According to The Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute, their numbers show the average dry cleaning customer only spends $120 per year, which again is very low. I know many cleaners who do better than that but if $120 is the average their are also cleaners who are doing worse.

As you may know, I have owned two dry cleaning pick-up and delivery businesses in two different states. To be fair, neither of them did anywhere near $15,000,000 per year in sales. But my average customer in California spent over $650 per year with us and our average Idaho customer currently spends over $700 per year with us. In both areas that is a far cry from the $100 per year that the average customer with the new Zoots / Tweeds Company.

So why such a big difference?

You can prequalify route customers. Just because someone wants to be on your route doesn’t mean you have to let them. Route customers are also much more loyal than walk in customers.

As a route owner you can cherry pick the best areas to service, with a store you are stuck servicing mainly only the people are areas within a few miles of your store.

If you currently just have walk-in locations, take a look at your gross sales and divide that by the number of customers you serviced in the last 6 or 12 months. You may be surprised at what your average customer is spending.

You can find the full article here http://www.americandrycleaner.com/Article.cfm?articleID=18263

Have questions or comments about any article or video on the blog feel free to post questions or comments and I will email you when I reply to them.

Search Phrase / Keyword

Dry Cleaner – 450,000 searches

Dry Cleaning – 301,000 searches

Dry Cleaner Coupon – 9,900 searches

Dry Cleaner NYC – 3,600 searches

Dry Cleaner Prices – 6,600 searches

Dry Cleaning Prices – 5,400 searches

Dry Cleaners Denver – 1,600 searches

Environmentally Friendly Dry Cleaner – 3,600 searches

All of the above search totals are MONTHLY search volumes for the US. AND, this is only from the Google search engine… Also, keep in mind, those are just a few search phrases.

Every dry cleaner needs to have an internet strategy and it must start with having a website. Once you have a website you will need to do what is called search engine optimization or SEO for short. SEO in its most basic form is two parts…

Part 1 you need to tell the search engines what your site is about and

Part 2 you need to get votes (more commonly known in the SEO industry as backlinks) to your site form other sites, I know that sounds hard but there are people you can pay on a per link basis to get those links for you.

Next you’ll need an offer on your website for new customers to entice them into trying your service.

Currently we get 5 – 10 new customers per month from our website. Although these are not FREE customers, since we have to spend money each month to be found in the search engines and offer a one time free credit so they will try our service; on a price-per-new-customer basis, we spend less for new internet customers than we do for any other marketing effort we currently have.

Don’t forget to leave comments below and let me know what you think of the video and or tell me what your biggest marketing mistake has been.

We are working off the premises that if you can’t get customers you have NO chance at success and hopefully everyone would agree with that.

Let’s take a look at The Straight Door Knocking Method of Marketing

Option 2 – The Straight Door Knocking Method

Straight door knocking is just what it appears to be… Going door to door and selling your services. But before you stop reading right here, this isn’t the kind of door to door sales you are thinking of or even use to experiencing.

You see you are NOT selling anything, let me repeat that you are NOT selling anything. When you knock on someone’s door if they don’t use dry cleaning on a regular basis all you can do is thank them for their time and move on. On the other hand, if they do use dry cleaning or laundered dress shirts on a regular basis all you are going to do is introduce them to your FREE mobile dry cleaning service and explain the benefits to them to give you the opportunity to earn there business. Make sense? Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s

The Pro’s -

1. Very little prep time is required
2. Once you have proven sales material and a proven script this is simple to execute.
3. Huge sign-up rate… With the right marketing material you can see 10 – 25% sign-up rates depending on the neighborhood and the person marketing.
4. If you are personally doing the marketing you are looking at a cost of less than $5.00 per customer to sign-up. If you hire someone to do the marketing you are still only talking between $30 – $50 per sign-up.
5. You can easily build tight routes
6. You can virtually lock out the competition by signing up the vast majority of regular dry cleaning users in the neighborhoods you service.
7. You can hire and train people to do the door knocking for you.

The Con’s

1. At first glance people are intimidated by the idea of door knocking. This can, at times, create a challenge when you try to hire marketers. Side Note — Since the unemployment rate is higher than it was just a few years ago hiring people for this position has become much easier. –
2. Door knocking is a very time consuming way to market
3. Your best door knocking times are in the evenings which means if you are personally door knocking, you will be working evenings.

The Straight Door Knocking Method is not for everyone but it is a super inexpensive way to grow a mobile dry cleaning business fast.

