Real numbers from one laundromat.

Including the ones that proved us wrong.

We own Super Kleen Laundry in Lake City, Michigan — population 5,000. Self-serve, wash-dry-fold, delivery and commercial accounts. Every figure we publish is measured on our own floor, and when we get one wrong we publish the correction too.

What we send

One email. One number, worked all the way out, off a real floor. Four we have already published:

9×

We were wrong about our own store by nine times. Our model said folded drop-off returned $300 an hour of labor. A stopwatch on one order said $34. The whole error was one figure — we had handling at 5 minutes. It is 45.

38¢

Our sign says $2.35 a pound. We collected $1.97. Nobody discounted anything. Almost no operator has ever divided their laundry revenue by their laundry pounds — and the number that comes out tells you what business you are actually in.

35

Thirty-five pounds an hour is not a speed. You cannot get there by telling somebody to fold faster. It is four orders run at once — and you reach it by starting later, not by moving quicker. That costs nothing.

80%

We ask businesses what they do with their mop heads. Around 80% say yes. It is the one item in the building nobody is defending — and it is a route, not a customer, which is the part that decides whether it pays.

How this is different

Where do the numbers come from?

One store, one town, one payroll report. Not a survey, not an industry average, not a guess. When something is modelled rather than measured, we say so in the email.

Can I just copy your figures?

No, and you should not. We are on a well, our sewer is unmetered, and our market is five thousand people. Our job is to show you the method so you can measure your own. Nearly every email ends with the two minutes of work that gets you your version of the number.

What do you do when you get one wrong?

We publish the correction. The labor model was wrong by nine times. The water was never free. We guessed our biggest number and missed by a quarter. Those are three of the most useful things we have ever sent, and they are all mistakes.