Hi,
I had a coin laundry for 13 1/2 years. The only reason I no longer have it is that the shopping center was sold and the new owners had other plans for the property than keeping it as a shopping center. They ran all of the small businesses out of the center by simply not renewing their leases. I decided to close. Moving a coin laundry is a lot more complicated than moving a dress shop or a convenience store. With those businesses, you take your inventory, shelving, fixtures, cash registers, computers, etc. and move to a new location. Moving a laundry is an infrastructure project. Sure, you can move you equipment, but what are you going to connect it to at the new location? You need to bring in sewer lines, water lines, gas, electrical, etc. before you move. This means cutting up the floor, ceiling, etc. So I closed as my lese expired.
If time is not a critical factor here, I'd join the Coin Laundry Association. I was a member for most of the time I ran my laundry. I've been out of the business for over 10 years, dues were around $200 when I closed my shop, so I'd guess it's probably around $300 now. That will be money well spent. CLA will provide you a wealth of information. They can teach you how to evaluate a laundry investment, what a good ROI is for the laundry business is, what a good lease for a laundry is, what lease pitfalls to look out for, and so on. There are also several trade publications out there that you can learn a lot from.
A coin laundry is a good business. It is a needed service for the community. I made good money for a while at it. But like anything else, it has pros and cons. Like the other commenter said, you do need to be mechanically inclined. You should plan to make most repairs yourself. Paying others to do all your repairs will really cut into your profit. If you don't like to fix stuff, this probably not the business for you.
You will have to deal with some vandalism in your store, especially if it is unattended. I have had people vandalize my machines trying to steal money from the coin boxes. I'm sure todays electronic payment systems reduce that somewhat. One time someone just ripped the door off a front loader machine, probably because it malfunctioned.
You will have to deal with homeless people, not a pleasant experience, again more so if you do not have an attendant. I would not recommend having a public restroom (you'll figure it out) if you can avoid it.
A laundry is a 7 day a week business, I found it hard to to get away from it sometimes.
On the positive side you do meet some nice people from your customer base.
One really critical important thing, get as long of a lease term as you can! The longer the lease, the more valuable your store is when you go to sell it. Get a series of options to renew or whatever to get as long of a lease as possible.
The best story I can tell you is I had to remodel, buy new equipment etc. one time. The equipment distributor told me that just by putting in new equipment my sales would double. I thought, yeh right, he's just trying to sell something. Yep he lied! My sales didn't double, they tripled!
Best of luck to you.
Rob