The Straight Door Knocking Method of course has the universal con we talked about in the last article — The Bag Drop Method — but The Straight Door Knocking Method also has one additional con that it shares with the next marketing method we are going to discuss next. — That marketing method is called The Bagging Method, not to be confused with The Bag Drop Method which was our first article. — This shared con is… Since you are going to be speaking face to face with the customer you MUST have a good presentation that keeps the potential customer interested in what you are saying and moves them in the direction of signing up for your pick-up and delivery service.

As I mentioned above the next article will cover The Bagging Method.

When Starting Your Dry Cleaning Route Business, Should You Target Residential Customers Or Business Customers (Office Buildings) First?

The most important part to understand is that there isn’t a right or wrong answer here… Really, simply just getting started is the best place to start… But if you want to know what would I do and why let me answer that for you.

I would start with Residential Customers… You see residential customers are much more stable and, believe it or not, easier to get.

Think about.. It does the average white collar person change jobs or houses more often? Obviously they change jobs on a much more frequent basis than they change houses.

As for pick-ups… What is easier, putting your clothes on your front door and having someone pick them up at your home or schlepping your dirty clothes from your house to your car and then to your office? That’s a no brainer… It is way easier to put the clothes on your front door.

Two of the biggest problems people who walk their clothes into a dry cleaning store are:

1. Finding the time to stop at the store and drop off / pick-up there clothes.

2. Simply remembering they put their clothes in the car in the first place.

If you pick-up up a customers dry cleaning from their office takes care of problem number 1 but you would be surprised how many times you hear business customers say something like… These clothes have been rolling around in my trunk for weeks now.

With business accounts you also run into a few other major problems.

1. If you piss off one customer you run the risk of losing the whole account.
2. Sometimes customers forget often enough that they simply start splitting their dry cleaning bill between you and the local dry cleaner, which can lead to you being blamed for problems you didn’t cause not to mention that you only get half of their total usage.
3. If a residential guy starts servicing their neighborhood, you run a huge risk of losing your business customer to the residential guy. Because it is just so much easier to put your clothes on the front door than it is to schlep them into the office.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

Don’t misunderstand me, business account have a place and can be VERY profitable but the absolutely BEST place to start this business for long term stability is with residential customers. Once you have a decent base of residential customers feel free to tackle the business accounts.

My rule of thumb is you should not drive more than 45 minutes each way. Like every rule, I know people who have broken the rule and been very successful. One couple comes to mind who had a 1:15 minute drive to the area they serviced… The cleaner they used was also in that area but at the end of the day it was another 1:15 minutes home. Ultimately they built two vans with 4 routes on each van, with each van doing on average $30,000 per month in gross sales. Not to shabby.

Although breaking my rule of driving more than 45 minutes each way works for the couple in the story above that is not always the case. I have known people who have only had an hour each way and have not been able to be successful.

So why does long distances effect the success of a route business?

1. The longer the distance the less customer service you can provide. If someone calls you for an emergency pick-up and they live 45 minutes to 1 hour from you, there are very few circumstances where it makes sense to do the special pick-up. This means you have to send that person to another cleaner. I’m sure we can all agree that sending your customers into the lions den is a bad idea.
2. The wear and tear on your pick-up and delivery van is EXTREME at long distances… Not only are you getting more frequent oil changes and tire rotations… But you are physically burning through tires faster, using more gas and adding a huge number of miles driven to your vehicle, all of which cost you money.
3. Personally I just don’t like long commutes… Originally coming form the San Francisco Bay Area may have made me a little jaded to long commutes but I feel it takes a toll on my quality of life… Even if you eventually hire someone to do the pick-ups and deliveries, you’re going to have to pay that person for commuting… And frankly that sucks.

As I mentioned in the story above there are exceptions to every rule but the closer you can have the routes to your house and the plant the better.

If you can’t get customers you have NO chance at success.

In this business there are 3 ways to rapidly add customers to your route business. Each way has it’s pro’s and con’s. Let’s take a look at all 3 ways.

Option 1 – The Bag Drop Method

Bag dropping is a method of marketing where you leave a dry cleaning bag on a customers door with a sales letter (yes one of the $3.00 bags). The sales letter explains the service and what the customer should do with the bag if they use dry cleaning and what the customer should do with the bag if they do not use dry cleaning.

