Today’s Winners & Losers in Laundromat Payment Systems with Stacey Cooper

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is Show one ninety, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today, we have on the show KiaSoft’s Stacy Cooper, and we get into payment systems today. Talk about what systems right now in today’s market are the winners and losers. What are customers using? What are they not using? What are owners using? What are they not using? And a lot of practical tips on how to actually, utilize a digital payment system for your business. So tons of good stuff. Cannot wait for you to see it, and let’s jump into it with Stacy right now.

Jordan Berry [00:00:41]:
Stacy, thank you for coming on the show. How are you doing today?

Stacey Cooper [00:00:44]:
I’m good, Jordan. Thank you for having me. Good to be here.

Jordan Berry [00:00:47]:
Yeah. No. It’s my pleasure. I’m super excited to chat with you today. We’re gonna, you know, dive into a bunch of really cool stuff that I am excited about. But before we kinda get into, you know, the the nuts and bolts of what we’re gonna talk about today, why don’t you give us a little bit of a background on you? Who are you, and how did you get into this weird laundromat industry that we’re in here?

Stacey Cooper [00:01:10]:
Weird laundromat industry. Well, it’s not weird. But, you know, yeah, I get it. So, Houma, I’m Stacy Cooper. I am the my current role is the, the the general vice president general manager of, Kiasoft’s, distribution and laundry group. So what I focus on is, kind of leveraging our our Kiasoft payment systems and our our technology into the, the laundromat space, laundromat market and the, and self ownership world for, for multi housing. And, also I am involved on the multi housing the route side of the business as well. But you know the majority of my effort goes over on water mats and self ownership.

Stacey Cooper [00:01:56]:
So, which is a is a growing part of our business and, and an important one because to that. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:02:03]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s a that’s a growing, a growing segment of our industry right now too. Right? Is this, you know, this payment systems and and all that. So how did you how did you get into this business? How did you get into this role?

Stacey Cooper [00:02:19]:
So, I came to this role, from we could prior to this. I’ve been in the payment the unintended payments industry, you know, or just cashless payments for unattended applications. And and that ran the game from anything from vending machines, to news back when newspapers were a thing. I’m dating myself with newspaper machines. Just about anything that you normally would put cash into as a point of self-service, you know, vending laundry, point of sale, kiosks, those kinds of things. I’ve been in that payment space, you know, to automate those things for thirty five years. And, you know, when you develop a technology like cashless payments, if you will, and over time that is that that technology evolves you look for ways to apply it in the different markets. You know like you know the vending is vending machines are a strong market for that kind of thing.

Stacey Cooper [00:03:17]:
You know gaming is another you know gaming video games and things are another much like but, one of the places where it stuck and and kind of made the most sense was the laundry vertical, you know, the laundry market in general. And that is I’ve probably been working on the laundry in laundry, applications and laundry environments for about twenty nine years, you know, coming up on 30 on that side. And it’s it’s one of the places where the technology really makes a lot of sense and take it took off. So probably for twenty five of those twenty nine years, it’s been multi housing. You know really really focusing on multi housing, colleges, universities, dorms, military installations things like that. And then the lawn and mass space was always something that was there And that, you know, was a tantalizing opportunity. And and Kiasoft was was expanding into that market. And they, you know, we we, you know, we came to, to feel like we had a shared vision.

Stacey Cooper [00:04:24]:
So I came over to the Kiasat team and, and they were, you know, gracious enough to take me and we, we started down this road. So, that’s how I got in the I’ve been in the laundry industry for a very long time, but in the laundry mat space for what I consider about between three or four years. You know, somewhere around.

Jordan Berry [00:04:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it’s it’s interesting because, I mean, I think that that that timing kind of lines up with the timing of this sort of segment, this digital payment option, it, you know, has really kind of taken off over the last few years. And I don’t know if you’ve seen that with your your business as you’re trying to grow that segment. Is that what you’ve seen as well?

Stacey Cooper [00:05:11]:
Yeah. It’s the you know, from from from the laundromat perspective, it’s the second, largest group within our company. You know multi housing is the largest. And then the water mass space and the self ownership is the second largest. And, it’s been at the fastest growth pace as well. And a lot of that I think stems from when you when you get your technology down and you get it right, you know, then, you know, and in in in your engineering is solid. In our other modern market, the multi housing side, we’ve been doing that for a lot of years and we’ve had to refine that technology and get it to a point where, you know, you don’t want to use sort of bulletproof, but the devices, the the you know, the the intention behind them, you know, the acceptance of a laundry card or the or the acceptance of a credit card to just start a laundry machine. There’s the fundamentals.

Stacey Cooper [00:06:09]:
And once you get the fundamentals down and you get that technology really really solid and you can scale it fast and it’s value engineered properly from a standpoint that it can be deployed in in mass numbers on that side of business then the laundromat space is a just a natural extension of It they accomplish the same thing in the end but they go about it by very different paths. You know, the one in that space is we had the pleasure of working with, entrepreneurs and, you know, small business owners And this, you know, they’ve they’ve really invested their lives in these kind of applications in in these kind of endeavors. And so for on that’s on on our this side. On the other side, on our other side of our larger business, we’re usually dealing with a a fairly large organization, you know, a a corporate entity that’s public or they’re backed by PE. And, they’re just really scale wise. They’re they’re much larger. So you you kind of refine in in narrow narrow may not be the right word but you focus your message and the type of technology that that particular operator likes and wants and then you you limit your number of skews and your options things like that. And then they just it just takes off.

Stacey Cooper [00:07:27]:
Right? You got the formula right, and then you just it’s just an assembly line at that point. Whereas the laundromat side of the space, every side of our market is so much more personal. There isn’t just one type of technology that fits all. So, we really had to, we were able to bring those different payment methodologies that we’ve that we developed over the years that a particular route operator or you know someone with multi housing really likes mobile and this one really likes laundry card and this really likes credit card machine. We were able since we had to kind of get solid on all those different ideas we were able to bring them together in a unified platform and to offer them each one of those types of things to our laundromat customers in the market. And, I think, perform more of a whole like, a whole wheel approach to some things because over time and I’m sure you’ve observed this as well. Over time, you know, the the end customer, the the person who walks in off the street to do their laundry, their tastes are changing and have changed over time. And what may have worked five years ago or even three years ago may not be two years from now may not be the preferred method.

Stacey Cooper [00:08:47]:
So you have to have sort of that that ability to leverage, different payment methods into a single device and allow that to be turned on or turned off depending or, you know, hang another, item or ability device off of the system that gives somebody a new method, easily, you know, to be able to easily adapt it to kind of future proof your technology. So I hope that makes that made sense.

Jordan Berry [00:09:17]:
Yeah. I mean, I think that that Provoke some, interesting questions, I think. I mean, you know, as somebody who you have kind of a unique perspective here, whereas it’s it’s sort of like an overview. You’re not stuck in like one or five laundromats. You’re you’ve got this sort of overview of the industry. I’m curious. I mean, as you mentioned, you know, the in the end customer, you know, the the the laundry customer and their preferences on payments. I mean, how have you seen that shifting over the last few years And any predictions on how that’s gonna continue to shift over the next couple?

Stacey Cooper [00:09:56]:
So the shifts that we see occurring are, a little bit surprising. You know? And I you know, for, like, there’s been some clear winners and clear losers. I think if you think about the, the way people pay within the laundromat. So, like, if you went back, say, two years, the numb the percentage of, like, stores and then I’m basing I can’t take credit for doing this. This is all coming out of CLA research, you know, so I can give them their give them their prop their dues. This is from their surveys. But, you know, we’ve been tracking them over time for a while. Kinda see if we could pick up on any, you know, trends, of course.

Stacey Cooper [00:10:38]:
What I’ve observed is that and and and gather from the data and and personal observations, you know, just in visiting and talking to clients is that number of stores that are just just cash, just quarter, they’ve been dropping at the same rates, if you will, as the pickup in the the stores that actually embrace particular types of technology, for payment, non non cashless payment. So the quarter only stores have gone down by about 20 points in two years whereas stores that you know accept technology have increased a corresponding amount. Yeah and within that I think that there’s there’s two two payment methods that are kind of clear winners. One is laundry card. You know like the traditional got a kiosk add value to the card. Very tried, very true. Works great. You know, it’s a great application.

Stacey Cooper [00:11:31]:
And it has some real benefits to the to the laundromat owners as well, that your audience is well familiar with than your pictures. The other is the credit side. You know, using credit cards or debit cards. The majority of the customers in this in modern management are used debit. But, those kind of convenient right in my wallet, right in virtual or more increasingly right on my phone, I can just pay directly with Apple Pay or Google Pay without having to visit a kiosk and do anything else. That’s the most convenient method. And those two methodologies, the laundry card and the credit card, really bumped up and filled in the gap of as, you know, the quarters have been eroding, they’ve been filling in. The surprising one to me that has actually retracted over the last couple of years has been, the mobile payment side.

Stacey Cooper [00:12:19]:
And I think that’s based on the latest survey kinda gone down about 10 points in the last two years. Now these are based off survey respondents, of course. We know those those stage can go. But, you know, the the store mix that’s just had, like, let’s say, quarters of coins and mobile, The mobile portion has been been on a little bit of a decline. You know? It’s, like, down to 10 points, which is, like I said, surprising to us because KiaSoft is, you know, in is the number one provider of mobile payment, laundry payments for laundry, number one in the world. Probably have 10,000,000 plus users of our mobile applications that start laundry or pay for a laundry cycle on a monthly basis. And, you know, if you look in the App Store or the Play Store, I think it’s fifty three fifty three or or in hires. Definitely over 50 of the mobile applications that you see branded and whatever where they are for a mobile payment store, those are ours.

