Changer Dispensing Slowly? Easy Fix

 

You load the quarters into the changer and it works. Customers put their bills in and they get quarters back. You start to notice that customers are standing at the changer a little linger than they used to. As a matter of security you watch several customers come up and they ALL seem to linger longer than they need to. You hear the coins coming out and the motors of the changer whirring but all the customers linger. Then you realize they are all waiting for the second dump of quarters to come out. It never used to take long. They put in a $10 or $20 and got their money really quick. Not now. What is going on?
Here is the reason and the solution in the video below:

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Cleaning Rowe Style Changer

 

Have you ever loaded quarters into your changer and then the Out of Service Light comes on and you KNOW there are still quarters in the coin hoppers? It's probably because you haven't cleaned your Rowe style changer in a long time. Here is how to do it.
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Fixing Your Changer Didn't Give Me My Money Errors

 

You haven't been a real laundry owner until you are in the middle of some family or fun event when your phone rings because of problem at the laundry room or laundromat. 

An error you might get early in your tenure or when you switch brands of change machines goes something like:

"I put a $20 in your changer and only got $10 back in quarters! I need my money..."

$10 is a major loss that needs to be corrected as fast as possible. What happened?

How do you solve it? The explanation and solution are in the video link above and hopefully you won't get that call again because of human error.

Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy

 

How to Load Quarters in Rowe Style Changers

Loading quarters is usually a no brainer activity in a business that has a coin changer.
You open up the changers and load the quarters into the coin hoppers.
Have you ever done that and walked away and someone later says they put money into your changers and didn't get the right amount back? Some brands of changers have an extra step that you have to do.

This video talks about Rowe style changers. Rowe was bought by American Changers some years ago and does not make Rowe changers or parts anymore, but there are still thousands of Rowe changers out there. If you have one here is a good tip for you and I'm amazed how many owners don't know this trick. It's about a six minute video. Enjoy.

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

WASH On Premise Laundry Equipment Page

If you have laundry equipment in your school, long term care facility, day care, hospital, or anyplace else that you need laundry equipment:
-washers
-dryers
-drain troughs
-ozone
-large chassis washers and dryers
-small chassis washers, dryers, and combo units
-rigid mount and soft mount washers

WASH has launched their new page for information: 

On Premise Laundry Equipment for ANY Business

How to ChangeMFR Buttons

Maytag MFR washers with inverter drive have been around for the better part of 20 years as of the writing of this article. If you have recently taken over a store or laundry room with this type of equipment in it they are generally great machines, but like all mechanical things you need to replace a part once in awhile. Do any of your machines have buttons that are missing or loose? Here is how you can fix them:

Unscrew the black Maytag name plate on the outside of the machine (the one with al of the printing on it. You should then see this:

Open up the top of the washer and move any plastic sheet covers to get at the board to remove several screws. There are a bunch and they are small so having a magnetized screwdriver will help save the frustration of screws falling down inside the machine:




You don't need to disconnect the board or any wires. Leave the board inside the machine. Just leave it leaning back and you will see two nuts from the screws in the front face plate.


Remove the screws from the front of the washer that hold the button plate on.
You might have to hold the nuts inside the machine to get the screws to come out.


The front button plate and membrane should now be loose.

Disconnect the ribbon wire at the bottom of the control board and the button plate and membrane should be loose.

Pull out the plate.

To replace the buttons use a flat head screwdriver to move the tabs connecting the buttons to the membrane and plate. Usually you only have to do this to the tab on one side and the set of three buttons and any debris should come right off.

Remove any debris that is sticking to the button membrane.

Very important! Check the membrane in the circles for dents and holes. The buttons shouldn't do this, but when a button falls off customers poke keys and fingers inside to hit the silver circle. IF you see holes or heavy indentation change out the membrane too because odds are you'll change out the buttons and that one button won't work because that circle is broken.

To put buttons back on, hook the peg on one side of the buttons into the notch on the plate and position the rest of the buttons so the locking tab is in the notch on the opposite side and press down.

To put the buttons back on reverse the process above.
Clean the plastic lens and the button plate so they are nice and clean.

Test all of the buttons by running various test cycles or selecting different options to make sure all of the buttons are working. Then screw the front faceplate back on. You are done!

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Selling Your Laundromat How to Get Started pt 2 of 2

 

Once you have a general idea of what you want to charge for your store, and if you want to be a landlord and continue to own the property, the next question you have to decide is whether or not you wanna work with some sort of business broker or if you want to try selling your store yourself. As someone that has gone down both roads, working with a broker can make your life easier because you’re not dealing with all of the ticky tack phone calls and emails, plus you usually will have the ability to look over legal documents and access to a lawyer if you do not already have one. Your broker will usually have a list of websites where you can list your laundromat for sale. You can also set these up and advertise on your own. If you decide to sell your store yourself.

