SUN CITY WEST, Ariz. — During my career as a multi-store owner, I was able to avoid many mistakes, but not all of them. And some were real doozies!
These are my most common mistakes, and my suggestions for how one can avoid them. (I’ll save my biggest regret for the conclusion.)
NOT KEEPING UP WITH MODERN TRENDS
There are a basket of mistakes I made under this heading, including:
Not Upgrading my Equipment Often Enough — Even though I was always actively engaged in popular trends, I sometimes got lazy about keeping my mats up to date.
Not upgrading equipment is very much entwined with property leasing, which I’ll get into later.
If you want to stay competitive, you must upgrade your equipment from time to time. It’s more important than you may think.
You may feel like you’re saving money by putting off upgrading, but each year that you don’t, your mat loses some value. More importantly, customers love it when you make improvements. You’ll get your investment back and more! Even partial upgrades will make customers happy.
Not Installing Large Washers and Dryers — Over the years, washer sizes kept growing. Today, you can get vended washers as large as 125 pounds in capacity. I’m not saying to get them that big, but if you were to install a couple of 80-pound or 100-pound washers, with a few others at 60 pounds, you could draw in customers with big families who will go straight to your big machines.
Big machines will make your mat unique since most mats don’t have them. Laundry rooms certainly don’t.
You will have a great focal point in your marketing if you spotlight them in your ads.
Even if customers don’t need big washers, they will perceive your mat as being “better.” However, big dryers must be installed to match them.
I regret that the biggest washers I had were 60 pounds. They became very busy, and I only had two for each store, plus a handful of 40-pound machines.
Today, big washers mean big customers. But keep in mind that some markets may not support big machines.
Sticking with Coins as My Lone Payment System — When alternate payment systems first came out, coin was still king and there seemed to be lots of problems with the alternatives.
I’m an old timer, so I was leery of the new payment systems in the beginning. Now, alternate payment systems are becoming the norm.
I regret not putting in a system that could handle card and coin, despite knowing that the more options I could give customers to pay, the more business I would do.
The trend is your friend, as they say, and the trend is people not carrying cash.
Not Installing Air Conditioning in All of my Mats — In many areas, it can get hot and humid in the summer.
For years, I stayed away from installing air conditioning because of the big expense and higher electric bills. So customers suffered, my employees suffered, and I suffered.
After installing AC in one of my stores, it was like heaven! We drew a lot of people in the summer, but what I did not know was that a good percentage of customers would get into the habit of coming to us and become year-round customers. That’s what made the expense worthwhile!
A smart thing to do is to make sure you feature signs and ads all year round that mention your mat is air-conditioned. Do this even in winter, because people will remember. AC is a great feature to have, and will even draw people from outside your trading area.
Failing to Design a Private Entrance Door to my Back Room for Discreet Use — I operated in New York City, which can be dangerous for a mat owner. You should know that you always have a target on your back.
I should have designed my mats with a private entrance from outside to the back room where I accessed my rear-loading change machines. I could have entered discreetly, taken out the money and left without anyone knowing I was even there.
If you do this, I recommend placing cameras outside so you can see if the coast is clear before you open the door to leave.
Letting my Emotions Guide my Decisions — I once bought a mat that had tremendous walk-in traffic but no parking. I was so dazzled by all the 27-story apartment houses that I figured I didn’t really need parking. Turned out, those apartment houses eventually built gorgeous laundry rooms, along with TVs, heat and air conditioning.
So whenever the weather was bad, people would use the laundry rooms instead of my mat. Snowstorms were the worst. If people were off from work due to a snowstorm and had nothing to do, they would use the laundry rooms while they were stuck at home.
Another emotional twitch I had in the beginning was that I hired people simply because I “felt” they would be good workers, instead of sticking to tried-and-true interviewing methods. Screening tools such as integrity tests had better insight than I did.
“Trusting my gut” didn’t work well for me until I had some years of experience under my belt.
Check back Tuesday for more on Paul’s mistakes, including his No. 1 regret!
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
