Laundromat News September 27, 2024

Jordan Berry [00:00:04]:
Welcome to Laundromat News Today. Almost said Laundromat Resources. Laundromat News Today. I am your news anchor. I’m committing to it, Jordan Barry. And I am here to bring you all the latest news in the laundromat industry. Today actually is I want to focus on one sort of piece of news. But before we kind of jump into that, I want to give you a small something to think about news story.

Jordan Berry [00:00:30]:
An article I read in The Guardian was posing the question, are people washing their clothes too much? Has social pressure caused them to wash their clothes too often? Clothes that don’t need to be laundered every time they’ve worn been worn or whatever, were pressured to do that. And, you know, it’s an interesting question and all that. The only reason I pose it is because I just I wanna keep an eye on it. Personally, I wanna keep an eye on that narrative and see if the narrative grows at all. Right now, it was focusing on UK and UK people washing their clothes too much. You know, so that that’s that. But I just want to kind of keep an eye on that. I want you to keep an eye on that, too, and want you to let me know if you hear more chatter around that because it would be interesting to hear if the narrative shifts.

Jordan Berry [00:01:26]:
I do think that would have some sort of impact on our industry, specifically on the self serve, side of things, residential side of things there. So, I wanted to drop that little article, but the majority of the time here, and I wanna keep it short, I wanna spend on the biggest news that I’ve heard 0 people talking about in our industry, and I don’t understand. I don’t know why. But last week, the Fed, Federal Reserve dropped the prime rate, or dropped their yeah, dropped the prime rate by 50 basis points or or half a percent. Right? And, this is big news, you know, mostly in the context. I hear it, you know, in in popular news, not to say that this news is not popular, this is very popular. But, the the in in the popular news sources, mostly, I’m just watching people kinda fish for the implications of that when it comes to purchasing housing. However, I just wanted to bring it up in our sphere here.

Jordan Berry [00:02:30]:
And I want you know, whatever your platform you’re watching or listening this to, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the implications of the prime, dropping interest rates by 50 basis points and sort of hinting that another 50 basis points might go down, again before the end of the year. Now, nobody knows, but, that’s been sort of hinted at. And I want I want to hear your take on the implications of that. But here’s a couple of things I want us to think about as business owners, as laundromat owners when it comes to the Fed Prime rate. So number 1, you know, whenever interest rates come down, a lot of us have variable interest rate loans. A lot of the loans given out over the last couple of few years at least have been variable rate, if not longer than that, have been variable rate tied to a prime rate, of some sort. And, you know, when that prime rate comes down, our payments go down, which is great news for us. Now, here’s what’s interesting is that most of our loans are 5, 7, maybe 10 years.

Jordan Berry [00:03:33]:
And so, actually, as I was kinda doing some calculations, just trying to see what the impact of that is, really, the impact is fairly minimal. Even even one full percentage point is fairly minimal. It might mean a few $100 a month for us depending on your loan amount and all that, obviously. So it’s not a massive moving of the needle for it to come down half a percentage point for us, but it is something. Right? And, if if I may draw an analogy to the housing market, it is interesting to see how even a relatively small interest rate change can stimulate home acquisition. And I’m wondering if a relatively small interest rate drop might stimulate equipment and acquisition, purchases in the small business realm and in particular in the laundromat industry. So I’m I’m curious how you feel about that, and does it make you more or less likely or or neutral in terms of wanting to buy new equipment or buy in another location, anything like that? It has put a lot of pressure on us as interest rates rose rather rapidly over the last couple of years in terms of making money more expensive and making it more difficult for us to retool or acquire new location. So just curious on your thoughts on that.

Jordan Berry [00:05:00]:
But that’s definitely something to kinda keep an eye on, equipment pricing or financing for equipment purchases, maybe has dropped a little bit there. Another kind of implication of this which, again, I don’t know that we’re gonna see massive changes at this point in time, but it will be interesting to watch the trajectory of these interest rate saga, I guess. I was gonna say drops, but we don’t necessarily know that’s gonna drop. But the saga of the interest rates is as interest rates do drop, it is more likely that companies are going to invest back into their businesses by adding new facilities or more equipment and that not just in our industry, but in other industries too. And why that’s important is because a lot of our clients, are in, you know, blue collar jobs, for example, and as some of these companies start investing in more equipment, more facilities, stuff like that, there’s gonna be more of a demand for construction, manufacturing jobs. Some of our clientele, there that use our facilities, there may be, more jobs there. So that could have, an impact on us. I again, I don’t think it’s enough to really move the needle massively, but it is something to kinda keep an eye on.

Jordan Berry [00:06:22]:
And, really, the point of this segment or this episode here of of the news is I want the conversation to start happening. So I wanna hear what other people have to say. I’m not the ultimate authority here. And, again, this is a first from the from the Fed’s point of view, it looks like this is probably a first step here, and it’s not gonna make a dramatic impact on small businesses and laundromats in particular, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. So tell me what you think. What are the implications of the Fed decreasing the rates here? Is it gonna make a big impact in us as business owners, in our, target demographics at all? Is there gonna be any changes that we’re seeing? Anything that you’re seeing that we need to be aware of? Leave a comment if you’re on a platform that you can leave a comment, YouTube or Facebook or LinkedIn, something like that. If you’re listening on the podcast and you’ve got something to say, shoot me an email, [email protected], and I’ll bring up your comments in the next, next week’s episode of Laundromat News Today. Also, if you have any other news in the laundromat world, send it over, laundromat, news at laundromatresource.com, and we’ll make sure we get it in future episodes.

Jordan Berry [00:07:42]:
And, you’re welcome to do that whether your news is small, something about your particular laundromat or maybe you bought a laundromat and you just wanna share it with the world, shout it from the rooftops. Or if you have got a product or service or, new partnership or anything like that that you’re working on and you’re part of a company doing something cool, would love to share that here, [email protected]. So send that over. And I’m gonna wrap up the news with that because most of the news from this week was just kind of depressing news. And here’s the takeaway. Make sure you are being safe out there and make sure you’re thinking about ways to make sure that your staff is safe. There’s a lot of, just kinda random, you know, things happening at Laundromats that we don’t wanna happen in in our business. It is a huge, huge reason that I advocate we have well maintained, well taken care of, clean, safe laundromats as best as we can.

Jordan Berry [00:08:44]:
So make sure we’re operating that way. That is it for the news. One thing I was thinking about and apologies again to Patrick. I just got back from a trip. I did not have time. I just feel like it’s gonna take me a lot of time to sit down and think of laundromat jokes. Maybe chat gbt can help me out next week. This is not a funny episode whatsoever.

Jordan Berry [00:09:03]:
0 jokes. They all went down the drain. No. It’s not even a good joke. Patrick, I’m letting you down, and I just wanna acknowledge that. But I also was thinking I you know, like, the best newscasters on the funniest TV shows always have, like, a a catch phrase that they end with, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, b e a u, to full day. I don’t know. I’d I probably need a catchphrase.

Jordan Berry [00:09:31]:
One that AI wrote for me a while back that you may have seen sneak in a couple of things because I think it’s hilarious is stay fluffin’ awesome. So stay fluffin’ awesome this week. If you’ve got some input on the Fed, rate cuts, I would love to hear about it. If you’ve got some input on what that catchphrase that wraps up every episode should be, I’d love to hear about that too. And until next week, that’s LornaMed News today, and I will see you then with the latest and greatest next week.