The Pro’s

1. This method is fairly easy way to market.
2. Very little skill is required to put bags and sales letters on doors.
3. If you have deep enough pockets you can hit a very large area very fast.
4. You cost per customer will be between $30.00 – $65.00 Assuming you can get the customer for only $30.00 you are doing pretty well… Unfortunately this will have to also go on the con list since $65.00 per customer using this method is very high.

The Con’s

1. High loss of very expensive bags… Each bag costs about $3.00 and you can expect to lose between 20 – 30% of the bags you put out. That can really add up.
2. Low response rate 0 – 8% I personally have never gotten an 8% response rate using this method and I have only talked to someone who got an 8% response rate using this method, once… Unfortunately he only got that high of a response rate in one neighborhood. But it has been done so it is only fair to mention that it is possible. Typically I have gotten 3 – 4% response rate using this type of marketing, which is low… Very low! And a response rate that low can do more damage to your business than good… I will explain that statement a bit more in a future article or video. Side Note — I spoke with 1-800-DryClean a few months back and they told me there average response rate nationwide is 3.2% and they have the recourses of 100+ franchises behind them.
3. Higher customer turnover rate than normal. The bag drop method of marketing causes you to have a higher customer turnover rate than normal because many times the people who use the service because you left a bag on there door are NOT regular use customers. — I define a regular use customer as someone who uses at least once per month and spends $40 or more per month. — You just happen to catch that person at the right time when they need their “once every 6 month” pick-up. Ultimately it means the response rate issue we talked about in the previous paragraph is worse than we thought.
4. You are leaving money on the table. There are many people who will simply NOT respond to this form of marketing which means you will literally drive by some great customers homes who could be your customers if you had just taken a moment to introduce yourself.
5. You are leaving yourself open for competition to enter your market. With a low response rate and leaving so many customer on the table, because they simply won’t respond to this kind of marketing, you have left a door open for your competitors to come in behind you. They can use a marketing strategy that gets a higher response rate and is easier for customers to say yes to, and all of the sudden you are now competing with another company all because you left the back door open.

From reading my con’s list you may get the impression I HATE this form of marketing… That couldn’t be further from the truth. I do believe bag drops have a place in your marketing arsenal… Unfortunately it is not as a primary method of growing a route business like it is being taught by a few individuals and even 1-800-DryClean.

This best way to use this marketing method for your dry cleaning business is as a fill in technique  after you have gone through the area with one of the two other marketing techniques I’m going to show you… You can follow-up 6 – 12 months later with this technique to help fill in your route.

The Universal Con – I want to share with a universal con in all 3 of the primary marketing techniques that i’m going to show you and con is that you must be able to write good sales copy… If you can’t write good sales copy or copy someone else’s PROVEN copy — I put proven in all caps because, just because a competitor is using sales copy doesn’t mean it is any good. — You are going to struggle.

In the next article I’ll go over a technique I call straight door knocking.

My second choice is the Chevy Express cargo van. The gas mileage is comparable, but I have found this van goes through tires a bit faster and has a few more maintenance issues.

When first starting out most people chose either a used Ford or Chevy cargo van or simply start with their personal SUV or Mini Van. Either of these options are just fine.

If you start with your personal vehicle and you are following my plan for building a successful pick-up and delivery business plan on maxing out your space in your personal vehicle very quickly and needing to upgrade to one of the above mentioned used cargo vans.

For those of you interested in the Dodge Sprinter – personally I believe that this van is overkill and frankly very expensive. Even when you include the potential savings you get with increased gas mileage it is still way too costly.

The first company I used is The Bag Lady 1-800-Bag-Lady

Her bags are of a high quality and on average will last for years. Last time I purchased from her we paid about $3.50 per bag plus shipping. The $3.50 per bag is not much more expensive than some of the discount suppliers and the quality is worth the extra few penny’s per unit. However, they don’t offer free shipping and you simply get eaten alive by the shipping charges.

For the last 3 or 4 years we have been using Cleaner Supply 1-800-388-5410 http://www.CleanerSupply.com Cleaner supply, cleaner supply us to produce poor quality bags 5 or 6 years ago… But they have really stepped up quality over the last couple of years and are now my preferred supplier for laundry bags. You can get bags anywhere from about $2.30 – $4.00 but, cleaner supply include free shipping for orders over $100.00 which saves you a ton of money. We are still using almost all of the bags we ordered from them 3 – 4 years ago and couldn’t be happier with the improved quality.

Either company you chose don’t forget to order bag loops and tag holders.