Opening a self-service laundromat: €24,000 and plenty of doubts

Self-service laundromats: €24,000 and shops that are almost always empty

There is a business that seems to sell itself. A €24,000 investment, zero employees, the customer does the work and even pays for it. Wash and dry for 5 or 7 euros in an hour, margins that some websites put at close to 70% and, on paper, not a single competitor in the neighbourhood. The proposal was written up by an entrepreneur from Barcelona looking for advice. The most common answer he received was a single word: "Failure".

The brochure included extras to make the wait more bearable: wifi, magazines, drinks machines. All very reasonable. The first sustancia ilegal appears with an awkward question: if the margins are so high and no staff are needed, why are there so few companies in this business? The most repeated explanation is that it has already been tried. People point out that a chain like Pressto tried it and gave up, and one segarro obstacle was left on the table: insuring expensive machines that nobody watches. No sensible insurer will cover a premises full of machines with no one responsible present, argues one of the first replies.

Why does it work better in lower-income neighbourhoods?

Location takes up most of the analysis. The typical customer is not someone who has a washing machine at home, but someone who cannot or does not want to have one: flats shared by many people, students, newcomers who have not yet bought appliances, tourists passing through a hostel. The summary that keeps coming up in several areas is brutal and transparent: the worse the area, the better. The humbler the neighbourhood, the higher the tenant turnover and the less desire to spend 200 euros on a washing machine that might not be taken to the next flat.

The examples draw a map: two laundromats a few metres apart on Conde Aranda street in Zaragoza, in a neighbourhood with a large migrant population; the Gracia neighbourhood in Barcelona; Benimaclet in Valencia. In some shops there are people in the afternoons and they have been open for over a year. In others, the attempts have closed one after another. The difference, people insist, is almost never the price of the service: it is the location.

What the machines really cost: more than €40,000

The figure that opens any business plan is misleading. The real cost of industrial washer and dryer equipment can exceed €40,000, and reselling it afterwards is very difficult: if the business fails, you are left with a shed full of iron nobody wants. Hence the recommendation that appears several times: do not buy. Lease the equipment through renting or demand a buy-back contract from the manufacturer. Girbau is mentioned as one of the manufacturers negotiations were held with, and the advice is to deal with them directly, without paying franchise fees, because the know-how they provide is minimal.

Four customers a day will not keep the business alive

The most cited calculation starts from a field observation: for one hour, four people using the laundromat at an average of about 10 euros. That is 40 euros a day, around €1,200 a month. Subtracting rent —between 300 and 400 euros in some areas—, electricity and detergents, you would be left with about 500 euros net. On paper, a pocket-sized business that runs itself.

The problem is that those four daily users are an optimistic scenario. The evidence that keeps coming up is the opposite: shops on busy streets that sit empty for hours. If the average drops to one customer a day, the venture does not even cover the electricity bill. And if it rises, the second problem appears: more laundry means more breakdowns, more cleaning and a person keeping an eye on the shop — exactly what was meant to be avoided.

The business that does not take cards

There is no card terminal in these shops. They run on coins and change machines, more expensive to maintain than a card reader but leaving no record of transactions. That detail feeds a suspicion that runs through the whole story: that part of these businesses serves to give legal cover to money of opaque origin. It is worth stressing: this is a suspicion, not a proven fact, and the person raising it names no names. But it explains the raised eyebrows with which many people look at these shops — the same look they give phone shops that open and close within three months.

From "failure" to mushrooms in five years

That first reply seemed to settle the matter. It did not. Years later, a retrospective comment notes exactly the opposite: self-service laundromats have multiplied in Spain over the last five years, and the person who asked in 2014 turns out to look like a visionary. The underlying reason is not explained, but it fits with the rest: high rents, ever smaller flats and a portion of the population that has no washing machine of its own, nor room for one.

And the question no answer closed remains: if the business is such a sure thing, why are so many shops being handed over, and why have so many others been open for years and empty? The answer probably lies, as almost always, in the numbers nobody shows.