Starting a business

[Four Pillars]

It seems like the startup costs are very small, so I would just go ahead and get started asap. Figure out the details later.

Seems like a good idea - now you just need to test it.

[andrewf]

What is your business plan? What services will you offer, at what price, and at what cost to you (time, materials, utilities, etc.)?

You should try to hammer these things out to see what you would need to charge to make the exercise worthwhile.

[Spidey]

I've been thinking over your plan, especially since I'm also always looking for business ideas. Here are some of the problems I see with it. First if you are starting with your own single machine, it will be fairly slow going. Suppose someone hands you two laundry baskets full of clothes. You will likely have to separate colors from whites, etc. We usually also separate towels as they seem to cause other clothes to pill. After separating, you may have as many as 3 washes and smaller loads than are efficient. Can you charge enough to justify your time and expenses? The efficiency question could be solved by combining several people's clothes but you may then have trouble with mix-ups or a time consuming identification system. And of course, you always have the potential hassle of someone saying that you ruined a piece of their clothing. Buying more machines would increase efficiency but would add to your capital costs.

It could work, but as I say, I don't know if you can charge enough for such a service to make it very profitable.

[donald]

It's not that there is'nt a market for the elderly but what stands out is that it is ''blue collar'' and a small community,most small communities have a sense of thirft way more than city folks(would they pay for it?,you think cmfers are cheap,rural ''farmers are pretty ''tight"lol and couple that with the vaule structure in a small community-Mr smith who has lived there for 50 yrs and his wife died- im sure has ''meals" and laundry being done for free from his peers in church ect-that is what i was thinking.

I'd set-up around a campus or uni in a bigger market and try to spread out that way with word of mouth,or like others have said maybe go the commercial route(maybe even get into linens)-see if you can undercut(intial start)a seniors home for example(there service provider)?maybe you can even use there facilities.(esp-private owned business where you can clearly show the owner or gm the cost benefits)