We Bought a Laundromat. Here's What We Learned.

Have you ever owned a laundromat? Who knew this is a new trend? Alex and I owned a laundromat in SE Portland in 2011-2012. I remember when I found the business for sale on BizBuySell.net, the previous owners claimed it was passive income as they were absentee owners living in Arizona at the time.

Here’s the article link in the Wall Street Journal: The Internet Told Them Owning a Laundromat Was Easy Money. It Was Anything But.

For our story, I definitely thought the laundromat would be "easy money," and after owning and operating it for the time we did, I'd agree that it was "anything but."

Here is our story, told in narrative back-forth dialogue style by Alex and me.

Another business the founder of AJC owned back in the day - a Laundromat in SE Portland, OR!

[ANDREA]

Alex and I made a very big life-changing decision three months after we moved back to Oregon from China in 2011.  At the time, I was just a few weeks pregnant with John Paul, and was trying to network back into a job for my independent consulting company.  After about six weeks, I started getting discouraged with the lack of any solid opportunities – along with my quickly expanding waistline, not to mention what I would do after this third baby was born – and began to consider alternative options for a second income.  My dad was helping me investigate businesses for sale, and he came across a Laundromat in SE Portland.  The seller was an absentee owner living in Arizona, and purported the place to net a decent amount of cash every month. 

I was intrigued.  Here was an opportunity for monthly cash flow requiring only part-time work, and something I could do both now and after the baby was born!  I brought the idea up to Alex that evening when he returned home from work.

[ALEX]

              Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday.  I came home from work that fateful day, and as I walked into the kitchen, Andrea was buzzing around with an unusual energy (even for her).  Her father was sitting at the table with a big grin on his face, and I turned to him and said, “Nolan, what have you done?”

              They quickly filled me in on their plot to purchase the Laundromat at 82nd and Powell.  I was honestly filled with dread.  Andrea tried to tell me about all of the financial details, and how we could make money, and the current owners weren’t even in the state, so how hard could it be?  And I said, “Yeah, that’s great…but they’re washing machines…they, like, break…and then someone has to fix them.”

              But Andrea was really excited, and it was true that it was taking her a while to reestablish contacts with her consulting clients.  While I was nervous about the whole deal, Andrea convinced me that this would be “her baby” – essentially her job – and so I said, “OK, go ahead and investigate some more if this is what you want to do.”

[ANDREA]

Once Alex agreed that I could look into it, I emailed the seller’s agent and signed a non-disclosure agreement started to get more background information on the Laundromat.  I scrutinized the financials and asked a round or two of questions of the seller.   Alex and I would pray about the idea of buying this business at night, and we started looking at our financial situation to see if we could afford it.  Alex and I discussed the Laundromat not only between each other, but also with my parents and his, both of whom have owned small businesses either now or in the past, and we talked with each other about how it would affect our family.

A week or two later, the seller’s agent informed me that they had several interested parties, and if we were really interested we needed to act right away. Although I was still networking and trying to find additional work, still nothing had had materialized and I was beginning to feel pressure to move forward with the Laundromat or lose the opportunity.  We decided to put down the earnest money and make the commitment to buying the business. Alex and my evening prayer changed from praying about the idea to praying that if it was not meant to be, for God to put up some show-stopper that would prohibit us from moving forward.

[ALEX]

              As Andrea and I went through the discernment steps of gathering information about the business and considering how it would affect our lives, I actually started to get more excited about it.  I started really getting into the idea of being our own bosses, and even got to the point of considering how many little Laundromats we would have to own before I could quit my job and become the Laundry King of Portland.  Our quick prayers each night after we got into bed helped me feel more at ease about the idea of owning this business.  We really put our trust in God by asking Him, “If this is not Your will that we should go forward with this, please let us know by presenting us a hurdle we can’t overcome.”  As it turned out, buying the Laundromat was pretty easy to do.

So as we proceeded through preparations for making the purchase, Andrea and I came to a strong mutual agreement that this was the right thing for us to be doing.

