Last month I concluded that the wholesale shirt
laundry should prevail and continue to service the smaller plants
across America. It is not my intention to suggest that small
drycleaners must use a wholesaler, but I think that the wholesaler must
continue to be a viable option.
Too often, drycleaners are forced into the shirt
business because that option — sending the shirts to someone else
— is not a good one. For either quality or service issues (or
both), the available vendor has proved unfit for the task.
Simultaneously, a drycleaner that is good at his
profession, concludes, perhaps erroneously, that whatever is actually
involved in processing a laundered shirt is not beyond his ability and
he ventures into the business convinced that he can outperform his
wholesaler. He just may be wrong. But worse still, he may be unable to
accurately evaluate himself.
The best case would have been the wholesaler all
along, provided that this wholesaler was fit for the task.
Let’s get out of the box and set up our own
wholesale shirt laundry.
I am going to make numerous assumptions here:
1. There is a market
for a wholesale shirt laundry in your area. You can’t create a
market for this product. If local cleaning plants have been
grandfathered into the shirt business, they aren’t likely to get
out of the business just because you’re getting into it.
2. You’ve done
the market research and have learned that there is a need. Those
cleaners in the area that you wish to service are — or clearly
would be — receptive to an alternate vendor.
3. You are ready to
charge a fair price, which is not necessarily the same as the going
rate.
4. You are open-minded
to new idea.s
I hate that phrase that has already become a
cliché: “Think out of the box.” But the fact is, in
order to succeed in the wholesale shirt business, you will need to
re-think everything.
In fact, if something is generally done a certain
way, seriously consider the distinct possibility that this isn’t
the best way to do this particular task.
Oddly, shirt wholesalers and would-be shirt
wholesalers, painstakingly follow in the footsteps of their competitors
and predecessors when, in fact, so few of them have succeeded in the
business. This would be understandable if those being followed were
openly and obviously profitable. This simply is not the case
Rethink everything!
The difference between the leaders in this
industry and the followers is really rather simple. The followers do
what they have always done. They accept things as they are. They do
things the way the previous owner did them. They are complacent. The
end result when you do the same things that you’ve always done is
that, of course, you get the same result.
The leaders rethink everything. And I mean everything.
The leaders assume nothing. They check everything.
They take nothing for granted. Nothing.
Let us divide the process of setting up a shirt
laundry into bite-size pieces. I’m going to do this with a
“mind-map.” I strongly suggest and highly recommend that
you learn about “mind maps” from this column whether or not
you ever actually go into the wholesale shirt business. Although
seemingly elementary, the Mind Map is an ingenious management tool that
you will find indispensable.
A completed “mind map” looks something
like this. Simply start with a circle (let’s call this your
brain) and write your goal in it. Here the goal is to set-up a
wholesale shirt laundry.
Now, branch off from your “brain”
— who, what, when and how. What equipment will you use, for
instance. As an example, we draw a line from the “brain”
and label that line “Equipment.”
Now branch off from that with all equipment
related issues, questions, projects and sub-projects. You might start
off with three branches: New Equipment. Used Equipment. Existing
Equipment. From the “New Equipment” stem you’ll
branch with a thought/project called “get brochures,”
“talk to Fred about his Unipress.”
From there, branch off with “What about
Financing?” From that branch, draw a few more stems. Label them
“Call the Bank” and “Check into Leasing.”
As you complete individual tasks — like when
you get all of the equipment brochures that you want — simply
cross off the completed chores. You will be amazed at how effective
this “mind map” is and how organized your thoughts, and
you, will be.
For every thought that you get, you will find that
each of those thoughts / problems / issues / obstacles breeds an
additional handful of related things. Writing them down in a
“mind map” will allow you to deal with complex situations
with ease. The alternative is a splitting headache.
My dear readers, this is one of the most amazing
tools in my repertoire. If you think it’s kind of silly, I urge
you to do this: Next time that you have a complex or semi-complex
project, make a “mind map” with the intention of proving to
me that it’s silly and to yourself that your were right. But I
bet that you learn just how incredible this management tool is. So much
so that you will have an irresistible urge to call me immediately and
tell me about your success with it and about how it cleared your head
and was instrumental in causing you to make the right decisions for the
right reasons.
So for the next month or so, make your own
“mind map” with the central goal “Set-up a wholesale
shirt laundry.”
Next month, we’ll compare notes. I think
that I have some pretty unique ideas regarding rental space, buying
utilities, workflow, accounts receivable and other things. Stay tuned.
Donald Desrosiers has been in the shirt
laundering business since 1978 and is a work-flow systems engineer who
provides services to shirt launderers through Tailwind Shirt Systems,
867 Spencer St., Fall River, MA. He can be reached by phone at (508)
965-3163 or by e-mail at tailwind1@attbi.com and he has a web sites located at: www.tailwindshirts.com and www.dondesrosiers.com