Stacey Cooper [00:13:31]:
You know, we we actually are the technology, the underlying technology behind it. Our partners in those cases, you know, in those branded, applications, they put their own, spin and their own, types of, custom features on top of those working with us in the development. So there’s there’s some custom elements to it, but the underlying structure of it all is, you know, is is is is key zone. So you know for us mobile is such an enormous part of our world so that when I see it like it’s not going down in the laundromat side I think you know why you know why why is that? Because mobile is really the easiest thing to deploy It’s the lowest technology barrier to really get over. But you have to get it right. You can’t, you know, just can’t just, you know, throw a a little device at it and throw an app onto the store and say, oh, I’ve I’ve got it all figured out. But from a from a certification standpoint, a security level, layers, and everything else, it’s it’s the it’s the easiest one to get into. I just I don’t know.

Stacey Cooper [00:14:35]:
Maybe people are app weary. You know, they just don’t wanna tie up and have another app, another login, you know, another whatever. When I can simply just go and use my debit card or my Apple Pay directly at the machine, just pay. And and, and it’s the easiest thing in the world. I mean, I your what do you what’s your perspective on?

Jordan Berry [00:14:56]:
Yeah. No. I mean, I’ve definitely seen that that trend, not only in usage, but also, like, I have the I have the benefit. I do a lot of a lot of consulting. Right. So I have the benefit of getting to look at usage numbers of the different payment systems for a lot of different laundromats. And like as a percentage of income, how much is from an app? How much is from, you know, a card, like a laundry card or credit card or just coins or whatever. And I have not really seen that there are stores where app payments are a pretty significant portion of Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:15:38]:
Of of the business. But by and large, like, what I’ve seen is about, like, 10 to 15% of revenues coming from a lot of these app payment systems in stores that have multiple options. And I I’m similar. Like, I’m a little bit surprised by that, and I don’t know if it’s because people don’t want another app on their phone, which I suspect might be the case, or if we’re just not if we’re not doing it right, somehow, some way, you know, as owners where we’re not really promoting it well or we’re not implementing it well, or there’s too many, you know, barriers. You know, we wanna make it obviously, any payment system any way somebody wants to give us money, we wanna make it as easy as possible for people to give us money. Right? Like, that’s the whole that’s the whole idea here. Right? So I don’t know if we’re just making it too tough, too much friction there. But, you know, I’m a little bit surprised by that too.

Jordan Berry [00:16:32]:
Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:16:32]:
Yeah. You said the keyword is friction. And over my career, that’s always been kinda like the, you know, the the the the the, you know, the descriptive boogeyman word for the, you know, kind of the barrier to to move any barrier move that prevents money from going from your customer’s pocket to your choice is is is the friction points. And if I have to go to a changer and get, you know, $20 worth of quarters and carry those $20 for three quarters around and and, you know, drop them into the machine one after one after another, and I have an alternative as a mobile payment option. The mobile payment option is less friction once I get over the registration. And we can reduce those friction points with, you know, Apple Pay you know, using Apple login or Google login, you know, kind of supporting those methodologies, which we do, which kinda makes it easier to register. We allow in app loading of the of the account by Apple and Google. That’s fine.

Stacey Cooper [00:17:32]:
You know, you can re refund your account or fund up your account, top it up, which also is a reduction point. But if it’s between coins and diet, I’ll pick mobile. Right? Because I don’t wanna deal with coins personally. This is my choice. Right? I’ll deal with that. It’s less friction. Now if I, you know, coins, mobile app, and a laundry card, a laundry card might be less friction to me than a mobile application because it’s just it’s easier. It’s transferable.

Stacey Cooper [00:18:02]:
It’s easier to deal with. I can be more easily, in most cases, load with cash. I can throw cash into a kiosk and load my card value up. I don’t have to log into it anymore. I just keep have to keep track of the car. It it’s it’s just more anonymous and and fast. Right? So I may like that. Now I would probably tend to move over that.

Stacey Cooper [00:18:23]:
Even though in in the strictest sense of the world, it’s an older model. It does offer distinct advantages, to to a lot of operators. But if I could just pull my debit card or my credit card or use my phone right there and I don’t have to talk to anybody that’s even better. I mean when you go to the grocery store now you’re you’re probably dealing with self checkout. Right? And

Jordan Berry [00:18:51]:
If I can

Stacey Cooper [00:18:52]:
Some some grocers have two lanes. They have the lanes that are have the bigger kiosks that actually have cash acceptance, and then they have a whole lot that are just card only. And which ones do you gravitate

Jordan Berry [00:19:04]:
to? I mean card only for sure.

Stacey Cooper [00:19:06]:
Right. I’m going right through that line. And if I can’t pay with my phone, but really if I can’t use Apple Pay and I’m not now I’m not trying to, you know, type Apple, but if I can’t use Apple Pay, then I if it’s easy for me to get to another business that’s nearby that takes Apple Pay, I will usually go there because we’ve all been caught out. We forgot to grab our, you know, our cardholder and it has a little bit of cash or whatever. We have our phone. If I get I’ve been caught out once, and I and actually stopped going to that business because I wanted to use Apple Pay. They didn’t have it. There’s nothing against them.

Stacey Cooper [00:19:40]:
Good people. It’s just not convenient for me.

Jordan Berry [00:19:43]:
Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:19:43]:
So, I mean, we’ve reduced the payment friction in that case to a point where something it’s something that’s in my hand all the time is I have my phone in my hand all the time. And as customers our customers’ customers skew younger and younger over time, and it becomes more big ubiquitous. That’s kind of an an to to circle back to one of your earlier questions, the future trends, it’s really gonna be contact with some mobile. I mean, I mobile from the standpoint of something like, you know, a a standard brand open payment system that’s out in the world like Google Pay or Apple Pay, something like that. Mobile payment applications are great. We love them. Like millions of people use us all the time. They’re our bread and butter in a lot of cases.

Stacey Cooper [00:20:30]:
But in this world, in the laundromat space, I think that that was where things were gonna go. It’s much more of a contactless excuse me, anonymous, just zip in, zip out. That’s where I think it’s going.

Jordan Berry [00:20:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. And and I’ve kind of been thinking that for a while. It’s just kind of interesting that we really haven’t seen that traction yet, where, you know, and maybe there’s a tipping point we’ve got to hit. But

Stacey Cooper [00:20:58]:
Well, contactless distractions really picked up. Yeah. The contactless. The first barrier of course is whether your device, your payment device can accept credit and debit cards. And not everybody in the market does, right? I mean, there’s some people that you know some people focus almost entirely on mobile payments and some providers focus very very very keenly on the on the laundry card model if you will. Now you can still use you know, credit or debit to fund the laundry card, but it’s at the kiosk. And then there are some there’s a couple players that actually have the, you know, the pay at the machine model. The the idea that I can use my Visa, Mastercard, whatever right at the point of purchase.

Stacey Cooper [00:21:38]:
No other interaction. Now thankfully, KiaSoft does all of those, and we do them all in you know, we can even do them all in in in the same device. You know, you can turn on mobile. You can turn on one of your card. You can turn on a credit, debit card, Apple Pay all in one unit and just have it there. Then you’re just kind of everything. You can do everything to all people. But we’ve noticed that at the point where people can use their credit debit instruments right at the point of sale, at the laundry machine, The the percentage has climbed steadily on which on when they choose to use contactless.

Stacey Cooper [00:22:14]:
Even if they’re using a card, they’re tapping the card versus inserting it. And, that that’ll just continue. COVID accelerated it to massive Yeah. Double digit growth every year, and it it’s not going bad. People just got used to it, and that was it. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:22:31]:
Yeah. One is so much faster and easier and more secure.

Stacey Cooper [00:22:35]:
I don’t have

Jordan Berry [00:22:35]:
to worry about, like, credit card skimmers being

Stacey Cooper [00:22:40]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:22:40]:
You know, like, all that stuff. Like

Stacey Cooper [00:22:42]:
That kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And you don’t, like, you don’t we don’t appear based on your background, we don’t appear to be in a cold climate right now.

Jordan Berry [00:22:49]:
I’m in Hawaii right now. So I

Stacey Cooper [00:22:51]:
mean, it’s

Jordan Berry [00:22:51]:
a little it’s a little chilly at, like, 72 at the moment.

Stacey Cooper [00:22:54]:
Oh, okay. Alright.

Jordan Berry [00:22:55]:
I had to put a shirt on to do this interview.

Stacey Cooper [00:22:58]:
I I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, we could both take out brochures. I think you’d be a

Jordan Berry [00:23:04]:
decent I have I have actually done one shirtless episode with shirtless Corey. So anybody I wanna look for that one. Yeah. That one’s out there.

Stacey Cooper [00:23:12]:
I’ll I’ll be sure to look for that one. But Yeah. My my point in that was, you know, and I I live in the Southeastern United States. So we don’t get we get cold, but we don’t get as cold, like, up north. And Mhmm. You know, what kind of brought on me was I was up. And, you know a couple years ago I was at Wisconsin it was brutally cold and I had gloves on and it was very difficult for me to get a card out of my card holder to pay it some you know to to actually pay a valid payment and that’s where, you know, your phone really comes in amazingly handy because you can operate it with your face and, you know, you don’t even have to double click the sign button anymore really. A lot of cases, you’re if you’ve got face facial ID turned on, then it just goes.