The trick with working with a broker is they want their commission. Some brokers take a percentage of the sale, some brokers are a flat percentage or dollar fee. If you have a small store, the price that you’re trying to sell your store at might not make sense for you to give up that much money for someone to help you sell. If your store is doing $100,000 in topline revenue , but you have a broker that automatically wants $20,000 to sell your store, is it worth it forgetting $20,000 worth of profit to not handle phone calls and emails? 

No matter how you decide to sell your store and what method you use to evaluate your store, there are four things that you definitely want to have ready before you even put your store on the market:
Number one is to make sure your distributor knows that you are selling and what the general details are, price while you’re selling, how you’re evaluating your store, property included or no, etc. 
Your distributor usually has some people that they are working with that are interested in buying a store. If you could be patient and don’t need to sell right away, let your distributor help you with leads.

The second is to decide if you want to seller finance your store. This can be a quick way to get a sale and usually you get a little higher price, however it will attract a lot of buyers that don't have the money and when something goes down they can't fix it. Not long afterwards you might be holding onto your store again because the new buyers didn't know what they were doing and ran your business into the ground or stripped all the cash out of it and left you with al the unpaid bills. I recommend you don't follow the self finance route unless the person you are selling to is someone that is already in the industry and works laundromats.

The third thing you need to do is make sure you have proof of whatever you are claiming your topline revenue or your net profit is. That might be in the form of tax returns or collection, sheets, or both. You might even keep track of the cycle counts on your machines. Whatever data you have, you’ll need to provide that to the buyer or whomever they are financing through usually.

The last thing that you want to do is make sure you have your own numbers set to go. What things do you need to pay off when you sell the laundromat  that are related to the laundry business so that you can walk away with the maximum amount of profit. What is your rock-bottom price? What are some factors in a buyer that will lead you to either saying yes or no to working with them, for example, will you work with buyers that are only looking for a land contract or buyers that are looking to get into the business for the first time  or buyers that may be are out of state. If you know who you’re willing to work with as a potential prospect for buying your store, you will then have an easier time sorting through potential leads.

Selling your Laundromat can be a tough thing. Like anything else in life, you are moving on to something else. Losing that store is in very parallel way, like losing a loved one. You put a lot of money and sweat equity into the business, and suddenly you won’t have that anymore. Take some time to grieve that loss as you sit on your chaise lounge with a nice rum drink in your hand on a beach somewhere, relaxing and letting the ocean breeze strip the smell of years of dryer sheets off of your skin and out of your pores.

To read part 1 click on the link:
Selling-your-laundromat-how-to-get started

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Selling Your Laundromat How to Get Started pt 1 of 2

 

So you’ve made the decision to sell your Laundromat, or at least look into it. How do you value what your store is worth and what to charge for it? There are lots of ways to sell a business, especially laundromats. Here are three easy ways to get started and figure out what your store is worth as a starting point:

The first way to sell your laundromat is to come up with a price based on your top line revenue and a multiplication factor of 1 to 5. 
What does this mean?
For example, if your store is doing $100,000 in topline revenue, that is revenue before expenses, multiply that by anywhere from 1 to 5 based on factors like:
-how long is left in the lease
-is it in a safe neighborhood
-what is the age of the equipment
-potential competitors in the area
-potential development in the area that could help or hurt business
-if revenue over the past few years is going up or going down or staying the same
-how fast you want to sell
There is no magic formula that will give you an exact answer about what to multiply your top line revenue by.
It is largely your gut feel, tempered with a heavy dose of realism.
Of course we all think our stories are perfect and that they are worth automatically five times gross revenue, however we no longer see our store in the same way as a first time customer or as another owner would so you have to temper your instinct to say your store is worth top dollar.
Look at other Laundromats that have been for sale in the area and in similar conditions and see what they’ve gone with. Ask a trusted fellow owner, distributor, or even a customer to walk through your store and tell you how they see your store and where the strengths and weaknesses are. You also have to look at your market and what type and how many buyers are out there or are you looking to attract.

So let’s pretend your topline revenue is $100,000 and your equipment is 10 years old or less and you’ve had good revenues but they haven’t really increased, and the neighborhood is OK but has a few developing problems  either with lack of development or crime. A good number to start is maybe 3×100,000. So another words you’re selling your store for $300,000. If you own the property you have to decide if you are going to include the property with that price or add the value of the property on top of that. Let’s pretend the property that you have your laundromat on is worth $100,000.
Now your price should be $400,000 for the business and the property. Don’t forget this is just a general guideline because there are lots of other things that you have to take into consideration before selling your business and coming up with a price. If you still have a mortgage, that will take some money out of your final price. If you have other loans tied to the property or the business, you will have to pay those off before any profit is realized. It’s always easier to go down in price and it is to go up in price so start a bit higher in my opinion. I'll explain more about this later.

