To See the Splash Em Out Clean Show Experience, check out: https://youtu.be/X2fZ8U73yfk
Speaker 1: 0:00
Curbside laundries. This is what we use. It’s good stuff here.
Speaker 2: 0:06
Welcome to state of the laundry industry with laundry, Matt episode 31, the clean show wrap up . Welcome to the podcast. First off, I want to thank our nearly 1800 subscribers. Last month, we had nearly 6,000 total views and that doesn’t even include the people who are listen on their favorite podcast player and nearly 35,000 minutes watched. So that those are just crazy numbers. This episode’s gonna be focused on the clean show. And one of the things right before the clean show, we ran some analysis on our curbside LA just wash and fold software. And it turns out we’ve had more than 2 million wash and fold orders placed through curbside laundry software and over 90 million pounds of laundry’s been processed through the software as well. And over 300,000 unique customers have been served. Those are just astronomical numbers, especially when you consider just five years ago, we were first presenting our software out of a 10 by 10 booth using computers. We didn’t even have a point of sell at that time and we’ve been just hitting it like gangbusters. And a big part is because of you. So my brother and I, we were doing pickup and delivery from our laundromat. We knew this was getting big. I mean, we never saw numbers like this before, where it’s like a hockey slope in terms of this is just a new trend. I fought tooth and no at the clean show in 2017, to have them have a whole seminar just on pickup and delivery for laundromats and they wouldn’t do it cuz they thought this was a flash in a pan. This isn’t gonna happen. We only see new technologies one year from the next, but we knew based upon the numbers and what we were experiencing at supersets that this is not a fad. This is culture is changing and people are trying to reclaim their time. For example, how many people do, you know, mow their own lawn versus hiring a gardener? I bet you when gardening first became something that you could outsource probably is all the neighbors looking down the street say , Hey, is that guy hotshot? He’s having somebody else mows lawn. And now you’re hard pressed to find somebody who does it , who does it themselves and wash and fold is moving in the same direction. More and more and more and more people are outsourcing laundry because people value their own time and some people are questioning well , what about the economy? No matter how bad the economy gets, there’s gonna be a lot of people who are never gonna fold their own clothes again. So that’s good news for us. The second thing is in a constricting economy where things are tightening up, everything tightens up, even the amount of money that a self-served customer spent goes down because they may not. They may make their jeans last a little bit longer, or they may not wash their comforters often as they used to, if they don’t have the money, they don’t have the money. So the question is not, Hey, maybe I shouldn’t get into pick and delivery because things are constricting a little bit. The question is, could you afford not to get into pick up and delivery? Because if you have a single source of revenue and that’s getting squeezed, wouldn’t you be better off with multiple sources of revenue, such as self-serve wash and fold and pickup up and delivery. And that Biggs a question, you gotta do it right? Because there’s a lot of companies out there who don’t do it themselves like we do at curbside and they might be pitching stuff like ride share programs. And I tell you it’s music to the ears of people who are laundry owners and say, oh , I love to do pickup and delivery, but I don’t really want to do the work or I don’t want to pick up the clothes myself. If I could outsource the driving and just have somebody else do it through, maybe let’s say Uber or door dash or some other ride sharing company. That sounds pretty compelling. Cuz now I could say ID do it. But here’s the issue at the clean show. Somebody came out to me and said he had six orders and two months get stolen from a ride share program. Now how much does that costing you in terms of your reputation in terms of compensation? And I mean, each one of these customers spends hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in wash and fold and pick up and delivery. And if you’re burning bridges and destroying your reputation because you’re outsourcing your driver is the face of your company. So if you’re outsourcing the face of your company to some stranger with no accountability, good luck, that’s not running a business, that’s rolling the dice and hoping your reputation stays intact. Come full circle. Now I understand five years ago when Brian Wallace told me, he doesn’t know if pickup and deliver is gonna be a thing, cuz he sees these fads pop up, you know, over time. So I ask you if you’re thinking about outsourcing your pickup and delivery to a ride share program, first, find somebody who’s actually doing it and not getting paid by a company to do it. What I mean is just a regular Joe laundry owner. Who’s not getting paid to be a salesperson cuz there are those out there. So the key to pick up and deliver it , making it work, you need to have a route density when you’re using a ride share program, your route density is one, meaning you’re just picking up one order or just delivering one order that makes it very difficult to make money. So I could see how some companies are pushing stuff. And then all these people are like, oh, that sounds great. But then they actually do it and they’re not making money or clothes are getting stolen, left