Stacey Cooper [00:24:02]:
And it just, you know, for for people who live in close climates have to dig their things out of their under under layers, then I get it. That’s tough. You know? So that’s where

Jordan Berry [00:24:11]:
You know what’s funny is I never, you know, before Hawaii, I was in California, like Southern California. Right? Like, I’ve never even considered that, like, having to fill with a glove. And I don’t even know if I own any gloves. Yeah. Genuinely, I’m not sure if I do. So, yeah. No, but that’s real. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:24:31]:
And, like, talk about reducing the friction, you know, and all that. It’s interesting. And, you know, I think more and more owners are I mean, we’re seeing that, right? You were kind of saying that with the stats, more and more owners are seeing like, hey, we’ve got to we’ve got to go this way. There’s like I’m trying to think of another business where you could go to that’ll only accept cash. And I’m like, I’m genuinely struggling.

Stacey Cooper [00:25:01]:
To any, you know, even used to be like, farmers markets and, you know, pop up those pop up kind of I don’t call them flea markets, but they’re kind of small merchant. They’re just all whatever. That that used to be one of the last places where cash was it was really king, except for my kids. They they always they never they just always just want cash. We wrote a check to our, to our one of our our grandson for his birthday and he didn’t even know what it was. It’s like what he

Jordan Berry [00:25:34]:
was saying. Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:25:34]:
Got it

Jordan Berry [00:25:35]:
out of

Stacey Cooper [00:25:35]:
the car and he was like, I don’t know what to do with this. What is this? So, yeah, there’s a little pop up shops, farmers markets. But any more people have, you know, Venmo, they have Zelle, all kinds of other instruments that allow them to us to move money around.

Jordan Berry [00:25:51]:
Square credit card readers that plug into their phone? Yeah. Like,

Stacey Cooper [00:25:54]:
like, at the top? All of it. Have you been out to dinner with any of your friends? I mean, you’re I would think you’re young enough to probably do this. Where one of you pays and and the other guys, you know, the other guys just Venmo or sell it to each other, you know, like, what they owe. Alright. So my, you know, my kids do that. So it the the instruments of commerce have changed to a point where, I places like laundromats and car washes. Car washes are another market of ours. Car wash and integration.

Stacey Cooper [00:26:23]:
And there’s there’s a surprising amount of overlap for those. A lot of lot of laundromat owners that we dealt with actually own car washes as well. So, you know, our group that focuses on you know, we got a group within the company that focuses on integration in car washes and airbag machines. They feed us leads that somebody’s got, oh I have a laundromat too. You know, I own the desk in the car wash next door. So, there’s there’s and it’s good to be able to supply payment systems that work across both the same, you know, settlement tools and back ends. But, car washes and laundromats are one of the few places that I think we’re almost I’m gonna call them net importers, but in some cases, they can be net importers of of of cash. You know, because people bring quarters in some cases to those environments

Jordan Berry [00:27:10]:
Mhmm.

Stacey Cooper [00:27:11]:
Versus using changes or whatever. They’ll they’ll they’ll bring in more coins than they actually lose sometimes. Depends on the the area, but it can happen. But I don’t think there’s many others. Yeah. I just don’t.

Jordan Berry [00:27:26]:
Yeah. I don’t either. And I think I mean, listen. Like, if you’re out there and you’re still only accepting coin, like, I just think you’re gonna struggle more and more every year, because, you know, and and there’s this like, there’s this resistance from some segments of our industry. That’s like, they’re like coin holdouts and I even hear, you know, like people advocating like dollar coins versus quarters. And I get that too. But even that, like, I just, I don’t know of anywhere else that you can go where you can’t pay with a card or a phone. And if you don’t offer that option, like, you’re just Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:28:12]:
I don’t wanna come off too. Right. I mean, I agree with

Jordan Berry [00:28:15]:
you. I I will. I’ll come off as, like, like, get with the times, people. Like, we I’m on this mission here. Part of my mission of this podcast is I wanna help rehab the reputation of our industry. We have a terrible reputation. When you ask the common person off the street, tell me what you think about when you think about laundromats. They think dark, dirty, dingy, homeless people, you know, and and having only a cash option is part of that bad reputation that we have.

Jordan Berry [00:28:47]:
So I am on this mission to be like, Hey, we have got to get with the times a little bit. I mean, I’m not even asking you to get with like today’s times. This is like a decade ago’s times of, like, having a credit card option or a card payment option in your store.

Stacey Cooper [00:29:04]:
Well, I and I I understand. I’ll do this

Jordan Berry [00:29:06]:
so you don’t have to.

Stacey Cooper [00:29:07]:
You can be devil knows. Yeah. I I have been Yeah. You know, I and I’ve I’ve said this to other people is I’ve been at war you know with coins for thirty five years. When I started out you know I when I started out in the industry it was really just vending. It was only on vending machines. Actually worked for a division of Coca Cola, and we were investigating these technologies, these payment technologies, alternate payment models. And I would, you know, I’d fly around or whatever.

Stacey Cooper [00:29:34]:
I’d be traveling. People said, what do you do? And I would say, well, you know, I work on systems that replace cash with card payments, you know, with the store value card payments at the time. And it would take me a while sometimes to just explain what I meant. I mean, it was just just a diff it was I was it was like I was going into foreign countries as some sort of missionary. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. This is this is this is coming down the road, and this is the way we’re all gonna pay for things in the in the future. You know? And some people would just look at me like I was nuts. And and, you know, now go forward thirty five years, and it’s I have been pushing back on coins, pushing back on coins.

Stacey Cooper [00:30:15]:
Now my point in saying that is I agree. I have my preferences. And I and proclivities because of my history that I think there’s certain ways and ways to be more efficient. But to harken back to something that we were talking in the beginning, these are, you know, the people are customers well. We sell to distributors, so our distributors customers, you know, they you you know, line managers, they are, you know, they’re they’re very tuned into their local markets. They’re they’re they’re entrepreneurial, and they’ve got their small business model that, you know, or or their business model is less small. And any in a lot of cases, it’s it’s they’re multi store owners. And they know what at least works for them.

Stacey Cooper [00:30:58]:
So while there are I have a preference for non cash payments, you know, There is enough still in the industry. I mean, I think there’s probably still 25% of stores that are out there in significant number. I mean, I think when you and I spoke with not too long ago, we were talking about the what we think the number of the laundromats were. Mhmm. I think somewhere we agreed somewhere around thirty two thirty to 32,000 laundromats in your season. I’ve got a list of five to 2,000. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:31:30]:
25% of those are still quarter only. Now from a business perspective, that’s a huge part of the market. And, you know, we’re we’re actually you know, we have been for a while building and, you know, designing and building systems that support the coin side of the business as well. You know we’re not all just about the cashless payment side we you know we’re we started out with coin boxes just the boxes you know to collect and then we’ve we’ve developed digital coin drops for the quarter and dollar coins that you mentioned, you know, because some people like to take both both kinds of dollar coins, you know. And, you know, we wanna limit the number of coin drop devices they have on the machines to one. So it’s a digital drop. It has a mobile payment built in. You know, we try to bring we try to yes.

Stacey Cooper [00:32:20]:
Enough of our customers come to us and ask us, could you build this? You know, could you build a, you know, an x for us or a y for us, because maybe they’re, you know, the the choices they have in the market have been reduced through consolidation. Or, you know, they’re having suppliers use or price pressure because of lack of competition. Anyway, a lot of our customers have come to us and said, could you build things like a coin box or a coin drop? And we’re like, alright. We’ll look at it. And then we decide, you know, yeah. There’s there’s an opportunity here. So we’ll go into that market and we’re building up those things now. But, you know, my where I’m going with that is if we try to introduce a piece of technology if we can to every part of those those that that entire stack that goes through the technology stack because coins do have a technology stack all the way from you know the devices that they fall into to the device that accepts them to the device that produced the coins you know to convert the money into coins you know, all the way up.

Stacey Cooper [00:33:26]:
We’re we’re developing product all across the spectrum to work side by side with, you know, the pay alternate payment systems if for our customers who do want and and still desire those is a big, you know, is a big part of their world and a necessary part of the world. So, if I open the wallet in that today, would I have any coins in it? No. Not not even no. I would not. But, you know, there like I said, there’s thousands upon thousands of people who disagree with me based on their decisions that are more informed than mine. And, you know, and I we respect those. So and and if it means that we can sell more product, then, you know, it’s okay with me. Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [00:34:10]:
All the better. We’re not a charity. We we don’t we’re gonna build these things and sell them, but, we’re gonna we’ll make sure they, you know, they do a good job and that they they do it at a good value too. So

Jordan Berry [00:34:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. I yeah. And that’s, you know and hopefully, nobody’s hearing me saying, hey. There’s no place for for cash in this business.

Stacey Cooper [00:34:28]:
I don’t think so. I don’t

Jordan Berry [00:34:29]:
think so. But but also, like, listen, like, we’ve gotta, you know, we’ve gotta also offer, you know, digital payment systems. And, you know, I know there’s some hesitancy from certain owners about, you know, the the trail that that might leave and the impact of the way they run their business. But

Stacey Cooper [00:34:52]:
I think that’s going to I think that’s been. Yeah, I

Jordan Berry [00:34:56]:
think that’s going away. And I think that. I mean, I think, listen, there’s more sophisticated people like if you’re out there right now and you own a laundromat, Chances are pretty good, especially if you’re listening to this podcast. And I know I probably preach in the choir here. If you listen to the podcast, you probably know all this and probably agree with, you know, at least the general sentiment of all this if you’re listening. But, you know, the the what I’m, you know, I guess what I’m what I’m trying to say here is like, listen, our our goal here is to serve our customers and to serve them the best way that we can to make it as easy as possible for them to do this chore that they probably don’t like doing or don’t want to be doing and to make it as easy as possible for them to pay us for that. Right. Like that’s kind of what we’re trying to do here.

