that's fantastic. Introducing a new product to a town is, is really difficult. You know, it's this lot of heavy lifting because it's actually easier when somebody else is already doing pickup and delivery because then the market's already there. They're help establish it in a sense. And we were in the same position at Super suds in 2010. We were the only pickup delivery, or one of the only ones in Long Beach. And we had to do a lot of awareness campaigns just to let people know that pickup and delivery is a thing. It's really neat seeing you guys being really good ambassadors of pickup and delivery and making those community inroads, which is a two-way street. You're helping out the community. Everybody remembers who helps out the baseball team or the sports team in the high school. Mm-hmm . And that type of thing. It goes a long way for the people who are listening. The one really powerful technique, I really do encourage reaching out to the community. And you also wanna get the most mileage from everything. Get photos. You wanna take lots and lots of photos because after the event, it's like the event didn't exist anymore unless you have photos and reminding people, because the audience of that event is the people who are there and the people who , who couldn't make it to the parade, but they wanna see photos. A really important thing as well is reaching out to the local newspapers and ask for a free press release. You know, especially if it's a new product in the area, you wanna say, Hey, we're offering this new thing to help moms and dads and help different businesses. And so you could build awareness that way. And if you reach out to those local newspapers, which will help your search rankings a lot, make sure they include your U r L . So like j ray laund.com mm-hmm . <affirmative> , you know , is in that U r l , you know, in that article because then when Google crawls and scans that article and they see your laundromat mentioned, it helps your search ranking, which means you're gonna get more business when people are looking for it. So I , I , I really co commend you're helping the community and also running a business and you don't, it doesn't have to be an either or . You've done a great job doing both.
Speaker 2:We appreciate that. And I'll tell you another thing. I was just notified yesterday that we were nominated for best in Bowling Green, which is a big deal around here. I'm up against three cleaners and then one of their laundromats. So that's exciting too. So there's voting involved in that. So that's a whole nother way to connect with the community, to push the stuff out. And it's really been an exciting ride.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's exciting. And, and that's where you need to be prepared for these opportunities. You know , you've got the Facebook groups, you've got the community outreach, so you could probably say, Hey, go vote for, you know, and then people feel a part of it, like they gotta vote for you guys and now they're part of the winning team. That's the place I go to. So that you could just imagine the customer journey, the customer experience, and their connection with your brand . Stay tuned for the next episode where we talk about rolling billboards laundry day, and how to increase order sizes by two and a half times on commercial accounts. And if you'd like to learn more about curbside laundries in our wash and fold and pick up and delivery system that made this all possible, go to curbside laundries.com.