Diversify

I was once at a drycleaners store somewhere – no recollection where – and he had a sign in the window:

WE SPECIALIZE IN
Drycleaning
Shirts
Wedding Gowns
Tailoring
Wash & Fold
Storage
Shoe Repair
Home Delivery

I chuckled to myself and thought “I guess that this guy has no idea what the word ‘specialize’ means.”  What it should have read “We are pleased to offer you all of these services” or something like that.  Back then, I wasn’t too much of a fan of the “one stop shop”.  I know that this is not the majority opinion, but I wanted to go to a bakery for baked goods, a florist for flowers, a cobbler for shoe repair, a tailor shop for tailoring and a haberdasher for clothing.  I didn’t always do it because convenience sometimes (read: often) trumped better judgement, but I truly believed that if I wanted the best, I had to deal with someone who specialized in what I wanted to buy.  For real.

But for the past decade or two, we have been struggling to keep our gross revenues up, one way or another.  For most of us, our customer lists haven’t shrunk so much as the number of pieces they bring to us and the amount that they spend has.  If only we can get them to spend more!

Enter the other services.  It is really hard to be against the idea. And forget about what I used to think.  Even if you agree with the concept of “dealing with someone who specializes in what I want to buy.”  There is a really smart workaround.

I wear Johnston & Murphy shoes.  They offer shoe repair.  I think that they call it restoration.  It isn’t particularly cheap, but I liked the idea of sending shoes back to them and then getting them back in “like new” condition.  I think it cost like $150, but the shoes come back great.  I later found out that J&M doesn’t recondition the shoes themselves, they use an outside vendor. Oh. Well, I guess that’s ok.  I got what I wanted.  Let’s get back to this a little later.

Back in my plant days, I had a huge wholesale shirt facility that processed 18 tons of shirts per week.  Nothing else.  Almost nothing else.  I also refurbished feather pillows with one of those pillow machines that you can buy from Harris Pillow.  A few years ago, I bumped into Mike Harris at the Clean Show and I told him a story:

“Mike, I have a story to share with you that you can feel free to share with anyone.  Many years ago, back in my plant days, the Massachusetts Dept of Worker’s Compensation contacted for some reason and my rate per $100 came up (maybe that was the reason that they called).  The rate was high, probably $38.  The agent said to me ‘Do you have a laundry, cleaning articles using only water and nothing else’?  I responded, ‘Yes.’ [Remember, I was a wholesale shirt launderer, nothing else].  In response to my affirmative answer, he said (remarkably), ‘That’s not the answer that I want to hear’. (It’s still hard for me to believe that he said that state employees are not known for being helpful).  I paused for a minute and then said, ‘I clean feather using ultra-violet light!’  He said, ‘That’s what I want to hear!  Your new rate is $8.14 per $100!”

Wow! Yep, that really happened.  That was the best reason ever to diversify!  Now don’t quote me on the rates, they differ from state to state; your mileage may differ, but who could have seen that coming?  And pillows were a big money-maker for us.  30 years ago, we wholesaled the pillows for $10, the ticks cost $2 and we paid a clocked-out employee that was good with a sewing machine $1 each.  She did 10-15 pillows per hour which paid her nearly triple her hourly wage. We wrapped them in regular poly.

I was always a big fan of wash and fold service, probably because my roots in this business are in the coin laundry business.  My gut told me that it made sense for your home delivery driver to include that in his realm.  I never analyzed it on a P&L. I always figured that I’d leave that for James Peuster.  I am particularly fond of the one-price concept where a customer pays, say, $300 per month.  You will launder whatever they can fit in a bag that you supply.  In theory, you make some extra cash because the bag isn’t always full.  Sometimes they send 40 (or whatever size bag that you decide is right for you) pounds, but sometimes it is only 30.  To use the simplest possible numbers, let’s say that a customer sends you 200 pounds in a month for which they pay you $300; $1.50 per pound.  I have seen more than one drycleaner turn that into a much more expensive fiasco than need be.  Often, they tend to keep every customers laundry separate.  This is wasteful and unnecessary.