Another way to sell your laundromat is to do a similar formula to the above, but instead of topline revenue you look at your net profit. You multiply that net profit by a factor of 1 to 10 and then sell at that price. It is still the same factors as above, but now you’re using what you have made at the end of the year as an example, and can honestly tell your buyer what you made  in profit. Topline revenue is $100,000. Your net profit for the year is $30,000 after expenses. With all of the same factors as the first example, maybe you multiply that 30,000 by 7. Now your sale price is $210,000. If you have been in business more than a couple of years either start with looking at your best year or I recommend combining the last 10 years and dividing to get the average profit, then multiplying that number. Either way you have to have proof of your numbers.

A third way of selling a Laundromat is to take the used equipment value, for that you can work with your distributor to get an estimate as to what your equipment is worth on the used market or look it up yourself online at auction sites and equipment sellers. Add 30% of your top line revenue to that number. Let’s again pretend your equipment is worth $100,000 and you take a third of your topline revenue which is $100,000, so now you’re selling your store for $133,000. This particular method of selling your store can work well if you don’t have any debt, your equipment is a little bit older, and you need to sell fast. This method might tend to attract more first time buyers, but it also has the ability to attract more cash buyers because the numbers are lover.  In addition to other owners and people that might buy your store at a lower price and revamp the equipment, it also brings in those people that are just getting into the business and have limited cash funds.

So if using the first formula gives you a price of $300,000 and the second formula gives you a price of $210,000, and the third gives you a price of $133,000, why wouldn’t you just use the first formula all the time and get the higher price? The answer is you can, however there are different buyers out in the field that by looking at numbers a different way. people that are just getting into the business in my opinion will look at more of the top line revenue. People that already have owned stores will look more at the net profit. The net profit has the advantage of you being able to say to a potential buyer here’s what I actually made at the end of the year, and my taxes are at proof of it. Another way is to run the numbers all three ways and get the average.

Some people say it is easier to sell a Laundromat where the owner also has the property. Some buyers will be turned away on a store that is strictly in a lease space because they want that property. At the same I’ve had plenty of people that do not want to be a landlord, and are much happier paying someone else to handle the exterior items like a parking lot or roof repair so they can concentrate on the inside of their store. Some owners want completely out and others want the rent income. You have to decide if you can stand to have someone else run YOUR store, even though they bought it, without you second guessing them. If you can maybe be the landlord. If you can't, sell the whole thing.

To read part 2 click here:
selling-your-laundromat-how-to-get started part 2

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

East Side Maytag Closing

Eastside was my wife's favorite. I hope someone can reopen it. 
Clean, well lit, friendly employees, safe, machines worked, and they had a pinball game.
What are the four rules of owning a successful laundromat?
1. Clean
2. Bright/well lit
3. Safe
4. Machines work

Eastside from lowed these rules and was successful for many years. Don't take my word for it. Listen to these customers in the news story about this laundromat closing down: 

Milwaukee-long-standing-east-side-laundromat-to-close

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy who many years ago managed the above
Heck of A Nice Laundry mentioned in the story

Everet's Farm Laundry Newsletter February 2023

 

For Farms: Towel Washer or Dryer Not Working?

Buying Washers Over and Over? Is the washer and dryer that you bought to clean the towels not working? Are you constantly buying new washers only to have to buy a new one 12 months later? Bacteria counts too high? Dryer leaving towels damp promoting bacteria growth? Whether you use terry, microfiber, or cotton cloth you have to do laundry at some point. Homestyle top load or frontload washers are not built to last and run 20 loads a day. Commercial large chassis washers and dryers are built to take the workload and will last years.   Towel costs have gone up. Washing services raised their rates to triple what you used to pay. If you are interested in the option of having your own laundry equipment or upgrading what you currently have, please contact me. Everet Kamikawa A Heck of A Nice Guy   I write a weekly article related to laundry equipment. Once per month I send out an email with links to some of these articles. If you are interested in reading them just click on the link Featured Articles this Month Dryers not heating? Check Sail Switch dryers-not-heating-clean-sail-switch   Keep your laundry area safe. At a farm this is easier than an apartment building. Is the area well lit? Dry? Here are some more ideas: laundry-room-rule-3-keep-it-safe   Dryers not heating? Clean sensors dryers-not-heating-clean-sensors