Ross Dodds and Russel Pinkard – West Hollywood, California
PWS – The Laundry Company has built a 50-year history of exemplary service that inspires long-term business relationships. That’s a fact that meant a great deal to Ross Dodds when he and his husband, Russel Pinkard, were ready to open their second laundromat.
“They have been around for generations and are still going strong… that shows the great relationships they have with their clientele,” Dodds said.
That solid foundation opened the door for PWS to take the lead on their vended laundry projects. However, Dodds still needed to know he would be working with someone who was well grounded in his goals. His standard was high – “we’re going to be friends.”
Attending a PWS open house in 2016, he and Pinkard met Debby Escalante, laundromat sales professional at PWS, and everything clicked. They knew she understood their drive to elevate the business by building a vended laundry focused on exceptional service.
“I need to have a high level of trust, if I’m going to do business with someone,” Dodds said, adding that that is exactly what he got. In 2017, he opened his first store with PWS and added another late that same year.
In addition to the professionalism and expertise of the PWS staff, Dodds was particularly pleased with the company’s streamlined approach through one point of contact for service and parts. The seemingly simple move keeps him from bouncing around a phone tree or multiple staff members who aren’t familiar with his business – saving him time so he and Pinkard can focus on growth.
And the pair is building this business rapidly. They started working with PWS on store number two while his first store was rebuilding after a fire. With store number three coming the same year those two opened, scalability was top of mind. Speed Queen®’s Quantum® Gold system enabled him to run the business the way he wanted.
Quantum Gold gave him all the information he needed to make informed decisions on operations to deliver the highest profitability. Absent this data at his fingertips, when he wanted it, he would need to be in the stores far more often and would not have been able to grow as fast… store number four is planned for later this year.
He likes the fact that he’s getting turns information and can quickly see what capacities and individual machines are being used the most.
“[Without Quantum] I would have to spend hours in my stores to get that information,” he said. “I really lean on it [Quantum].”
With Quantum, he was quickly able to identify peaks and valleys in his business and start to deploy strategies to spread out those busy peak periods. That resulted in going to “Customer Appreciation” pricing on Wednesdays from 6 to 8 pm. Quantum automatically switches washer pricing to 50 percent at 6 and goes back to full pricing at 8.
Data and the automated way in which it is attained and presented has Dodds and Pinkard committed to Speed Queen’s Quantum controls, knowing that leveraging technology will be imperative to effectively managing multiple stores.
Their loyalty obviously is also tied to the relationship they have built with PWS and Escalante. They’re looking forward to working with that team on store number four yet this year, employing the same customer-focused approach that has made their current stores highly successful.
Randy Radtke
Global Public Relations Manager, Alliance Laundry Systems
