SUN CITY WEST, Ariz. — I always loved grand openings! They’re both exciting and a little scary. After months of planning and work to prepare your mat, you’re finally ready to open it to the public. You ask yourself, “How will it go?” If you planned well, the opening should go well.
This column serves to identify what you need to think about before you open your doors. Part 1 touched on getting permits in order, ensuring safety, and the importance of stocking parts. Allow me to conclude:
WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR GRAND OPENING
Free drying for a month or two is the most common promo I have seen over the years because it worked. Just make sure it’s temporary so you don’t trigger a “Free Dry War” with competitors who may want to match it. Then, nobody wins. Well, the customer wins, I suppose.
“Wash Customers Only!” should be clearly displayed in all your free-dry advertising, whether online, or inside or outside the store. This will help limit people who will try to sneak in just to use your dryers. You need vigilant attendants to police it.
I limited my free drying to weekdays to avoid becoming overwhelmed on weekends when it’s harder to call in extra help.
When the free-dry period is over, vend your dryers at a reasonable price that matches or is slightly higher than your competitor’s, at least in the beginning. You can always tweak the drying time up or down according to how busy the store is after the promo.
I wouldn’t raise the wash prices for quite a while unless your mat is still crazily busy months later.
You can also try offering free wash for a month or two. This can be done by limiting it to one free machine per family, not per customer. Otherwise, people will try to use their kids, or their spouses/significant others, to demand more free washes out of you. Another way they can cheat is by making multiple trips, but you can’t control everything.
As far as drop-off promos, this is easy. Just offer a percentage discount off the drop-off price. I found that 20% off Monday through Thursday worked so well for me that I made it permanent. This will take a lot of pressure off your crew on weekends. Make sure it’s clear that the discount is applied at the time they drop off, not when they pick up. You can also choose to limit the deal to prepaid only, since drop-off customers who prepay will pick up much sooner, which helps greatly with storage.
HAVE A ‘SOFT OPENING’ FIRST
After you and your crew are satisfied that everything is working well, you can declare a grand opening date. Then, a few days before your advertised opening date, just quietly open your doors to start allowing customers to trickle in. This is a great learning experience.
I once built a new mat from the ground up. Tested everything, and all seemed fine. Had my water levels where I wanted them to be, cycles were accurate, change machines worked, water temps and pressure were good, dryers got hot and baskets turned, and detergent venders worked fine, so I figured we were ready to go. But I didn’t run all of the machines at once.
Guess what happened? We opened up and were crazy busy from day one but got complaints on the water temperatures. I went downstairs to inspect the boiler. It was firing like it should, but the gauge was mysteriously fluctuating wildly! This hadn’t happened when we tested only a couple washers at a time.
The boiler and hot water storage tank were brand-new, yet I couldn’t figure out why the temps were fluctuating despite the flames almost constantly on. I called in my “boiler guy” and it turned out that the plumbers had piped it backwards! I hadn’t discovered it til then because I had never tested the store under a full load.
It was the best time to wow my customers, especially since they were on the lookout for anything they didn’t like, but the last thing I needed was to disappoint people during my grand opening. Some came back, some didn’t.
GET OUT IN FRONT OF THINGS
Your signage for your grand opening specials is extremely important. You want new customers to clearly understand your rules.
If you’ve bought a rundown mat and are renovating it, you’ll want to convince everyone who passes by that it’s under new and better management.
One of the best ways to do this is to choose a new name for the business, change the storefront and install a new main sign. This will greatly increase the chances that people will at least want to take a peek inside, if not bring in their laundry.
A new storefront will be an investment but it’s one of the best forms of advertising you do. Its longevity makes it cheap in the long run. An attractive storefront and catchy signage will be working for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, over many years.
Now, I know they can be expensive but automatic sliding doors make a lot of sense for a laundromat! Try opening an entrance door yourself while carrying a heavy basket or bag of laundry that requires two hands and you’ll see what I mean. With doors of this type, customers won’t have to struggle with opening them both coming and going while they’re carrying laundry.
If you bought a fairly well-run mat, you can probably skip the storefront (unless it’s in bad shape) but a new sign with the original name could be a help.
Wishing you all the best with your grand openings!
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