Jordan Berry [00:35:47]:
So, I mean, I love that you guys are, you know, obviously you’re you’ve got this proclivity towards, you know, digital payment options, whatever that looks like in the various, you know, ways, but also, you know, trying to work with the other forms of payment here, and integrate, you know, your product with other ways to take money so that, again, we can just kind of reduce friction based on our business model or our particular location and demographic or whatever the case may be. I think that’s I think that’s awesome.

Stacey Cooper [00:36:24]:
Well, thank you. And we Yeah. You know, there there’s the we want to respect what the owner wants to do and support what he’s doing and hopefully there’s the technology pieces that we can bring into it allow a much deeper and more easy you know convenient a much more convenient method to get the picture of what’s going on you know what’s going on in the environment like our our coin drop mechanisms will, of course, will count all the coins. Report them up through wirelessly up to our host. And so they can get an idea of what kind of, you know coin flow has been going through their environment and do they need to bother going and collecting or you know to collect and and resupply the changes or whatnot. So you know our changer will report you know, the levels that they’re at. Our drops would count however the coins are. So you have your tracking from issuance to to, acceptance.

Stacey Cooper [00:37:27]:
That will should you know, we’re trying to bring the same level of of accountability and data integrity to that side of the business as as we do for the digital payment side. Enroll it all into one place so that, you know, somebody that is lives in Hawaii can look at their phone and say, what’s going on?

Jordan Berry [00:37:46]:
Yes. That thank you for that. I love that.

Stacey Cooper [00:37:49]:
Yeah. That’s You’re driving.

Jordan Berry [00:37:50]:
That’s that’s fine. Actually, I think

Stacey Cooper [00:37:51]:
we’re we’re deploying our, a group one of our guys is actually headed out to Hawaii in a week or two, maybe this week, and to in to install a laundromat. So

Jordan Berry [00:38:04]:
Ah, we’ll have him get in contact with me. Maybe we connect up. That’d be fun.

Stacey Cooper [00:38:07]:
Okay. Yeah. He’s, he’s, he’s one of our senior installers. He’s he’s been in the business for all two. He came he came out of the multi housing side, but, you know, he didn’t wanna come come over. It’s a, you know, it’s a I think the industry the distribution industry from a service perspective, installation perspective, everything is needs to, I I don’t know what the right word is, but maybe go a little bit of a recruiting phase. You know, it is, you know, in in the lottery market as a whole all the way across every side of it, needs to it’s one of those quiet businesses that people don’t really think about. But, we liken it to something very it all it it just it’s all to us, it’s almost equal to a utility, that you would get, you know, your water, your electricity, your gas, whatever else.

Stacey Cooper [00:39:01]:
I mean, you know, it’s it’s in the same realm or ZIP code as your cell phone. You know? Like, you you look at your communications, right in that list should be the importance of laundry in a person’s life. And, you know, it’s an industry that doesn’t get a lot of, people talk about it a lot, you know, outside of the world. You know, or, you know, kind of in normal conversation that you people run into and think about from career paths or or, just the idea of of that being a business in and of itself. And then, you know, when you when you tell people I’m in the laundry industry, you know, like, what do you mean the laundry industry? You know, when you take some time to explain to them all the elements of it from OPL to to the store side, you know, the street store to the multi housing, they’re like, I never really thought about that.

Jordan Berry [00:39:52]:
Yeah. It’s

Stacey Cooper [00:39:52]:
like they’re everywhere. Everybody needs access to a washer and dryer. And, so it’s a you know, from the recruiting standpoint, I don’t know what they can do about it. I don’t have the answer. But it’s the the idea that we can, that it’s it’s a noble business to be in and, you know, because we’re performing a service we all collectively are trying to perform a service that is that you know is necessary and it improves everybody’s quality of life. My portion of it makes it easier for people to do it, for for people to get another and for the business to support their efforts through higher efficiency and and just to be frank a better profit margin. You know if I don’t have to drive out to a location to collect coins every time I want to get you know refund my business then it’s just easier to deal with. You know so I just yeah yeah yeah from the installers and then that’s a big segue there but you know your installers, the people who operate, people install rigors, everything.

Stacey Cooper [00:41:00]:
You know, they’re just in I hope that we can, you know, kinda get some get get more young blood into this into this market and get people, kind of excited about the whole idea of it, you know?

Jordan Berry [00:41:13]:
Yeah. Well, and I I wonder what you know, it was funny. You were saying, like, when you’re talking about telling people about all the different facets of laundry stuff, I’m like, Yeah, man, people are really filthy. Like, we’re just gross. Like, there’s a lot longer that needs to be done. I always joke about kids being really disgusting, but I don’t think it goes away when we get older. We’re just all does it? Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:41:36]:
A lot of laundry.

Stacey Cooper [00:41:36]:
If anything, probably people should do more laundry than they do.

Jordan Berry [00:41:39]:
Yeah. That maybe is true. Yeah. Well, it’s, you know, that really makes me forget what I was really going to say. Think Think about how gross we all are. But, so you mentioned like distributors. Oh, that’s what I was going to say. I’m wondering there’s I’m seeing I don’t know if you’re seeing this yet, but I’m seeing a lot more younger people being interested in owning this business.

Jordan Berry [00:42:06]:
I think a lot has to do with, the way it’s being portrayed on social right now. Social media.

Stacey Cooper [00:42:13]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:42:14]:
On YouTube, you got like Cody Sanchez, you got a lot of people on like TikTok showing, you know, big wads of cash that are pulling out of their chain machines and stuff.

Stacey Cooper [00:42:23]:
You know,

Jordan Berry [00:42:23]:
we can talk about the merits of that or not. I think on the one hand, it’s been good for the industry to get a little bit of exposure on the business side. On the other hand, I think there’s a lot of deceptive information, maybe unintentionally, or maybe intentionally. But, you know, information that maybe is not quite as accurate as, as it should be. But I’m wondering if I’m I actually I’m kind of more wondering when I because I think what’ll happen is that a lot of people who have this interest in coming into this business will shift into there’s a this this is sort of a little bit of a gold rush here in our industry. And, you know, the whole classic the ones who really got rich in the gold rush are the ones who sold the shovels. Right. I’m wondering when that shift will come to be like, actually, you know, probably there’s a lot of money to be made.

Jordan Berry [00:43:23]:
I’ll just frankly say there’s a lot of money to be made for anybody who’s willing to learn how to fix machines and who is willing to pick up the phone when somebody calls them to get their machine fixed. Like in most markets, there is a shortage of service techs and, you know, things like that. So distribution, that kind of stuff. Like, I think that that will happen. But we’re at this point, I think right now we’re at, like, a shortage of that side of things. So it’d be interesting to see how that evolves.

Stacey Cooper [00:43:55]:
I agree with you. I think it would be interesting to watch that evolve on this side. And that, I think, is the next big wave of opportunity is is the picks and shovels model you know just be the one who sells the picks and shovels on the service side. Because you’re a % right the the last five years have really been this kind of a golden period for people. I think and and I think that the age to some degree of a lot of the laundromat owners that, you know, that that they’re retiring. Let’s just say people that are retiring out of it. People that are are kind of moving on to the next phase of their lives, who are just ready to be out. And, and that timed out at almost, you know, at this perfect nexus of of social media and when, you know, and tonight it’s a second reference to COVID on this, but I think COVID also gave this sort of kind of kind of reignited people’s desire to find some other way to have a career or to secure their family’s future, that kind of thing.

Stacey Cooper [00:45:08]:
And those three things come together at just the last five years especially. Now I think I agree with you. I think that some a lot of people got into this with some, maybe not intentionally intentionally in inaccurate information. You know, a lot of people bought in the hype. You know, they they did. And some of the valuations that I know that you’ve heard about and I’ve heard about have been a little, you know progressive. But no different than the housing market. There have been other factors driving that.

Stacey Cooper [00:45:43]:
It’s not just it’s not just individuals trying to get into it. You know, there you know there’s there’s that specter of PE that in in in, and capitalization have come into this side and have driven a lot of these these valuations up higher. Almost like a mini inflation index if you will. It’s that’s come through with it and, that remains to be seen how that’s gonna play out but, you know, it’s a if you go into it with your eyes wide open and you got a fair valuation I think it’s a fantastic business especially if you take in you know if I was gonna give any offer you know any advice you know what little I know about it but the advice of anytime I’ve gone in with a with a when regardless of the environment And and I put these these kinds of technologies into everything from massage chairs at airports to US Navy warships. And, it’s when you’re going through a change, when there’s a there’s an opportunity to change, when ownership of a laundromat is changing when you’re retooling that’s a change when even if you just put a new coat of paint new lights on or whatever you know that’s you have an opportunity to to introduce another change to it and that’s when I would bring in an alternative payment system to reduce my reliability on cash and the attractiveness of the cash for the environment. Because you you you exactly said it earlier. There’s, when people think about laundromats, if they think they’re, you know, they think about them just being the way that that, you know, we have this mental image of them. And it’s it’s not really true anymore.

Stacey Cooper [00:47:21]:
There’s been a major renaissance in them. And, you know, some and and a lot of them that we go through are just beautiful where they and and they take a lot of due care of their environment and every tendency. But it’s yeah. I spoke to an owner not so long ago, and and he had retooled, and changed out the lighting. It was really beautiful. These LED lights, these cool shapes and everything. You know, did the ceiling black and just looked like a totally different environment. And, he didn’t even replace all the machines.

Stacey Cooper [00:47:52]:
Some of the machines, he just really cleaned them up, bumped and moved them around a little bit. Took the big chassis up front kinda, you know, the the the more classic when, you know, the more modern edition of what we should do with a a long minute space. And, he was just all brand new. Right? And, and he just he he he took orders out. He totally eliminated coins. And, you know, I asked him, sir, are you worried about the effect? And he said, I know I’m gonna lose I and he said, 8%. I’m gonna lose 8% of my customers. I’m a lose 8% for the next sixty, ninety days.