Let’s say that you have 5 laundry orders; 5 customers.  You have an understandable fear;  if these clothes get mixed up, you will lose a customer (probably 2 customers for every mistake). Fair enough.  The counter-point is that if you take precautions that are so costly that the venture doesn’t make any money, why bother in the first place?  Frankly if you lose a customer due to a Wash and Fold error, and that leads to bad press that ultimately leads to losing drycleaning customers, this has been a bad experience.  So, with that in mind…

Start with brand new laundry nets.  No draw-strings, no zippers.  Open top, old-school sturdy laundry nets.  You will be replacing them from time to time.  They are a consumable.  They are not something that will last years.  Notice that the one pictured is GREEN.  You will have five colors;  GREEN, blue, red, yellow, white.  Notice that there is a laundry pin on this net bag.  You hate them and are sure that they don’t hold.  You probably don’t know how to use laundry pin unless you were around when you could buy a gallon of gasoline for less than 40 cents.  I could tell you to put two pins, but that probably won’t help if neither is used properly.  So here is what to do.  After you have attached the pin as shown, use a RT-200 rope tie (notice the GREEN toggle on the end) below the tie to double-secure the net.  Never use a net with holes or one that has been mended.  You will be replacing nets regularly.  They are a consumable.  They are not something that will last years.  So perhaps you already see a pattern here.  GREEN net bag, GREEN Rope Tie.  Let’s extend that still more…

Take the invoice or work order or whatever you might call it and attach a blank instruction flag to it as shown here.  Now, all of the clothes in the “GREEN” order go into GREEN laundry nets and secured properly with laundry pins and Rope-Ties.  Of course, you will be separating lights and darks and the laundry nets must not be more than half full, which is nowhere near as much clothing as you see in the picture.  That picture was taken so that you can see the pin.  Do not stuff the bags.  You’ll see why later.  So, you can see where I’m going here.  Everything about this customer is GREEN.  Do the exact same thing with all of the other four customers.  Work on one customer at a time.  Once the net bags are locked and loaded, feel free to toss them into laundry carts, one cart for lights, one cart for darks.

 Where you can start making a difference in this business is by utilizing two or three large capacity washing machines and two or three large capacity dryers.  I have seen these orders go to a drop store that has a coin laundry where the attendant commandeers more than half of the machines in the laundry.  I am not exaggerating even a little bit.  She will take 12, 13, 15 top-loaders to wash all of these clothes and then 8-10 dryers.  If this is done in a drycleaning plant, there may not be that number of machines, so the employee turns this into an 8-10 hour job making it into a cashflow negative proposition.

Here’s how to do it:

The capacity of your washing will determine how much will fit into your machine, but don’t let the employee determine this.  Chances are high that they will underload it to pad the timeclock or overload to get that last bag in.  Use a scale.  When loading the washers, make sure that you get all of the nets of one color into the washer before introducing the next order.  Got that?  If you have three red nets, three blue nets and three white nets and the washer only holds 6 nets, be careful not to wash 2 nets of each color or 3 nets of one color, two of another and one net of a third.  Your only choice is to wash three nets of 2 colors and run the other afterwards.  Sorry if that sounds complicated, it’s just a productivity thing. Meanwhile you will do the same thing with the same color nets for the dark colored clothes, assuming you did the lights first.

