Queston for Rug Washers

[Ivan Turner]

I'm curious as to how many, if any rug guys and gals market their services to dry cleaning stores.

 

[Ron K]

It's hard to get compitative pricing unless you're machine cleaning them or you could hack them out with your truck mount. I'm sure the big op's are doing it.
Hoponagain or Hailic?

 

[cleanking]

I think rug washers certainly are marketing to dry cleaners. My question would be HOW are you doing it. In my market there is very little real competition. This is our next move, wholesale cleaning.

 

[rhyde]

I did years ago it was a PITA and my experience was that people that take rugs to dry cleaners
usually have crappy rugs. By crappy I mean poor quality hard to clean de-laminating tufted rugs,
inked rugs....stuff you spend more time but make much less money than retail rugs. every once in a while something
decent would pass through.

It's a 3rd party transaction so dry cleaning staff apathy, turnover is an issue to effectively communicate issues to the customer
is a constant battle. You find yourself on the phone allot more trying to piece together WTF non rug people are talking about.
I'm not saying it's impossible particularly for larger companies with more mouths to feed if you are small there are better ways to make money.

-Give them a invoice template and spend some time with the staff to go over basic check in & inventory procedures
-When possible on pick up roll the rugs out and go over them with the staff which often doesn't happen
as they are usually taking care of customers when there or you're already running late to the next job or the rug is too big to roll out in their store...
which then leads to the question how did they get the size ...'the customer told us" which is usually dead on accurate,..so you'll want to double check
their measurements and check in.
-Pick one day of the week for pick up/drop offs or they will call you every other day to pick up the 3x5 for cleaning
-Net 30 and charge 5% late fee after 60 days hold rugs until payment then go COD

 

[Ron K]

Just like Randy said. We have local dry cleaners refer us. It's so much easier. We just send them a nice hand written card with a small token coffee gift card everytime we get a referral from them.

 

[Jim Pemberton]

Read everything Randy said....twice.

If you still want to work a deal (other than as recommended by Ron) with a dry cleaner, read Randy's message a third time...

 

[Mikey P]

When I did my stint as a rug washer in a 50/50 partnership, it was exactly as Randy discribed



Only worse.

 

[J Scott W]

Dry cleaners can supply a lot of business. One of the larger rug washing operations in MD is a chain of dry cleaning stores that added rug washing. Now they pick-up from dry cleaners in nearby states as well. But they do train their own dry cleaning staff and have personal contacts in the other dry cleaning locations they pick-up from.

 

[cleanking]

Just like Randy said. We have local dry cleaners refer us. It's so much easier. We just send them a nice hand written card with a small token coffee gift card everytime we get a referral from them.

This is great, you could even offer them a 10% kickback when clients bring in the business card with their code on it.

Best part is you will make more on the rug than traditional wholesale cleaning and your own educated staff can handle the intake.

I like it.

 

[Desk Jockey]

We do 20-30 rugs a month for one of the prominent drycleaners.We don't wash them, so I can't speak to the viability for washing rates.

We only charge $1.65 a sq/ft, invoice them once a month. Nothing to jump up and down about. We hate when we are busy but its something to whenever we are slow.

 

[Desk Jockey]

They just keep rolling in and we just keep getting further behind.

In a normal year they would be welcome extra work. This year has been so busy rugs have become a bit of a pain.

The thing I have to remind myself and my employees is that our restoration work comes from those clients that have used us to clean their rugs, upholstery, carpets & air ducts and are pleased with the results.

So everything we do has to be done right in order to continue the stream of other work.

 

[Ron K]

This is great, you could even offer them a 10% kickback when clients bring in the business card with their code on it.

Best part is you will make more on the rug than traditional wholesale cleaning and your own educated staff can handle the intake.

I like it.

Stay away from this "marketing" strategy. Just be the best and people will come to you and you won't have to buy your work.
Business owners/people, whomever, want to know that the people doing the work are competent,knowledgable and trustworthy not just buying your business. Say thank you be professional you'll be OK.

 

[cleanking]

It's a referral rewards program, it has worked well for us in other areas of our business and it can bring more loyalty.

Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little, especially when trying to create a reason for these wholesale sources to begin referring us.