Stacey Cooper [00:48:33]:
He said, but they’re the sixty you know, they’re the 80% of my customers that I should lose. They’re the most problematic. They’re the they they do the had the most wear and tear on my machines. They are the ones who complain who harassed my attendant the most. They’re the ones who destroy the bathroom, whatever. So I don’t, you know, when I really step back and I said, what am I losing? Yeah. I’m gonna lose that 8% for for a short period of time but I’ll attract a higher caliber customer somebody who would who drives by and sees the way it looks now and they see the cars in the parking lot now and they’ll bring their all their comforters you know, back to me because now they can see the 80 pound machine up front, you know, and and it’ll hit it’ll go in their mind. And I have the Visa and Mastercard and everything right on my door.

Stacey Cooper [00:49:19]:
I’m like, oh, okay. I can go in here. It’s clean. And I can throw all of my comforters in in in in eighty minutes be out of there, you know, all the way through. So, yeah, he saw the opportunity. And it that I guess that’s the key word that I would go back to if I was gonna just take take to anybody ask me my opinion on this. If you have an opportunity whether it’s a retool or a new ownership a little bit of a spin up whatever take the opportunity to introduce the a payment technology into it Because typically, the sales lift that you get after the first sixty to ninety days from from a payment technology, it will more than make up for what the payment technology cost you. You know? I’ve, you know, I’ve seen it time and time again.

Stacey Cooper [00:50:13]:
The sales lift is is just not taken into account nearly as much as it should be. Now if you’ve got an existing payment system and you’re just changing it to a different type, you won’t see the same kind of the same delta. But, you know, if you’re going from, like, a pure stored value card or small card or something, but you and then you allow credit debit at the machines, you can make that kind of that leap. Then the the peak to peak delta from, you know, will be it’ll be there. You’ll get more. But if you go from pure cash to allowing, you know, for a payment option, that’s the most convenient. The the delta is much greater. You’re gonna get the most pop out of it.

Stacey Cooper [00:50:54]:
So, anyway, I’m I feel like I’ve I’ve been speaking a lot during that particular segment. So what do you think?

Jordan Berry [00:51:01]:
No. That no. I think that I think that’s great. And I, you know, I think that just kind of addresses the fear of a lot of people of, like, making that transition right of, you know, adding that and that payment system in in a framework to sort of think about it, a way to to, you know, address it. And, you know, I think that there’s a lot of truth in being selective on who we want our customers to be and being okay with letting the wrong people go somewhere else. Right? And so having, you know, having that perspective on, okay, if I’m gonna add a payment system, I’m gonna lose a certain amount of customers, at least temporarily. And I would argue that a lot of times they come back even, whether you want them to or not. You know, the you know, it’s it’s sort of the it kinda goes back to, like, the whole Pareto principle, right? The eighty twenty rule, which is, you know, 80% of your problems are coming from 20% of your people.

Jordan Berry [00:52:08]:
And in fact, probably it’s even more than that. Right? It’s like 90% of your problems coming from 10% of your people or even less. Right? Like, and, you know, it’s does it listen, the pros are just going to outweigh the cons and you don’t have to necessarily get rid of your coins you know, to add that digital payment system. You know, and that’s the beauty of it, right? You can run the business how you want to run it and set it up for the business you want to have and the life you want to live. And and that’s in the customers that you have. And, and that’s what’s great about it. Right? And I like that about KiaSoft is you have all those options. Now you mentioned a couple of different things that I want to circle back to and touch on because I think they’re interesting.

Jordan Berry [00:52:53]:
And I think that, your perspective on them and we we sort of, collaborated a little bit in these two issues, you know, before we hit record. And these two things kinda came up and I’m so I’m kinda curious about it. There’s a, on the distributor side, there’s this sort of consolidation happening, in distribution. And I’m I’m curious on your perspective on that and if there’s any sort of implications or impact on the market from that consolidation that you’re seeing, from your end of things.

Stacey Cooper [00:53:31]:
Well, it’s a good question. You’re you know, we’ve we’ve observed you know look the beginnings of consolidation in the ownership market there’s probably more multi store owners than there ever have been. And you know for the first probably for the first time in years know, we’ve actually gone up by the average number of stores that, somebody has by a whole number. You know, let’s say it’s like instead of 1.05 now it’s it’s 2.1 or something. And so the consolidation there has had, you know, some you know, we don’t feel the effects of that that much because it’s on the distribution side. Where we see, you know, we kinda firsthand some of the things that we have to adjust to on our is that consolidation of the distribution line. And you know and it’s going it’s going two different ways there’s really two ways that distributors are consolidating right now one is through the OEM side You know, like, you know, an actual equipment manufacturer will purchase the distributor, outright. And, and then, you know, and there’s there’s a million reasons for them for them to do those kinds of things.

Stacey Cooper [00:54:50]:
And, you know it’s really up between it’s up to them to you know kind of explain that and manage that with their other customers that surround them geographically. Right? There’s got to be some market considerations that come into those plays. Because a distributor owned sorry an OEM owned distributor I think has distinct pricing advantages to, you know, to a regular distributor, that they can. So I’m sure that they’re being very respectful of that. You know? So but for us, it means that it’s that when they just when an OEM buys a distributor and as they get more and more, you know, become bigger, you know, it has some direct implications for us based on our ability, to, you know, like, look at what we’re dealing with. You know? I mean, this this is there’s 300 distributors in The United States. And, you know, when I when when our sales team and I are you know, we’re developing relationship with them. We gotta do it 300 times.

Stacey Cooper [00:55:54]:
You know? Ten years from now, are we gonna do it 200 times? And, you know, in a hunt, you know, 50 of those distributors, you know, control 20 branches each, you know, or something like that. And and and there’s a different scale that comes into that you know there’s the volume purchasing power there is the the you know the consolidation and the and the standardization of what kind of technologies that they promote You know so there can be some focus of their effort and their intent around that that we will you know have to parallel and support them in. And, you know, we’re, like, we’re always gonna have the distributors that are, you know, whoever comes in their door and says, I wanna buy they may have five labels, and they may represent six or seven different payment options or whatever. And and they just like, well, you just it’s a it’s a big menu up on the board. You pick whatever you want. We’ll do whatever you want. Whereas I think if they’re going to these larger distributors that are are not larger, but the the more unified ones that are OEM controlled and are, are spread across larger geographic areas or or in the second case, private equity control. I mean, not private equity, but publicly acquired.

Stacey Cooper [00:57:20]:
There’s a big one out there that we all know that, you know, you don’t think about them. But when they’ve acquired as many distributors as they have and they made a big announcement just this week. Right? Or is it last week? Last week. They, you know, that they represent an an incredible incredibly large group and opportunity within that. So anybody who supplies them supplies our organization, you know for they they they’re they’re a very high value target and in that what that means it for us that means I think we have a much better opportunity you know, to work with them because of how we grew up. You know, we grew up working with the the, you know, somebody that has, you know, 600,000 machines that they have to support over 40 branches or 1,100,000 machines or something like that. Hey, at last count we probably have about a we have over a million payment devices that are out and the vast majority of those are in the laundry space in you know, in Canada. The United States is our biggest market.

Stacey Cooper [00:58:37]:
Canada is second. I think Mexico is our third. We operate laundry in about 22 countries right now. You know, we have offices in Seoul, South Korea, Vietnam, China. We opened up an office in Bulgaria or sorry, Romania, to get into the European market side of things. So, even we as those distributors, those corporate owned distributors and large ones, as they get more unified and more streamlined in how they deploy their services, that’s how we were trained. We were trained for people who operate vast numbers of machines across multiple locations and, you know, to to deliver a unification of service and value that they can view from a corporate level down across massive distribution layers and or, you know, many layers down the organization. So, for us, we view it as a good thing, in a lot of ways because it it does simplify our message.

Stacey Cooper [00:59:45]:
And it it it does, you know, kind of, clarify who, you know, we need to, you know, who who we’re dealing with at that level and we can achieve a much greater scale of of of delivery with that. With with one agreement, you know, with one agreement, we could, you know, I I we could just kinda ink the deal that would be, oh, this product, you know, I don’t have to worry. And, like, I had a budget of x to sell this much of this product in 2025, let’s say. I could ink one deal now with one of those larger groups that takes care of that product for the year. Very very valuable to to us as an organization. What it means to the other distributors is maybe just like anything when it comes to, people who shop. You know, when people are shopping around and they want they want to find the product that they want, I think it also can represent an opportunity to the independent industry that, you know, they and this actually could factor in. I’m just thinking of this, but it actually could factor in, to the typical store owner, you know, or or somebody that I I think of as the typical store owner because they’re largely independent.

Stacey Cooper [01:01:03]:
They like to be independent. They’re business for themselves. They wanna stay that way. Maybe, you know, going to the, you know, the independent distributors is an attractive thing for them, you know, because they feel like they can have a much more personal relationship with them. I don’t know. I mean, it’s I the consolidation will have downstream effects. I think it’ll put pricing pressure on the ones that are are not part of larger groups. It may take a while to manifest that.

Stacey Cooper [01:01:34]:
But for you know, I think it it’s still it’s it’s in what you make it. It’s what you make of it. And, you know, you got everybody’s gonna have to pay attention. And, and if they just answer the call in in the way that it comes in, then we can still, you know, it’s not like we value one over the over the other. We just have to approach them in a slight in in different ways. And I think that the independents will can can really capitalize on that identity as being an independent and being what they are. But, no. I think I don’t think it’s gonna stop.

