Dave Menz 將自助洗衣提升到新水平

辛辛那提——戴夫·門茲(Dave Menz) 將他對洗衣業務所有權的熱情傳播到了他的商店之外，與自助洗衣行業的其他人分享了他關於將商品業務提升到優質服務領域的想法和想法。

Multi-store owner Dave Menz has been in the self-service laundry industry for 12 years. He’s also an author and industry consultant. In Part 1, we learned how Menz’s involvement in laundry ownership and management has evolved since his arrival in 2010. Now, let’s continue.

多店老闆 Dave Menz 在自助洗衣業工作了 12 年。他也是一位作家和行業顧問。在第 1 部分中，我們了解了 Menz 自 2010 年上任以來對洗衣店所有權和管理的參與發生了怎樣的變化。

FALLING DEEPLY IN LOVE WITH SERVITUDE

深深愛上服事

The experience gained from fixing up his first store taught Menz that his revenues grew in direct proportion to his improving the business.

門茨從修復第一家商店中獲得的經驗告訴他，他的收入成長與他的業務改善成正比。

“As I did that, my profits grew, and as I reinvested the profits back into the business, the community appreciated what I did,” he says. “They would go tell other people in the community, ‘Wow, you should go check out Queen City Laundry. It’s got a new owner and they’re fixing it up, doing things different.’”

「當我這樣做時，我的利潤增加了，當我將利潤重新投資回企業時，社區讚賞我所做的事情，」他說。 「他們會告訴社區中的其他人，『哇，你應該去看看皇后城洗衣店。它有了新主人，他們正在修復它，做一些不同的事情。

He installed new equipment, changed operating hours and shifted from unattended to partially attended to eventually fully attended.

他安裝了新設備，改變了工作時間，並從無人值守轉變為部分有人值守，最後最終完全有人值守。

Getting back to the three ownership phases he mentioned in Part 1, during his first five years, he was “obsessed” with buying “zombiemats”—three in all—and fixing them up into plain-Jane laundromats. “I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but that’s what I was doing. Trying to not make them horrible,” he laughs.

回到他在第 1 部分中提到的三個所有權階段，在他的頭五年裡，他「痴迷於」購買「殭屍機器」（總共三台）並將它們改裝成簡單的自助洗衣店。 「我不知道這就是我在做的事情，但這就是我正在做的事情。盡量不讓它們變得可怕，」他笑著說。

What he fell in love with was the concept of servitude. Menz was several months into laundry ownership when a teary-eyed single mother of three who lived nearby approached him in the store one day.

他愛上的是奴役的概念。門茨擁有洗衣店幾個月後，有一天，住在附近的一位帶著三個孩子的單親媽媽淚流滿面地在店裡走近他。

“She came up to me and gave me a hug,” he recalls. “She said, ‘Thank you for fixing up our laundromat.’ I’ll never forget that as long as I live, because that was the day I realized the impact that revitalizing a laundromat had on a community.”

「她走到我身邊，擁抱了我，」他回憶道。 “她說，’謝謝你修好了我們的自助洗衣店。’只要我還活著，我就永遠不會忘記這一點，因為那一天我意識到振興自助洗衣店對社區的影響。

‘FROM GOOD TO GREAT’

“從優秀到卓越”

“In the next five years, I wanted to take my business from good to great,” Menz says about his evolution as a laundry owner. “Over the first three, I kept investing all the profits. I call it keeping my hand out of the cookie jar. I took the bare minimum to be able to support my family and everything else went back into the business.

「在接下來的五年裡，我想讓我的生意從優秀走向偉大，」門茨談到他作為洗衣店老闆的演變時說道。 「在前三年裡，我繼續將所有利潤進行投資。我稱之為「把手放在餅乾罐外面」。我拿了最低限度的錢來養家糊口，其他的一切都回到了生意上。

“You wake up three or four years later, the same four stores are significantly nicer than they were. We invested in furniture, in air conditioning where they didn’t have it. We invested in the beginnings of layers of management to keep people accountable, and training and empowering our team.”

「三、四年後你醒來，這四家商店比以前好得多。我們投資了家具和空調，而他們沒有這些。我們在管理層的初期進行了投資，以讓人們承擔責任，並對我們的團隊進行培訓和授權。

Menz had borrowed roughly $3.5 million to get his stores to the point they were and by year eight, he’d paid back some but still owed most of it.

Menz 借了大約 350 萬美元來讓他的商店達到現在的水平，到第八年，他已經償還了一些，但仍然欠大部分。

“I thought, ‘I can keep doing this to 10 or 15 or 20 stores,’ which is what I thought I would do at one point, ‘or I shift my focus to how can I generate more revenue, which will allow me to serve my community in a better way from the four stores that I have.’ That required kind of the third shift for me, into this service-based economy.”

「我想，『我可以繼續對10 家、15 家或20 家商店這樣做，』這就是我一度認為我會做的事情，『或我將注意力轉移到如何產生更多收入，這將使我能夠我擁有的四家商店以更好的方式為我的社區服務。這對我來說需要第三次轉變，進入以服務為基礎的經濟。

OPTIMIZATION COMES INTO FOCUS

最佳化成為焦點

Menz knew he couldn’t grow his stores’ demographics, so it became about optimizing his facility and getting the most out of the equipment he had.

門茨知道他無法增加商店的人口統計，因此重點是優化他的設施並充分利用他擁有的設備。

Operationally, he decided to capitalize on a growing trend by offering drop-off laundry pickup and delivery. Meanwhile, he turned to some friends who were successful entrepreneurs outside the laundry industry.

在營運方面，他決定利用這一日益增長的趨勢，提供洗衣服務投遞服務。同時，他向一些在洗衣業之外也是成功企業家的朋友求助。

“I had always kind of obsessed over my next level and what that looks like,” Menz says. “I couldn’t see anyone in the industry who could help me figure that out. So I went to these entrepreneurs. Most of them are restaurateurs.”

「我一直對我的下一個級別以及它看起來像什麼樣子著迷，」門茨說。 「我在業界找不到任何人可以幫助我解決這個問題。於是我就去找了這些企業家。他們大多數都是餐館老闆。

Through lunches and meetings, these business owners asked about his laundry equipment, specifically how much it cost him to purchase, what vend price he charged its users, and how many times a day the equipment is being used.

透過午餐和會議，這些企業主詢問了他的洗衣設備，特別是他購買的成本是多少，他向用戶收取的銷售價格是多少，以及設備每天使用多少次。

Based on those factors, Menz’s mentors pointed out that his machines were only being used 10% of the day. “Horrific” was one description of that usage, he says.

基於這些因素，Menz 的導師指出，他的機器一天中只使用了 10%。他說，「可怕」是對這種用法的一種描述。

The point of buying commercial business equipment, while expensive, is to wear it out as quickly as possible, they told him, not to make it last.

他們告訴他，購買商業設備雖然昂貴，但目的是盡快磨損它，而不是讓它持續太久。

“They helped me understand how underutilized our industry is,” he says. “And that helped me to understand that we, as an industry, need to attack this differently. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing since 1940, we’re probably just going to stay where we are, which, in my opinion, isn’t good enough.”

「他們幫助我了解了我們這個行業的利用率有多低，」他說。 「這讓我明白，作為一個行業，我們需要以不同的方式應對這一問題。如果我們繼續做 1940 年以來一直在做的事情，我們可能只會停留在原地，在我看來，這還不夠好。

In Tuesday's conclusion: Value proposition, and finding one’s desired service level

週二的結論是：價值主張，以及找到所需的服務水平