The coin operated laundry is a staple of urban American neighborhoods. It also entails significant startup costs, and has unavoidable overhead expenses. Careful planning will go a long way to ensuring the success of your business, and to securing startup financing. Writing a business plan will help you to better understand the business before you start, and is required by most investors and lenders.
Write the operating plan. This includes how many machines and what kinds you will have, what additional products you will stock, such as single-serving laundry soap, the hours you will be operational, whether you will have employees or contractors, how you'll manage security, and other issues. If you will offer laundry pickup and delivery service, include details of how that will work.
Describe the business and its location. Since location may be the single most important factor for a coin-operated laundry business, this section will be a significant selling point for your business plan as well as your customers. Include photos, a description of the neighborhood and its residents, and the likelihood that their homes will not include their own laundry facilities. Also describe yourself and any other owners of the business. Tell your audience why you're passionate about starting this company.
Describe your marketing and advertising strategy. State what your marketing message is, how you will convey it to customers, and why you will choose each advertising platform. If you will advertise on local radio stations, include the costs of creating and broadcasting that campaign, and why that medium is the best choice for you.
Create an outline. For some people it helps to mind-map or brainstorm to make sure they capture all of their ideas and understand the relationships between each piece of the business. For others, downloading a template helps structure their thoughts. Either way, you'll want to include sections on operations, marketing, financial statements and a description of the business.
Create financial projections. They should include all startup costs, including rent, leasing or purchasing laundry machines, advertising and legal fees. Add a break-even analysis that tells how many loads of laundry it will take to cover all of those costs. Estimate how many loads of laundry each customer will do and how often, resulting in average revenue per customer. Then create a financial statement that includes all costs and revenues over the next three to five years.
评论