The Bread and Butter Customer
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on the blog. A little over 2 months to be exact. I’m starting to feel some normalcy come back into my life. I’m starting to build a routine. And routines are so important because they are efficient. I am able to get more work done when i stick to a routine.
As far as sales, May and June were my best 2 months ever. In fact I think we over-performed to such a degree that July is going to bring us back down to earth. I’m slowly starting to not panic as much when sales drop. I simply run more ads.
I’ve learned a lot about ads on Instagram. For example, because I’m advertising locally, there’s a limited audience and after about 4 days the ads start to recycle to people who’ve already seen them. So 3 days is the optimum time my ads should run.
Part of the reason I haven’t written in so long is because I was bombarded with problems throughout the last 2 months. There was nearly $1,000 in refunds for damaged clothing. My car broke down. My AC at the store was flooding the store. Then one of my dryers went down. Then the water bill came in $500 higher than usual. Things were just going wrong left and right. It was dramatic and stressful. I don’t get stressed easy but these 2 months really tested me.
Now things are calm, and on the horizon I see growth. I know that the next 3 months will be phenomenal because my 3 biggest customers are event venues that will be in full swing. I’ve learned that corporate customers are vastly better than average people. People are fickle. They come and go. Businesses build a long term relationship.
So I’ve made a plan to start pitching and selling the service to more businesses. The City of Dallas posts all the new businesses opening in the city on their website. From my business I’ve learned that doctors’ offices and clinics are the most likely to need laundry service. So I’m going to start cold calling those businesses specifically.
Right now I have to really push sales. This whole time I’ve been complaining about capacity. I needed to open the store to truly increase capacity. Now the store is open. Now there are 3 employees asking for more hours. Now I have a delivery routine that allows me to handle more deliveries, and the cash flow to hire another driver if necessary. The only missing ingredient is more sales.
There is one small issue of adding 2 more dryers. The hardest part about adding dryers is adding the exhaust vents that need to go up through the apartment above the store and out of the roof. But my uncle said he can get that done for me within the next few weeks. I’m worried 2 more dryers will make it hotter in there and then the solution to that is another AC. I was thinking about replacing the current one but it’s working fine. Adding another smaller wall unit will make that work room just fine, even with 5 dryers and 2 people working.
The capacity issue is mostly solved. Now the issue is increasing sales to fit the capacity.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my customer churn is high. I think if I were to lower the price I would be able to retain more customers. But I’m not a big fan of decreasing margins to increase volume. I’d like to increase volume and keep the margins high. At least exhaust the market at the current price before lowering it. And I have a feeling that churn wouldn’t improve that much anyway. As I said, people are fickle.
I keep going back to the same thought: I need more corporate customers. 4 of my top 5 customers right now are businesses. That’s the bread and butter right there.
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a Dallas startup called Feather Laundry. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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