Raise 'Em or Neglect 'Em

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Heading to Excellence in Laundry this morning and thinking about all the opportunities that come from attending Coin Laundry Association events. All those from the Wash Weekly Community attending, let's definitely connect while there.

Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and seeing new ones.
Travel safely.

As long as I can remember, raising prices in the garment care industry has seem like a taboo. It's like that old, creaky floorboard in our childhood home that everyone knew to avoid but no one ever fixed.

In online forums, I see many discussions on when, if, and how to raise prices. Some even debate whether to inform retail clients before a price increase. 

But does this happen in other industries? I don't remember my favorite restaurant ever sending me a message stating that their prices would increase.

Suppose you don't adjust your prices accordingly in the garment care industry. How can you maintain quality services for clients, offer competitive pay for your team members, keep up with repairs, make necessary upgrades, pay yourself, and invest in research and development for your businesses?

The answer: you couldn’t.

Raising prices is an essential part of any healthy business.

A New Way to Raise Prices

Typically, businesses base price increases on one of four methods:

• Bottom-up: Calculate the cost of everything that goes into our services and add a fair margin.
• Sideway-in: Analyze and adopt the price of competitors’ services.
• Top-down: Target a demographic or economic segment and create the service to meet that price.
• Dynamic: Use a complex calculation to gauge supply and demand to set the price.

But what if you considered price increases like you scheduled maintenance for your stores and machines?

I set two dates on my calendar every year for our price increases.

Doing so makes price increases regular and keeps them from slipping our minds. The increases vary each time based on market conditions, our costs, and goals.

To avoid the pushback, we sometimes get from clients about price increases, I use a fifth method of pricing increases that author Ty Montague calls "story analysis."

Story analysis involves analyzing a service's capabilities to fulfill a profound human need, to tell a story that gives your clients’ lives richer meaning. 

In a world of abundance, what your service does for your clients is important but not nearly as important as what your service means to them. 

This second part, the story of your service, yields the greatest pricing power of all.

Think about objects in your life. What makes one watch cost $100 and the other $10,000? 

They both tell time. Yes, some parts are added that increase the cost, such as jewels, gems, precious metals, etc., but the main factor is the story behind the watch and brand. 

If I gave you two plain yellow pencils and said one was used by one of the founding fathers to draft the Bill of Rights and the other was found in an old schoolhouse around the same time, which would you believe has more value? 

Same pencil but different stories.

What story or stories can you put behind your services or products to drive clients' value and feelings that the price becomes not as important?

That's all I got for today.
Waleed
✌️🏴‍☠️

P.S. Do me a favor and share it with one person.

Thinking about, the thinking of laundry

From the thoughts of the marketer, author, and former dot com business executive, Seth Godin

Perhaps the reason price is all your customers care about is because you haven’t given them anything else to care about.