Stacey Cooper [01:02:14]:
I mean, you know, I think it’s gonna continue. And for distributor for OEMs that haven’t gotten into it as much, I think they’re going to. You know, some are much more or, you know, you know, more, willing to do this. Relactive. I think the others are gonna have to follow suit. I mean, it’s like an arms race, and you never really, you know, you never you never had just one player that takes off and does all of it. Right? You know, other people are gonna get involved. So I don’t know.

Stacey Cooper [01:02:42]:
But but, I mean, do you what do you think?

Jordan Berry [01:02:45]:
Yeah. No. I mean, I think it’s just very, very interesting to kind of watch all this play out. And, you know, the the big the big questions for me, like, obviously, I’m not selling things through distributors, so I’m not, you know, me and probably most lawnmower owners aren’t going to see that necessarily that benefit from that you guys would see from this consolidation of distributors. I you know, one thing I’ve always thought is, and I still think is that whoever is able to. Whoever is able to start selling these things online, and utilizing the the distributor network for install or service, techs or parts, that kind of thing, I I think is gonna win the actual arms race. So I’m it’s interesting to me to to see this, buy up of distributors, but I also think it’s, it’s a fading business model just in other industries. And I think we’ve seen it fade in a lot of industries and I think that it will eventually fade in this industry.

Jordan Berry [01:04:02]:
Because so much of what we can do and buy and what we have access to online for everything else, is it’s there and it’s available. Like I’ve I’ve literally purchased houses or I should say a house. I’ve literally purchased a house, never seeing it online. And, you know, and I’ve done and you can do the same thing with cars and, you know, Tesla’s model where you can customize a car. And, I don’t think that there’s a I don’t I don’t think that the distributor model necessarily completely vanishes, but I think there’s a big evolution coming, that will come one way or another. And that model will be interesting. I think whoever kind of figures that out first is I think there’s a lot of money to be had there.

Stacey Cooper [01:04:56]:
Yeah. It’s a very good take. I mean, it’s very I I appreciate that take very much. You’re you’re more trusting than me to buy a house online. I was like, I just don’t think I can do that. I understand the Tesla model. And and, you know, that was and it’s something that we we’ve looked at this, of course, you know, we you know, is any business you gotta examine your your channel management and and how do you approach this. And, from the laundromat perspective, it’s it is complicated.

Stacey Cooper [01:05:34]:
It’s and and believe me, when I when I first came over to this side of business, from multi housing, I was like, well, laundry’s laundry, you know? Surely, it can’t be that much different. And, of course, it is. It’s it’s so different in in the this in small ways. And but there’s so many small ways that they add up to, you know, you really have to be have a lot of consultative expertise. I feel like that you need somebody walking, especially if you’re a new investor. The walk to to really understand what you’re getting into. And that’s where your distributor can and the distributor that they have in the area, I think, can shine is their ability to to highlight and and guide and point out the the unforeseen and the the things that aren’t that that they may not think about. Surely, think about the fact that I know I like this type of machine.

Stacey Cooper [01:06:30]:
I like that. You know? I like the way it looks. I like the way it operates. Sounds like a great message. I may like this payment system. You know? I learned about this payment system from somebody else, and they said it’s great. So those are the two things I want. And then it’s like, I get it, but, you know, you still have to have the site.

Stacey Cooper [01:06:47]:
You have to have your lease worked out. You have to have your permit. You have to have the architect cleared. Oh, you know, all this stuff. Who’s the who are you gonna hire to do these things? And so for a full service distributor, they have the ability to to really bring on almost like a professional services. You know? We all know what Salesforce is. Right? You know? You know, Salesforce is this great tool, and I’m gonna get Salesforce. And I’m gonna get it to automate my, you know, whatever, my ERP flow or my, you know, configure price quote or whatever it is.

Stacey Cooper [01:07:17]:
But then he’s like, okay. I can buy it, but then I have to hire somebody to integrate it and train me and customize it to what I think because it’s really a complicated software tool. Once you get it in and it’s running and it’s humming and tuned, it can change your life. Absolutely. And a lot of mat, I think, is similar in some ways. It that is where our distributors and our provide the most value they can is through that process. And, like I said, we looked at some of this and and and and to think about what it would how would it be? What would it be like? And, you know, one of the things that kind of got us, you know, helped me realize that we had to work our message for this market and and the way that we present ourselves to to our end customers is because we had so many options. You know, we had so many payment devices and we had so many different ways to pay within those devices and different things you could turn on or turn off or have that if you just walked into you know like call it the KiaSoft showroom if you will and said and we’re looking and you’re like well what can I do in my laundromat? And I just waved my hand and said, all of it.

Stacey Cooper [01:08:35]:
Now what? You know? It’s we have to be able to take considerable time with some of our our our, you know, in lawn and med owners sometimes and our distributors sales teams to help them fully understand what the options are and what what’s best practices in this particular environment versus, you know, versus another environment because we’re not we’re not so omnidimensional that or are unidimensional that we can say, alright. If you’re coming to us, we know you want a laundry card system. And we have this kiosk, and we have this laundry card reader device, and that’s what we do. I’m gonna note note no no no disparity to to those that do. There’s really fantastic ones out there. But that’s what they do. And if you wanna do something else well, I’m really interested in, you know, the you know, another style. You know? I’m I’m interested in integrating my clones directly in the environment.

Stacey Cooper [01:09:36]:
Well, I can’t do that. You know? You have to go to somebody else. Your distributor, if they can help you through that decision and point you on the right road, then they’re just adding to the value chain. And, you know, buying it online, you know, that’s that’s where that’s the utopia. Right? I mean, for any supplier, any any company, they wanna sell direct. Sure. I mean, I get it. A lot of people do that.

Stacey Cooper [01:10:03]:
We’re just not we’re not sure how that ultimately benefits everyone, that it could that it could be, that that’s involved in this. And, and so for us, you know, we’re focusing on the distribution network. Now we want those tools that you’re describing. We’ve been developing tools like that to help distributors, you know, order faster and get the the right options based on what their customer’s interested in, kinda guiding them through the process. But, I I’ve gone through the Tesla, you know, the kind of the shop, the the online shop for Tesla. And I think they have more models now. When I did, I think they have three models of cars, maybe six colors, three wheels, and the self drive option. So you really answer, like, five questions.

Stacey Cooper [01:10:49]:
And then it’s the financing, stuff like that. But how many questions would you think you’d have to answer for a loaner? You

Jordan Berry [01:10:57]:
know? Yeah. A a lot. But, however, I mean, I I I agree with, like, everything that you’re saying. But you said one key word in there and it’s two letter word. And it was if if you have a good distributor that is is a full service that’s helping you out. And there are some good ones out there. There are some.

Stacey Cooper [01:11:15]:
Absolutely.

Jordan Berry [01:11:15]:
I think the vast majority of them are not good. And I hear this day in and day. I talk to laundromat owners every single day. Multiple. I have six calls today with laundromat owners. And one of the biggest complaints I get over and over and over is my distributor is not doing anything for me. What it what is I mean, it’s why my consulting business, I have to continue to raise my prices. I’m not the only one because there is so much demand for people to help them out because they’re not getting that support from those distributors.

Jordan Berry [01:11:49]:
And now, I mean, just like with what we’re talking about with payment systems, there are so many tools available to us to help us figure out how much money a potential location is gonna have, what kind of equipment mix, we need. Do we need soft mounts or hard mounts, all the different options that are available, what payment systems gonna there’s so many tools. I think Placer AI, like Placer AI has changed the game for laundromats. I can know pretty closely how much any laundromat is making. If I have Placer AI and I know how many machines they have and what they charge, I can know about how much money is coming in. Right? And anybody can do that. Right? And so these the there’s you’re right. There are some really great distributors out there.

Jordan Berry [01:12:34]:
I have spoken at some of their distributors shows. I was just in Spokane at Kazettos. They have a great team out there. They’re doing awesome stuff in Spokane, Washington. Right. But there’s so many distributors where their only value add is selling you the equipment and they’re not doing all those things that you outline. And I, I, I hear exactly what you’re saying and I don’t think that that role is going away, that who’s going to help people figure out, you know, what machine makes it like all the different questions that you were outlining. That role is not going away.

Jordan Berry [01:13:12]:
I just don’t think the distributor model because listen, if I’m in if I’m in Southern California and I don’t have a distributor like the one that you’re describing in there, guess what? I’m out of luck because they’re territory models. And now there’s one, you know, in Ventura County, but I’m in LA County and I can’t use the one in Ventura County who’s super good. Who’s gonna go above me on. Who’s gonna help me do all the things that you say. And they can’t help me and make their living because they’re based on their territory. And so Okay. I I just I don’t think the role’s going away. I think you’re right.

Jordan Berry [01:13:46]:
All the things you say, I don’t disagree with. But I think the model is gonna go. It’s gonna die. Like, I don’t think that there’s, I have no doubts about that. What it looks like exactly. I’m not sure yet, but I think whoever figures it out, first is gonna make a killing because I think that there’s a lot more support that you can do, online now than ever before, obviously.

Stacey Cooper [01:14:13]:
It is very true.

Jordan Berry [01:14:15]:
So I I I don’t know. It’s interesting and I could totally be wrong and you could totally be right. And the distribution model is not going anywhere. And I just don’t know. But I I love having this discussion. I appreciate you being willing to, like, indulge my, my little fantasies over here and give your perspective. Cause I, I think that these are the conversations that help us all, you know, navigate these changing times because stuff is changing so fast faster than ever has in this industry. And it’s interesting to have these discussions to me to to see how things are gonna kinda play out.

