A few weeks ago I posted on LinkedIn about the 95% success rate that people love to talk about when it comes to laundromats. Derrick Compton stopped me with his comment one that post.
Derrick isn't a stranger. We met at the CLA Clean show in Atlanta. He's attended the Laundry CEO Forum every year. He owns stores and knows the business from the inside out.
He said that vanity metrics, number of stores, big revenue numbers, store size, number of machines, go just one layer deeper and they mean nothing. What actually matters, in his words, is being a healthy, profitable, and viable business that can genuinely serve its clients, community, and team.
That landed. And it's what Derrick's comment got me thinking about that led to today's editorial.
What We Actually Celebrate
Walk into any industry event. Within the first few minutes of meeting someone, it happens. "How many locations do you have?"
Not, are you profitable? Not, what’s your client return/retention rate?, Not, what’s your expense ratios? Just, how many?
Same thing on social media. Posts celebrating millions in build costs. Content conversations aimed at the owner/operator chasing their next acquisition. The number of locations has become the default measure of whether you've made it.
Nobody built this scoreboard on purpose. It just became the air we breathe.
The metrics it rewards, location count, build cost, machine count, gross revenue. All visible. All easy to post about. None of them telling you whether the business is viable.
This Isn't Just a Laundry Problem
Here's what's worth understanding. That same scoreboard, size over substance, scale over profit, nearly destroyed some of the most celebrated companies in recent memory.
WeWork reached a peak valuation of $47 billion in 2019. At the time, the business was losing more money than it was making. $1.9 billion in losses on $1.8 billion in revenue. To hide that, WeWork invented its own metric called "community adjusted EBITDA," which stripped out nearly every real cost to manufacture the appearance of health. When the actual numbers became public, the valuation collapsed almost overnight. By 2023, WeWork filed for bankruptcy.¹
A $47 billion company. Built on a metric designed to avoid the real one.
The same pressure that celebrated WeWork's growth, scale fast, worry about profit later, has crept into how Main Street businesses get evaluated and how owners feel about themselves. You see it in the questions people ask at events. You see it in what gets celebrated online. Size became the signal. Profit becomes an afterthought.
Your laundromat isn't WeWork. But the scoreboard Seeping into our industry comes from the same place.
Who This Scoreboard Fails
Here's some data worth sitting with. According to the CLA's 2024 Industry Survey, 40% of laundromat owners have one store. 74% have two or fewer.²
That's most of the people in this business. And the conversation, the events, the content, the questions people ask each other speaks almost entirely to the owner/operator chasing more.
If you have one or two stores, you've probably felt it. The quiet implication that you're a work in progress. That the real success story is somewhere up ahead with more locations. Total BS.
I was at an industry event last week. One of the Owner/operators there had one store, self-service, wash-and-fold, commercial accounts, pickup and delivery. Someone asked if she was planning to get another location.
She paused. "I think about it," she said. "But honestly, what I have is doing well for me. I'm pleased with where things are.”
The room moved on, but I kept thinking about that answer.
She wasn't stuck. She wasn't settling. She knew exactly what she had built and she was good with it. That's not a consolation prize. That's discipline.
Some owner/operators don't want more stores. That's not a lack of ambition. It's a choice. Growth doesn't have to mean more square footage. You can grow profit, grow efficiency, grow your own compensation, all without signing another lease. The industry talk scoreboard has no column for that.
The Real Numbers
The metrics that actually tell you whether a business is working aren't complicated. They're just not what gets celebrated.
Net profit margin. What percentage of revenue stays after every bill is paid?
Owner's take-home. Not gross revenue, what did you actually put in your pocket?
Cash flow. Is the business generating money or consuming it?
Debt load relative to income. Can the business carry what it owes without stress?
Profit per square foot. Not revenue, profit. What is each square foot actually producing?
Revenue and profit per machine. What is each machine producing?
One more that doesn't appear on any spreadsheet, are you happy with what you built?
That sounds soft until you remember why you started. You had a reason. A life you were trying to fund. Time you wanted back. A level of independence you were chasing. Flexibility, to do the things you wanted to do. Did you get there? If you built one store that answers yes to that question, you didn't fall short of success. You found it.
And to put some numbers behind what that can look like, laundromats typically generate net profit margins of 20-35%.³ That range beats the S&P 500 average. Not startup valuations. Not tech company press releases. Actual deposited profit from a business most people drive past without thinking twice.
What It Actually Looks Like
I know an owner/operator with two stores. Each one runs about 3,000 square feet give or take. Self-service and wash-and-fold. Combined, just over a million dollars a year in revenue.
He's clearing north of $400,000 in profit. 38% margin.
Nobody's putting him on a podcast. He's not speaking at events. By the scoreboard everyone uses, he barely registers.
By the real business scoreboard, he's exceptional.
That result doesn't come from having the most locations, biggest build or most expensive build. It comes from running what he has exceptionally well. That's the game. And many of the conversation in our industry miss it entirely.
Thinking about the thinking of laundry:
When you realize the scoreboard you've been measured against was never designed to see what you've actually accomplished.
Ask yourself the question the scoreboard never asks, is this working for you?
If the answer is yes, really yes, not "yes but I feel like I should want more”, that's worth knowing. Because you might already be winning a game the industry scoreboard can't see.
That's all I got for you today.
Waleed
Echoing the thoughts of Charles Goodhart.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Footnotes:
¹ WeWork Bankruptcy - ABC News, 2023
² 2024 Laundry Industry Survey - Coin Laundry Association
³ Laundromat Profit Margin Data - Metrobi, 2025