[ANDREA]

When we decided to go ahead and make the purchase, I took care of all the logistics.  I talked with the seller, I spoke with the property managers, the utility companies, and opened up the bank accounts.  This was, after all, my “baby”, and although our mutual savings was going to be used in the purchase, I didn’t want to over-burden Alex who already had the worries of a new job and an upcoming MBA program to start in the fall.

Ironically, about two weeks before we were scheduled to close, two of my consulting clients finally responded about being seriously interested in my services, pregnancy and all, and we ended up closing on the Laundromat just two days before I started working for one of them!

[ALEX]

Needless to say, the first few months of being Laundromat owners were quite challenging.  It turned out that the workload was more than we anticipated, surprise, surprise, largely owing to a slew of deferred maintenance on the equipment.  (It turns out you actually can’t run a Laundromat from another state.)  It seemed like every time we went there, I found something else that was broken, from washers and dryers to the soap dispenser and the change machines.  Although we could have hired someone to fix all those things, that would have made a big dent in our profits.  So I became the Vice President of Operations…aka the maintenance guy.  I actually liked fixing all those things – I enjoyed the immediate satisfaction that came from being able to say, “before, this was broken…now, it works.”  And I learned about how washing machines and dryers work.  I learned what it is that causes the most washing machine malfunctions…anyone want to guess what it is?

[ANDREA]

We hired a part-time manager to deal with customer complaints, and added some capital improvements including a new coin changer.  Although we only spent 10 to 12 hours at the store each week, they were at odd and often unscheduled hours.  For example, we had to do a final money pull the last night of every month, and if there was a major error or “flood” of a washing machine, one of us (usually Alex) had to drop whatever we were doing and head over there.

And then early one Wednesday morning in late November of 2011, I got a call from a customer saying that one of the washing machines was overflowing.  We sometimes had this happen, and at worst it amounted to a puddle in the vicinity of the offending washer.  This time, when we looked on the security camera feed at home, we could see a lake was consuming the store, and water was starting to flow out the front door onto the sidewalk.

 [ALEX]

I was just about to go into work, and I had to cancel my meetings and go spend the morning cleaning up the mess at the Laundromat, and trying to calm down our neighbors there whose business had also been flooded.  That evening, I told Andrea that I was feeling really stressed with the amount of “stuff” on my plate, and the Laundromat was only adding to this.  Oh, and our third child was due in just a few days.

 [ANDREA]

With John Paul about to be born, I was ready to at least consider re-evaluating our decision to become Laundromat owners. 

I emailed the old seller’s agent to see if he would be willing to represent us should we decide to sell to consider our options.  He wrote back immediately and enthusiastically – apparently Laundromats are in high demand (who knew) and within a few weeks, we listed the business for sale.  From the first listing to the sale date, it took about three months, and probably would have been shorter had we not said that we were not in any rush.  Alex and I began to pray and start the whole Discernment process again to decide if selling the Laundromat was now the right idea – after all, it was making money, and we did discover a mutual value of independent financial means, but going through the steps again we realized that with three young children, two careers, an executive MBA, and trying to maintain some personal time – owning a small business like this could wait. 

[ALEX]

As we prayed and talked about selling the Laundromat, Andrea told me she felt like we made a mistake by buying it in the first place.  She felt guilty that she had put us through what turned out to be a very stressful experience.  But I told her that I had no regrets – I thought it was an amazing learning experience that we never would have done if she hadn’t had the courage to consider it in the first place.  We both consider our laundry experiment a success in terms of learning what it takes to own a small business, gaining real experience to help us possibly take that path again in the future, and fortunately not losing money.  I think that God had a big hand in the whole thing and thank Him for the wonderful life lesson.

This is an excerpt from Alex and Andrea’s “Discernment in Marriage” talk for Catholic Engaged Encounter. This is the first time I have posted anything from our personal faith/religious life on this website, so if you’re still reading, you may be wondering why now?

First, I sincerely doubt many people will read this to begin with.

Second, it’s a great story, and apparently timely given the WSJ article (we were only 15 years too early, LOL!)

Third, it’s my website, so why can’t I do what I want? Drop me a note from our Contact section if you managed to get this far!