Stacey Cooper [01:14:52]:
It is. Yeah. It is. I, and and I I it’s I’m not I’m not disagreeing with you about that there are greater among equals of distributors. I mean, we all, you know, we’ve all had a just, you know, distributed at what didn’t quite handle something the way that we would have wanted to. One of the ways that we I don’t wanna say it can can deal with something like that is that, because KiaSoft doesn’t actually have exclusivities. If, you know, if you’re if you’re if your distributor’s a good steward and, and and they’re a good customer and and we’re good customers of their I mean, we’re good vendors, suppliers. You know, we have to hold up our end of it.

Stacey Cooper [01:15:40]:
Then there can be there could be five in a particular city or geographic area. And the advantage to that is that, if if a distributor or if a customer is unhappy with the distributor, it’s not always the distributor. Well, they’re just unhappy, but they wanna continue using our our payment systems. We can refer them to somebody else, that that may have a better rapport with them or a better touch. So, you know, we did we don’t just we don’t agree with the the that kind of exclusionary geofencing model that a lot of distributors do or, sorry, OEMs, have have have done, you know, kind of, you know, whatever promoted and enforced over the years. We don’t agree with that. And, I think that that that may help us, you know, kind of navigate that, a little bit longer for people who are interested in Kiasoft but don’t particularly like the experience they have with somebody else. So, yeah, it it having it go away, who knows? I mean, you could be right and I could be wrong.

Stacey Cooper [01:16:55]:
The truth’s probably in the middle somewhere. But I think the consolidation that we’re seeing in it is part of that, I don’t know what to call it just just trend but yeah it’s probably a better word than any. It’s it’s it’s just the trend. As they become more unified and as there’s more consolidation, you know, they’re they might they might become more, unified in their their the model of their service delivery and the standards that they delivered upon. So I think that’s what we all hope for in those cases is that, you know, when you shop on Amazon, you know, you just, you know, just learn to trust the brand. Right? I mean, I I’m old enough that I remember when Amazon just sold books.

Jordan Berry [01:17:45]:
That’s right. Yeah. Me too.

Stacey Cooper [01:17:46]:
As they introduced more and more products and services, you know, I’m not I’m I’m rarely gonna be the first guy through the wall on something, that’s usually not me. I’m really more conservative on those kinds of things. But, yeah. But it has gotten to a point where, it is just as easy for me to to go, as you said, to the direct model. Now Amazon’s really a dis they are really a distributor, but Mhmm. You know, they’ve crossed in that that realm of kind of their own country at this point. But, you know, you just everything that I’m willing to check with them first and just just handle everything I can directly from that that shop model online because because of the ease, because of the ubiquity, because of the speed of delivery. So, you know, we’re we are aiming to be that type of supplier for our distributors so that it’s not like they go to this particular supplier to get a payment system for credit card and that one for mobile and this one for laundry card and I need coin boxes and I need coin drops and I need a changer and I need carts and I need we do intend and are rapidly getting to the point where we are we can all of those answers, we can supply them direct, and we can be a one stop.

Stacey Cooper [01:19:16]:
But, you know, our but our model is let’s go let’s work with the people that we can trust. And, and also that, you know, there there’s a, you know, cost of acquisition to the you know, for the customer side. And there are a lot of those customers out there. There’s 30,000 of them. Right? And and they change. How many what do you have a I mean, I I wanna say it’s, like, 15%, but I how many do you think change hands every year? The ownership of the owner?

Jordan Berry [01:19:43]:
Oh, less over the last three or four years than before. So I I mean, I would

Stacey Cooper [01:19:51]:
there was I

Jordan Berry [01:19:52]:
would say probably in that 10% range if I had to guess, but it would just be a guess. But but I know that less have been changing hands recently than before.

Stacey Cooper [01:20:03]:
It has slowed. I agree. It has slowed down. I mean, I went through this frenzy for a while and then Yeah. Yeah. I don’t you know, and I I’ve not been in it long enough to know if it’s a cyclical thing. You know, like, every three years, there’s this, like, you know, this wave of them that come through. But, yeah, as those people are changing hands and and distributors are holding these events, you know, when they and they’re and we’re in event season.

Stacey Cooper [01:20:27]:
I mean, I I think we have 30 or 40 of them that were attending this this just, like, six, eight weeks. But that gives us the opportunity. You know, the distributors are the ones who are putting those those events on. They’re cultivating and bringing the people their their potential owners, you know, their you know, the people are looking to build or buy into the mix and introducing them to the different suppliers. So, I mean, the time that it takes to put those events on into, you know, kind of people in, that’s a, you know, that’s a part that is, you know, it’s a function that, you know, somebody that would that they need to appreciate the amount of effort and and and, you know, and blood and treasure that goes in to bring those people in. It’s a long sales cycle, but, you know, we that’s where we get introduced to a tremendous number of customers, you know, end customers of of the distributors so that we get to influence them and and help them pick us for their, for their payment system. You know, usually if they’re at that event they’ve settled on their their chassis, you know, type. But, you know, there’s five other guys in the room with, you know, one of us that are saying pick me.

Stacey Cooper [01:21:44]:
You know? And this is why you should pick me. And, if we had to go track all those people down individually, that would be, you know, there there would be take up it would be a very, very much an expensive time vampire that, that that we are appreciative of the distributor network to bring to us. So, there’s it it’s a nuanced, you know, situation. But I don’t think it’s going anywhere for a while. You know? That’s me.

Jordan Berry [01:22:13]:
Yeah. I don’t think it’s going anywhere for a while either. I I agree with that too. Alright. I got I’ve got two more questions for you if you got time for two questions.

Stacey Cooper [01:22:24]:
Yeah. All right.

Jordan Berry [01:22:24]:
So the first one is, I mean, listen, you you’ve got this very unique perspective of seeing lots of different laundromats, lots of different things that work, lots of things that don’t work. So for somebody looking to buy their very first laundromat, aside from immediately day one putting in KiaSoft into their, laundromat, what’s your what’s your number one piece of advice for somebody who’s wanting to get into this industry and get into this business?

Stacey Cooper [01:22:55]:
Number one for me is advice I have for aside from putting in KiaSoft is he would think about that a little bit. So, I would I would put more focus into, the into the the marketing side of it. And and and, look, this is just my opinion. I don’t have a lot to base this on. But, you know, I don’t ever recall in, you know, getting some sort of flyer or an an email or anything that said, hey. We’re opening it up. There’s a new laundromat opening up, and and and here’s have you ever considered what we could do for you? Like, hey. We have you know, we can like I was saying earlier, we can wash all your comforters at once, you know, and we could you could wash every comforter and and dry it in eighty minutes or whatever your time is.

Stacey Cooper [01:23:58]:
You’ll come up with something like that. It’s it’s you know, it was a way a way of reaching out to people in your community and trying to entice them for a reason to come see you. And, you know, provide them with pictures of his social media outreach, something like that. Anything that you can do to get your name out there because I don’t know where it like, where where you’re at, how many water mats are near you. I live in a medium sized city, and, we’re, you know, on on kind of the excerpts. I’m not in the downtown area. We’re a little bit in the excerpts, but I there’s four or five laundromats within two miles. And I couldn’t tell you what their names are.

Stacey Cooper [01:24:43]:
It did you say coin laundry? You know there’s one that puts the brand of the machines on the front you know like you know you drive by and it just says you know that you know this this OEM coin laundry but I go by the others it just says coin laundry. Now I happen to know that I think all of them are owned by the same guy the same guy. They were in the same outfit. You know they’re you use a multi store. I think you have eight or nine within the area. Most of them are concentrated on my side of the city. But I have no idea about the brand. I don’t know what kind of services they offer.

Stacey Cooper [01:25:25]:
You know that immediately evokes what I have you know what are the image that you were talking about that we all have in our minds about coin laundry and so why would I want to go to that one you know why would I want to go see a yet another coin laundry because it’s I’m gonna assume if it just says coin laundry it’s just like everybody’s. So I would really work on my brand, and I would work on some sort of differentiator. And we did a laundromat in Toronto, a few months ago. And it it was typical. It was a small footprint. I think they referred to as bowling alley Mhmm. Where, you know, the washers are on one side, the dryers are on the other. Right?

Jordan Berry [01:26:08]:
Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [01:26:09]:
But they really put a lot into the decor of that laundromat, you know, making it look really bright inside, and they had a lot of plants and bright colors and really cool stuff. This guy yeah. He even wrapped some of his machines. So they were in, like, cool colors and stuff. I don’t know how long that will last, by the way. I you said that, but, we’ll see. But he put the effort Uh-huh. Now the but the real key that he did was he actually reduced the number of machines.

Stacey Cooper [01:26:41]:
He got rid of some of the smaller he got rid of all these top loaders and his smaller, like, 20 pounders and stuff. He got rid of those. And he just kept, like, thirties 30 and higher on the washers. Most of his washers were on, like, 40 pounders, something like that. And all of his dryers were 30 or 40 or 45 pound stacks. But he put in the back because it’s a really urban area. He put in the back of it in the space that he took all of the front loaders off of or the top loaders off of in the small chassis. He put three dog wash stations.

Stacey Cooper [01:27:12]:
You know those big like trough you know spray nozzle and many dog wash stations and he incorporated our payment devices onto those and but that was what he really keyed off of like wash your you know wash your sheets and wash your dog bed and your dog here at my laundromat and he really focused on that side and people who were coming in while it was still under construction people were walking in and wanting with their dogs they’re like are you open yet he was like no I’m not you were gonna open next week or whatever I mean it was it was just something very different and I don’t know if he’s making money off those dog wash stations, but I don’t know. Do you have a dog? Do you? Yeah. Okay. Right. And I you you I think it’s a law now. They passed a law and they didn’t tell anybody. Everybody under the age of 40 has to have at least one dog. You know, but my all my kids have dogs.

Stacey Cooper [01:28:11]:
You know, we we don’t anymore. Once the kids were out and last dog was gone, we’re like, no more dogs. No more dogs.