For many of you, there is nothing new there – aside from the concept of colors – you know how to wash, it’s the drying that makes you nuts.  That’s what I’m here for.  A 50-100 pound dryer is good to have here.  Your knee-jerk impulse is to open the nets and tumble the clothes in the dryer.  Hold on.  Put several bags in the dryer.  Remember that you didn’t stuff the bags.  There should be about 5 pounds of dry weight in the bags, so 8-9 bags in a 50 dryer would not be unrealistic.  Tumble these – lets call it 8 bags, for a few minutes while you prepare to complete the GREEN order.  The customer’s name really doesn’t mean anything at this point.  Everything about this order is GREEN.  Get the customer’s delivery bag ready.  Remember to only be working on one order at a time.  Go back to the dryer, open the door and open each net that is GREEN and let the clothes loose in the dryer along with the other nets of different colors that are par-drying. (That’s a term that I borrowed from the kitchen.  It means partially drying).  Let’s say that there are 3 GREEN nets.  Now the garments from those 3 GREEN nets are free and will dry quickly.  Attach the 3 empty GREEN nets to the door handle of the dryer.  This will remind you of the pending order.  Do the exact same thing to the dryer with the dark colored clothing, assuming you did the lights first.  In the folding area the wash and fold bag awaits with the invoice and the color indicator.  Soon the light-colored clothes will be done.  There is a specific procedure.  Open the dryer door and check a couple of thick pieces for moisture.  If they are dry, TOSS THEM BACK INTO THE DRYER.  Remove the remaining 5 net bags and place them into a small laundry cart for a moment, making sure that not dry pieces have clung to the net.  Now remove the loose pieces from the dryer.  Be certain that you get everything.  These pieces go to the folding area for final processing and packaging.  Remove the GREEN nets and Rope ties from the Dryer door and return them to storage.  Return the 5 net bags that you set aside to the dryer, but select another color to remove from the nets and tumble loosely.  If you have additional net colors that have been washed but have not yet been par-dried, you are encouraged to put them in the dryer now.  The light-colored clothes from the GREEN order are now folded and packaged, then the dark-colored clothes follow in the same manner. The secret is to stay organized and stay efficient. 

So, I said that I would get back to the shoe repair.  Johnston & Murphy is a retailer that I trust (like you) and they advertised shoe restoration for their brand only.  Since I trust them, I must also trust them to make good decisions with my goods.  They didn’t tell me that they specialized in shoe repair, they told me that they offer this as a service to their customers.  They had a path to a service that I wasn’t privy to.  So, if you “do shoes”, you need a reason why your customer should go to you.  J&M has a great reason.  The resulting work looks like it came from the factory and the cost, although expensive by one view, is 30% less than new shoes.  Most people that “do shoes” in this industry look for a cobbler that will give them a good discount and then the deal is done.  This is entirely different than “Thank you for asking about our shoe restoration service.  While our service is priced slightly higher than some street corner cobblers, the quality of work is second to none.  Please take a moment to look at these before and after photographs.  I’m sure that you will agree that the company that we contract with is one of the best shoe restorers in the world.  We guarantee our work 100%!”  Surely beats the heck out of “Yeah lady, we do shoes.  Drop ‘em off today and they’ll be back in about 2 weeks.”

Personally, I don’t recommend shoe repair.  Most shoes are of such poor quality that they really aren’t made to be repaired.  I got to know a couple of cobblers in town and they would start conversations with me because of the types of shoes I would bring them.  More than once, I’ve been told, “It’s a real pleasure to work on shoes that are actually well constructed rather than the crap that usually comes in here.”  If you buy shoes at WalMart for $40, what will someone pay to repair them?  Nothing.  You can’t replace soles on sneakers.  Shoe repair is a dying business.  The cobblers that I knew are long gone.

Don’t try to do wedding gowns yourself.  Make it a fixed cost.  “We have contracted with a firm that does nothing but wedding gowns, thereby assuring quality and expertise, first time, every time”

If 2020 didn’t teach you that you have to change, nothing will.  You do need to diversify, but do it right.  Don’t pretend to be a specialist at everything, but remind your customers that you are the person that is to be trusted in this industry.

Because you are the one to trust, you are smart enough to know that you aren’t the best at everything.  The most important things are to improve upon the things that you do, make sure that you can be profitable at the services that you offer and for the services that you use and outside vendor, have a script that every employee memorizes and uses religiously, so that ultimately the customer learns that it is the smartest decision to patronize you, in spite of the outside vendor.