Brainstorming with a Grievance List
Here's a idea I came up with last month for generating up with new business ideas: create a grievance list. Write down a list of things that really irk you about something, and then try to come with ways that you would change them to make them better.
I live in California, in a city where real estate is priced quite outrageously. For a small one-bedroom apartment, I'm paying nearly double what people would pay just about anywhere else. Needless to say, since I'm not filthy rich, I can't afford a place that has its own washer and dryer in each unit, so I have to go to the laundromat once every two weeks or so.
Now, in my experience, laundromats are miserable places. They're hot, stuffy, and full of people waiting around in tedium for their clothes to be ready. I wonder why this is? People, by their very nature, waste a lot of time in this country. We sit in coffee shops, chatting about nonsense with the people we're with and play on our laptops. We go out to eat so we can talk about our day.
Why not combine wasting time anyplace else with wasting time in a laundromat? Why don't laundromats give people something to do while they wait? Why not a hybrid laundromat/coffee shop, so people can get a coffee or tea and surf the 'net while they wait for their clothes to be done? Let them go through a door and enter a Starbucks-esque atmosphere where they can kill time. It's the perfect opportunity to upsell your customers a cup of coffee.
People wouldn't even have to be in sight of the machines with clothes. In lots of restaurants, while waiting for a table, we're given coasters that buzz when our table is ready, giving us the freedom to wander away from the waiting area. When the table is ready, the coaster buzzes and vibrates, and we can go claim our table. Why couldn't someone create a similar portable mechanism for a washing machine and a dryer?
Anyway, getting back on topic, even without keeping customers occupied, what exactly could be done to improve a laundromat? Here's my grievance list and quick proposed solution to each:
1. They're cramped. Washers and dryers are always crammed as close together as possible, in the interest of maximizing how many loads you get per square foot. On a busy day, you often have to work really hard to avoid bumping elbows with the people around you. Why not open up the space a bit, give people more room?
2. Moving from washers to dryers is a pain. Most laundromats are split in half: on one side, the washers, and on the other, the dryers. That means the switch, the point at which you have an unwieldly sopping mess of wet clothes, requires you to move the most throughout the place. Why not pair them up? One dryer next to every washer, so the switch doesn't require a massive move.
3. Security. There's no guarantee that your clothes won't be stolen. With the washer dryer combo idea, why not give each pair its own private room secured with a key?
4. The television sucks. The idea is to give people some diversion. A good idea, in theory, but most laundromats that have a TV in them, it's always some thrift shop cathode ray tube piece of junk and it's tuned to some crappy soap opera/local news station, and people aren't watching it so much as they are staring at it vacantly in the absence of anything better to do. How about a flatscreen hanging on the wall playing the latest Pixar flicks? Line up some chairs theater-style so it's easy for people to sit and watch.
5. Kids all over the place. Give children something to occupy themselves with. If not television, some kind of play structure. A pit of plastic balls. It works for McDonald's.
6. No free wireless access. It's no longer 1997, so laptops are owned by the majority of people and not just introverted techno-geeks and CEOs of IBM. Let us go online. Better yet, offer some kiosks with Internet. (and none of this "pay-by-the-minute" shit, either...make them free.)
The point is not to find a great idea for a business you could actually start. (although, that's always a possibility.) Actually, I have no doubt that you could fault some or all of these ideas. (think about cost efficiency, target market mismatch, etc.) But it's just an exercise that helps you brainstorm ways of improving things, especially things that are widely stigmatized as commodities in people's mind. The perception is that all laundromats are the same, that none of them offer anything of value to customers over the next one, so people just choose the one closest to them, or the cheapest one.
Differentiation often commands a price premium in the marketplace. Even if you can't charge more, why don't more people try to differentiate a laundromat?
I live in California, in a city where real estate is priced quite outrageously. For a small one-bedroom apartment, I'm paying nearly double what people would pay just about anywhere else. Needless to say, since I'm not filthy rich, I can't afford a place that has its own washer and dryer in each unit, so I have to go to the laundromat once every two weeks or so.
Now, in my experience, laundromats are miserable places. They're hot, stuffy, and full of people waiting around in tedium for their clothes to be ready. I wonder why this is? People, by their very nature, waste a lot of time in this country. We sit in coffee shops, chatting about nonsense with the people we're with and play on our laptops. We go out to eat so we can talk about our day.
Why not combine wasting time anyplace else with wasting time in a laundromat? Why don't laundromats give people something to do while they wait? Why not a hybrid laundromat/coffee shop, so people can get a coffee or tea and surf the 'net while they wait for their clothes to be done? Let them go through a door and enter a Starbucks-esque atmosphere where they can kill time. It's the perfect opportunity to upsell your customers a cup of coffee.
People wouldn't even have to be in sight of the machines with clothes. In lots of restaurants, while waiting for a table, we're given coasters that buzz when our table is ready, giving us the freedom to wander away from the waiting area. When the table is ready, the coaster buzzes and vibrates, and we can go claim our table. Why couldn't someone create a similar portable mechanism for a washing machine and a dryer?
Anyway, getting back on topic, even without keeping customers occupied, what exactly could be done to improve a laundromat? Here's my grievance list and quick proposed solution to each:
1. They're cramped. Washers and dryers are always crammed as close together as possible, in the interest of maximizing how many loads you get per square foot. On a busy day, you often have to work really hard to avoid bumping elbows with the people around you. Why not open up the space a bit, give people more room?
2. Moving from washers to dryers is a pain. Most laundromats are split in half: on one side, the washers, and on the other, the dryers. That means the switch, the point at which you have an unwieldly sopping mess of wet clothes, requires you to move the most throughout the place. Why not pair them up? One dryer next to every washer, so the switch doesn't require a massive move.
3. Security. There's no guarantee that your clothes won't be stolen. With the washer dryer combo idea, why not give each pair its own private room secured with a key?
4. The television sucks. The idea is to give people some diversion. A good idea, in theory, but most laundromats that have a TV in them, it's always some thrift shop cathode ray tube piece of junk and it's tuned to some crappy soap opera/local news station, and people aren't watching it so much as they are staring at it vacantly in the absence of anything better to do. How about a flatscreen hanging on the wall playing the latest Pixar flicks? Line up some chairs theater-style so it's easy for people to sit and watch.
5. Kids all over the place. Give children something to occupy themselves with. If not television, some kind of play structure. A pit of plastic balls. It works for McDonald's.
6. No free wireless access. It's no longer 1997, so laptops are owned by the majority of people and not just introverted techno-geeks and CEOs of IBM. Let us go online. Better yet, offer some kiosks with Internet. (and none of this "pay-by-the-minute" shit, either...make them free.)
The point is not to find a great idea for a business you could actually start. (although, that's always a possibility.) Actually, I have no doubt that you could fault some or all of these ideas. (think about cost efficiency, target market mismatch, etc.) But it's just an exercise that helps you brainstorm ways of improving things, especially things that are widely stigmatized as commodities in people's mind. The perception is that all laundromats are the same, that none of them offer anything of value to customers over the next one, so people just choose the one closest to them, or the cheapest one.
Differentiation often commands a price premium in the marketplace. Even if you can't charge more, why don't more people try to differentiate a laundromat?