LOS ANGELES — Enrique Del Rivero’s greatest challenge as a small-business owner is promoting his coin laundry. “I think I’m terrible at it,” he admits.
So when laundry detergent maker Gain approached him about a promotional remodel, he accepted. “I wanted to do something different than what everybody else has done in the past.”
The Los Lavaderos group of four laundries owned by the Del Rivero family is located in the Silver Lake and Huntington areas of Los Angeles. Enrique Del Rivero opened his first store in 1990 at the age of 21. Since then, he has opened five more stores, sold two of them, married wife Ana Maria Ferrer-Del Rivero and raised two children, Analuisa (Ana) and Enrique Jr.
A NEW SENSATION
The previously white-walled store at 954 North Virgil Ave. was bathed in a bright color scheme of light blue, yellow and orange. The remodel team painted instructions for washing and store rules onto the wall, and “Los Lavaderos” in large yellow letters against a light blue background. Yellow-spotted decals now swirl across the glass doors of the washers.
New seats with durable orange cushions that are easy to clean and maintain replaced wooden benches, according to Del Rivero.
Two stations with outlets to charge electronics were installed. The Del Rivero family noticed that when people are doing laundry for extended periods of time, batteries tend run out, so the charging area was requested. To go along with the music theme of the promotion, headphone stations were also added.
Shortly after the remodel was completed, Gain threw a concert May 2 in the parking lot with Grammy Award-winning band La Santa Cecilia. Free food and drinks were provided at the event, as Gain promoted its product, Gain flings! The event hosted about 50 people at one point, according to Del Rivero.
I SAW THE SIGN
During the remodel, the producers and designers were intrigued by a graphic that had been created by Enrique’s daughter, Ana.
A mostly self-taught designer, she is attending the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. She is majoring in graphic design with an emphasis in transmedia, which focuses on interactive media. In addition to her designs for school and her family’s business, Ana has freelanced for Newport Beach Festival, charities and a laundry business in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
When her parents opened a new Laundromat in Melrose, they were remodeling. The trendy “hip” area called for a modern design, Ana thought. While researching logos of other laundry businesses, she noticed they were typically basic images associated with laundries, such as washers, bubbles or water. In order to better depict a Laundromat, she created a graphic that illustrates the laundry process.
“There’s an [image of] unfolded clothes in the laundry basket,” she explains. “Then the next one is a washer, then the dryer. And then there’s the basket again, but all the clothes are folded. So it’s like taking you through the whole process of what you would do in a Laundromat.”
Gain representatives liked this graphic and chose to utilize its different components for wall decorations. This helps to build the business’ brand and image, which Ana finds important.
“By creating any old logo, but not applying it to the actual business, you’re not creating an atmosphere,” she says. A graphic designer for the remodel told her that because the other businesses lacked a cohesive style, Los Lavaderos set itself apart from them.
Check back Tuesday for the conclusion!
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