Currently, Belgium has about +/- 1.500 active laundromats: 11 owners own 5+ laundromats, 103 owners own 2-4 laundromats and 1081 owners own 1 laundromat.
Looking at it from an individual standpoint, in order to live a comfortable life with your laundromat income, having 1 venue isn’t enough. If an average laundromat makes +/- 1.000€ of gross profit, you need at least 4 or 5 businesses to be able to make it your fulltime job. Meaning that the majority of laundromat owners having 1 venue are looking at it from a passive income point of view and are also the ones that, when having a rougher month, are more likely to close or sell their business. This creates a big opportunity on the market to open new laundromats or take over existing ones.
What about the customers, what are they like?
When we look at customer behavior we can make a distinction between a traditional laundromat market and a future laundromat market. The current, traditional market consists of a lower income audience going to the laundromat because they can’t afford a machine at home or sporadic visitors who want to wash and dry larger volumes (i.e. sheets, curtains,…). The future market consists of people with higher incomes who live in city centers and don’t want a washing or drying machine at home because of the fact that they take up too much room. City people are evolving towards a smaller, yet higher price per m² when buying real estate and trends show that more and more of them are preferring a more minimalistic interior design where there is no room for laundry machines. Looking at the US market, city people are doing laundry at the local fitness center or laundry bar so they combine other activities as a trade-off for not having large equipment at home. Looking at the raising m² prices, this is a trend that will keep accelerating in the coming years. This future laundromat audience is looking for more trendy places to do laundry so offer a pick-up & delivery service is an interesting alternative.
Tell me more about the competition
When looking at the total “washing & drying market”, we can make a distinction between different types of competition. Direct competition such as automatic laundromats & laundry service companies and indirect competition such as home DIY machines.
Looking into the automatic laundromats market, typically competition is limited to an average 2 kilometer travel radius. Look at it from a convenience point of view where people don’t want to travel more than 2 kilometers with a heavy laundry bag. Before entering the market of automatic laundromats in Borgerhout we did a small market research on how pricing was set at the competitor’s venues. The analysis below shows that for 2 out of 3 services the current Wassepoester laundromat was priced too low compared to the competition. This made the laundromat an interesting acquisition target as revenue could be increased easily by just adjusting pricing.
Example of pricing analysis of the competition in Borgerhout
Apart from the automatic laundromats, lots of dry cleaning & ironing companies are also offering washing & drying services. The difference with these kind of companies is that, besides a wider range of services, that washing & drying is done by employees and not by the customer. The prices are generally higher and attract a different target group.
Last but not least, we looked into the market for home washers & dryers. Traditionally this market also has different opportunities and is not only considered as indirect competition. For example, people often go to laundromats to wash & dry larger volumes of laundry such as sheets, curtains,… On the other hand we noticed that during post-covid, lots of people with home machinery found their way to the laundromat because of uncertain energy prices. When going to the laundromat, a customer has a 100% view on the final pricing of a washing & drying session. When doing laundry at home, the fear of receiving a high invoice at the end of the year has pushed customers to the local laundromats.