and right. And then they realize it doesn’t happen. It took me five years to figure out, but now I understand some things work and some things don’t work. And one of the differences at curbside is we’re actually doing it. So our stuff is proven. It’s not some MBA PowerPoint saying, Hey, this is good idea. Give me some investment capital dollars. Now this is everything is developed at curbside based on real world use. And I want to give a shout out to two boys laundry and the reason why they chose curbside laies overall , the different competition is one of the owners said, I always go with passion. And at curbside we’re passionate about pickup and delivery. We’re doing it. We know if we develop a certain feature set, we’re gonna make more money at our laundromat. And all of our clients are gonna make more money at their laundromats too. One of the highlights at the clean show for us, really a coming of the age moment, we had a curbside client reception dinner with over a hundred of our clients there, food drinks and education and networking too. We went over how to increase your web ranking. We went over strategies on online advertising. We went over a new feature development roadmap and we got a round of applause on different features. So that was pretty cool. It shows where on the mark. And it’s just great seeing everybody in person, which is a proud moment for us here at curbside is in 2017, we had a tremendous success at our laundromat superstars. We’re making over a hundred thousand dollars a month, every month in wash and fold . 70% is from pickup and delivery. And so we were able to tout our success in 2017, but a big difference between 2017 and now is instead of touting our own success at supered, we have success story after success story of our clients. We have hundreds of clients making tens of thousands of dollars per month and many making over a hundred thousand dollars a month too. So that’s just incredible and it’s great getting everybody together. And the conversations at the tables was just incredible. One of the most popular seminars at the clean show, 2022 was the seminar on pick and delivery. And man there’s people left that seminar over 500 people were in there and as they left, people were just pumped up on pickup and delivery. And after the clean show, I noticed something which was, I saw so many Facebook ads about offering pickup and delivery on my own Facebook feed. Some people may wonder, wait, is it too late to get into pickup and delivery? But I say no way. See the more competition the better, because it creates awareness for this as a product in 2010, as we’re doing pickup and delivery, we were doing the heavy lifting at super sus . We had to let people know that pickup and delivery as a thing. And now as people peruse Facebook, people are seeing ad after ad after ad about laundry pick up and delivery. So the market is growing faster than ever before. People are realizing this is a thing people value their time. Our business at super sus, just gone up and up and up. The pie is growing faster than the rate of new people. Getting into the business. One of the keys to growing your was fold business is you don’t wanna really advertise to everybody. You want the people who are looking for washing and fold to find you. So the more people who are looking for washing fold , the better off we all are. And something where laser focus on at curbside laundries is helping people improve their web ranking so people could find you online. So we had some really cool reveals at the clean show. We’ll be doing some videos specifically on these a little bit later, but first off we have a brand new user interface for in-store ordering. It makes it even easier for your attendance to place wash and fold orders provides information where you need it when you need it. I have to give a shout out to one of our clients, Joe Dan , over at splash him out the guy’s genius operator. He gave us one of the biggest compliments you could give. He said, my favorite part about curbside laundries is my employees don’t call me anymore on how to use the point of sale . And he used two different solutions in the past. It’s just taking care of itself, which is important because he’s got nine locations and we’re making things even better with our new user interface. So keep a lookout. In my opinion, Joe, Dan made the best virtual clean show video out there. There’s a link to the video in the show notes, or you could just do a YouTube search for splash ’em out anyways. Here’s a 32nd snippet from his clean show of video.
Speaker 1: 9:16
Okay? People, if you like OZO already cleans the place to be, I guess. And this is uh , mark he’s out of in Kentucky. Actually, this is where you get your boards, fixed mountain electronics, great people, good products. And this is a Alia ale names . This is what we use. Good stuff here.
Speaker 2: 9:59
I just wanted to thank all of our clients for helping us get to where we’re at today. We couldn’t do it without you. We’re making the software of our dreams, both my brother and I are making the exact same salary as we have been for the past two years. We have not given ourselves raises. What we have done though is we’ve doubled our development team and we’re gonna be adding even more developers too. We’re just gonna keep putting the pedal to the metal and rolling out some great, great new features. So see you next time. We’ll get back to laundry . Just wanna give you an update with what happened at the clean show to learn more about the curbside laundries wash and fold and pick up and delivery solution. Go to curbside laundries.com. Don’t forget a click like and subscribe and see you next time.
