Spinning around: the humble laundromat space is heating up

The days of the old, sad coin laundry are in the past and a new cohort of entrepreneurs are upping the ante with state-of-the-art laundromats.

“With a more transient population and the unreliability of cheap white goods, people are coming back to laundromats,” director of Soap Bar Launderette, Constance Bernard, says.

Over the past five years of running the Melbourne business, competition has intensified; the number of other operators within a 5-kilometre radius has tripled, Bernard says.

Making laundry a social event

Not all of the competitors are as customer-focused as Soap Bar, which incorporates a cafe and has site turnover of close to $100,000.

Bernard and co-founder Ben Shaw want to make laundry more of a “social event”. The Soap Bar space includes games, snacks and massage chairs.

“We do find students having study nights while doing their laundry and more and more parents bringing their kids in to play with the toys and have babycinos, while laundry time is being slashed,” Bernard says.

With renters and apartment dwellers dropping by in increasing numbers, the Soap Bar team says running an innovative business in the space is hard work. Read more
Emma Koehn - Brisbane Times - 24 Sep 2018