If you’ve come here, it’s because you want to open your own laundry or dry cleaning center. You will find all the steps to open a successful laundrette in this guide.
Before opening any business, it’s important to know information and statistics about the sector. The laundry market is currently one of the most profitable sectors. The industry moves around 181.4 billion dollars worldwide each year.
Mainly due to 3 important factors:
If you want to further reduce the financial or business risk, you should consider opening a laundry franchise.
Before making the decision to set up your laundrette, you must study the different aspects you need to bear in mind. Regardless of the country, city or location, there are general aspects that apply to anywhere. The results will vary according to the culture, laws, politics and demography.
If you choose to open a laundry franchise, the franchisors provide you with all the necessary information, prepare and train you so that you grow a successful business, so that you don’t have to worry about these steps. In addition, it’s months of work, effort and money saved.
But if you want to set up a laundry on your own, here’s a list of steps that we consider useful:
Like any new business, you need to have studied the market. Being clear that laundry will be your business focus, you must investigate what your target audience is looking for, what they ask for, what they like, look at existing companies, analyze the competition, what they are offering and what they are lacking, as this is where you can take the opportunity to make yourself stand out.
Use tools to carry it out without investing a lot of money. It will help you to segment not just your customers, but also your services and tools such as: online surveys, monitoring social networks or studying online trends, etc.
At this point, you should start to compare more specific business issues such as the plans, objectives and tools necessary to start out in any sector. This section is a guide for the proper functioning of your company and can show you how the laundry will be viable. You can include methodologies such as the SWOT analysis, which analyzes the situation of the company both internally and externally. From there, you can create strategies that allow you to see the different scenarios and the application of solutions.
This is an essential point to open the laundrette or for the makeup of the company. It’s a tedious step due to the process and time involved, but impossible to avoid. The necessary requirements will vary depending on the country you are in.
The location of the laundrette is where business will take place and it will be a determining element for the profitability and success of the business. It’s necessary to take certain characteristics into account, such as: moderate or high pedestrian flow on the street where the premises will be located, that the premises is visible and preferably on street level, that there is parking nearby and surrounding businesses which are not competition. Also take into account the purchasing power of the area.
Although it starts from when you have approved capital or credit for the investment, it’s important to analyze the previous steps to have an objective and grounded confidence. In the budget you have, you must include different factors that can increase or decrease the investment. Depending on the type of services, the type of customers and the location, the amount will vary significantly. Adapting your premises will take a large part of this amount.
Observing is a continuous action, before, during and after opening your business. It’s one of the reasons why many businesses don’t get the expected result. People are always talking about their needs; with the rise of social networks and their synchronization with companies, customers of products or services are constantly commenting on their experiences; so listen, observe, read, ask and question everything you offer and how your customers are perceiving it; the aim is always the satisfaction achieved by your service.
Laundrettes often also serve as dry cleaners. That is, in addition to washing clothes with soap and water, they also provide dry cleaning and dyeing services.
You must decide what services you are going to offer which complement the main business so that you can generate more income and so that your future customers don’t need to go to the competition.
For example, Mr Jeff laundries offer a clothes washing service, as well as comforters, shoes, suits, dresses, down jackets, sheets, curtains, carpets and the ironing service among many other products, in addition to a home pick up and delivery service and an app so that customers can place their orders without having to go to the store.
Knowing exactly how much a laundrette costs is impossible as it depends on a number of factors. Firstly, the country, city, zone and the type of premises, and each one has a different price.
Then operating permits, everywhere, including in different cities within the same country, more or fewer permits can be requested, which also influences the final budget.
We must bear the cost of washing machines and dryers in mind. How many should be bought, which brand and model, and both the fixed and variable costs for the first few months of being in operation.
All of this will influence the cost of opening a laundrette. An approximate cost would be between $40,000 - 60,000 USD.
Opening a self-service laundrette follows the same process. The steps are the same, you will just need machinery adapted to the service.
Keep in mind that by having a laundry you will be washing your customers’ clothes. You must take special and extreme care when treating them, so the processes must be standardized and supervised. This doesn’t happen with a self-service laundrette, because the customers are in charge of washing their own clothes.
This depends on you, but there are some questions you need to ask yourself:
If you answer no to any of these questions, it would be better to buy into a laundry franchise. Franchises give you all the know-how, everything that this article contains is given to you by the franchisor, but with great detail. It advises you about each of the opening processes, from the choice of the premises, buying machinery, budgets, profitability and financial analysis of each year, market studies, etc. It also prepares and trains you in all the IT tools that should be included in the business, attracting new customers, etc.
Franchises are one of the most profitable business right now and this is confirmed by the Spanish Franchise Association in their report The franchise in Spain 2019:
The Spanish franchise adds its 5th year of growth in all its variables: number of networks, establishments, jobs generated and turnover. - Spanish Franchise Association.
According to the report, in 2018, franchises in Spain obtained €27,707.2 million euros in total, increasing by 0.4% compared to the figure reached in 2017, €27,592 million euros. It also employed 293,872 people, 14,921 more than in 2017, representing a 5.3% increase.
With regard to laundry franchises in Spain, the increase has been exponential each year. According to the information in the franchise in Spain, by the Spanish Franchise Association:
➡️ Open day of a Mr Jeff franchise in Barcelona