Jordan Berry [01:28:17]:
I know.

Stacey Cooper [01:28:18]:
No more animals. But it’s it’s a need that this generation has or that younger people have. If you wanna try younger people, do your laundromat. Make it dog friendly. Oh, you know, have dog wash stations, whatever. Do something different for your brand to differentiate you from the other five laundromats that are in two miles. That I mean and I know that’s easier said than done, but I would in a heartbeat that I would spend far more money on that than I than I would think that anybody or most people put their, put think about it. You know, I mean, trip marketing.

Stacey Cooper [01:29:00]:
And hopefully, your distributor is telling you you need a marketing budget, but, you know, really go after that.

Jordan Berry [01:29:06]:
Yeah. You know, I I actually actually think that’s really great advice. I, you know, I think, you know, we’re watching, like, Tide Laundry come in. There’s a Kathy Ireland laundry. Trusting brand. Is gonna be huge going forward here. And those unbranded laundromats, I think, are gonna struggle, going forward. If you’re not investing in your brand, you’re gonna you’re gonna show us.

Jordan Berry [01:29:33]:
I actually think that’s really great advice. So

Stacey Cooper [01:29:36]:
Yeah. Appreciate it. It’s like a coffee shop. You know, that that and if you especially if you’re a multi store owner. You’re a multi store owner, and you’ve got a loyalty program and, you know, look. If you’re if your payments if you’re considering a payment system, you’ve gotta have a payment system with loyalty programs. And, you you know, you I would talk about the fact that you’ve got these locations and that your, you know, your loyalty program works across all of them and you got these unified you know, unified look, feel, service, logo for each brand. Right? So having that conform uniformity of of payment experience and and and and machine types and everything else, Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [01:30:20]:
Even if your machines are the same type, and there’s a lot of that. Right? You could have multiple laundromats, and one could be this brand or another brand. Or you could have the first laundromat I ever ever went into in this role had seven different brands of machines. All brands. Somebody referred to it like it’s a Frankenmatt or something. Uh-huh. It would be just over the years been they put some Maytags. They put some Dexters.

Stacey Cooper [01:30:42]:
They put some Speed Clean. They put some old Primus. They put they had, don’t I think a a newer machine in there. I mean, it’s just it was everything in the world. I was like, I don’t think I don’t think I wanna do this. Yeah. Yeah. Like, from a interface perspective, technical is like, this is gonna be a real challenge.

Stacey Cooper [01:30:58]:
But, A nightmare. Yeah. I agree. There’s the I I saw the Kathy Ireland. Was it during the Super Bowl or no? Maybe when the Super Bowl?

Jordan Berry [01:31:06]:
I think so.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:07]:
There was some I saw this

Jordan Berry [01:31:09]:
ad Something. Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:10]:
She maybe with social media. That was like, I couldn’t I was surprised that, you know, that, you know, I remember Kathy Ireland, you know, and, you know, a lot of young people don’t. But it’s like, what what is she doing? It’s is she has her own wash, dry, full service or something like that? Or

Jordan Berry [01:31:27]:
Yeah. Well, it’s a franchise. Agent. Franchise for wash, dry, fold. Yeah. Yeah.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:32]:
Those are

Jordan Berry [01:31:33]:
They they say they can triple your business in six months.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:36]:
That’s what they say.

Jordan Berry [01:31:37]:
So

Stacey Cooper [01:31:39]:
at what margin? You know? I

Jordan Berry [01:31:42]:
no. I don’t know.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:42]:
I mean Really? I mean, having a great having an increase in volume, but if it’s at a terrible margin, maybe that’s not it’s not a great idea.

Jordan Berry [01:31:50]:
Yeah. I don’t know a lot of details, but it’s been in the news a little bit.

Stacey Cooper [01:31:53]:
So,

Jordan Berry [01:31:54]:
you know, something to keep an eye on. Like, I mean, the point though is that there’s there’s some big name brands coming into this business. I mean, we talked about private equity coming into into this business. There’s big name brands. You know, one of my one of my critiques of franchises in this industry has been there’s not really any big brands that are going to draw people, you know, and saying this with a lot of these guys are my friends. Like I know that a lot of the people who are building these franchises, but they, at this point in time, at least there’s no, there’s no McDonald’s of laundry, right? Yes. Except now that Tide Tide does have that brand draw where people will drive by laundromats to go to a Tide Laundromat. Right.

Jordan Berry [01:32:38]:
So we have got to up our game, here when it comes to our branding, but also just in general, our service offerings, our customer service payment options that we have. We have got to up our games as an independent owner. And, and we take all that a lot more seriously.

Stacey Cooper [01:32:55]:
And it’s it’s that trust. Yeah. You know, people trust. Yeah. They know what

Jordan Berry [01:32:59]:
they expect

Stacey Cooper [01:32:59]:
for the well, I don’t I wouldn’t know exactly what to expect from a Tide Laundromat except that it would have a lot of orange and yellow in it and stuff like that. But and it would smell like Tide, I guess. But, you know, other than that, it’s just a name I know. And, yeah, if there’s if there’s a if there’s if I’m gonna make that decision on something that I’m and and I think you said this I know you said this at the beginning of our discussion, which was, you know, it it’s something that people don’t necessarily enjoy. Right? You know, people nobody really likes to do laundry. It’s not like on the list of top 10 things I wanna do. You know? But if I’m if I’m going in the pace for this and I’ve got to, everybody has to do it. If I can go a quarter mile one direction or another and I can go to one that just says going laundry and that I’ve never heard of before and one that says tied and it’s well lit and everything else, I’m probably gonna go to the time.

Stacey Cooper [01:33:56]:
I’m gonna pay more Yeah. But I’m gonna I’m gonna do it because I trust it.

Jordan Berry [01:34:01]:
Yep. Yep. Yep. Awesome.

Stacey Cooper [01:34:05]:
Awesome. Alright. The the last Yeah. Last

Jordan Berry [01:34:07]:
question I have for you is, hey. People wanna connect with you or learn more about KiaSoft. What where should we send them? Where’s the best place for them to go to connect with you or learn more about KiaSoft for their launch?

Stacey Cooper [01:34:22]:
So I would say to the best place to go to connect with us directly is just sales@KiaSoft.com. And, that that’ll get to the team that does, you know, the lead qualification and, assigns it to work with one of our artists you know, one of our distributors and one of our sales representatives as as a as our consultative approach to it. And our sales representatives, and I, we we frequently every day, we’re talking to to our our store owners, along with the distributor as well because, you know, we don’t we don’t push all of it off onto the distributor and say, you handle it. You do this. I mean, we will help. We will coach. We will talk to them. We have no problem setting up.

Stacey Cooper [01:35:08]:
Because there’s a lot of questions that come down the pipe. I mean, yeah, what are my options? What are my op what are my expected operating expenses? You know, that kind of stuff. So, you know, our our team will work with them directly. Sales at KiaSoft.com gets you into the front part of the funnel. And another way is just KiaSoft.com. It’s ki0s0ft.com. And that’ll, provide a lot of information about the different products we have, services, the different, you know, different vertical markets that we go after, and there could be some overlap. You know, like I was saying earlier about the car wash side, you know, there’s quite a few that I that get into the water management business that also have car wash or vice versa.

Stacey Cooper [01:35:50]:
They have car washes, and they do the water management business. And, you know, we have the exact same payment reader that can go on all of it. You know? And you can apply it to every place that you have business on and connect it to the same back end. So those are two best ways to reach reach out to to us. I think you’ll have my I don’t know what’s the right word. Socials. You know what? My my my my LinkedIn Yeah. We’ll have all that.

Stacey Cooper [01:36:13]:
Get to us. But I I Yeah. And our team will naturally get you the links for that you can supply to your listeners for, all of our, all our different media channels to get into us on that. I think we have, we have LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I I don’t think I’m leaving any of them out, but we’ll make sure you have those as well. But, yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:36:35]:
Yeah. We’ll make sure those are all in the show notes. Or if you’re on YouTube, they’ll be down below. Especially

Stacey Cooper [01:36:39]:
again, Justin.

Jordan Berry [01:36:39]:
In the description, Stacy, this has been awesome. Truly full of pearls of wisdom you delivered, just like we all expected. You know, but so much, so much good stuff. Thank you so much for just taking the time to share all this wisdom that you’ve learned and your perspective on this industry, all that is super valuable for us owners to hear. And as we’re thinking about our businesses and how to best serve our customers and make payments frictionless, all those things. So appreciate that. So make sure you check out KiaSoft.comsales at KiaSoft.com, if you wanna get in contact. Stacy, thank you again for

Stacey Cooper [01:37:18]:
coming on. I appreciate all of your time and attention in on this, giving us the opportunity to to share our perspectives. We we really appreciate.

Jordan Berry [01:37:27]:
Yep. No problem. And, anytime. And, hey, maybe we’ll do some more stuff together.

Stacey Cooper [01:37:31]:
We’ll do a great job. Like that. Thanks. Alright.

Jordan Berry [01:37:34]:
Appreciate it. Alright. Hope you loved that episode and that interview with Stacy. So much good stuff in there. And listen, we’re almost to that point where we need to stop talking about why you should have a payment system because we should all just have payment systems. But that’s just the beginning. Right? Now we need to decide what are we going to utilize in our stores, and most importantly, how are we gonna utilize them to not only make it easier for us to manage our stores, but also to serve our customers better. I hear a lot of, naysayers about digital payment systems, cards, apps, whatever, saying, oh, it’s good for owners, but not for customers.

Jordan Berry [01:38:12]:
I don’t believe that that’s true. And, I wanna help all of us utilize these payment systems better in our stores to better serve our customers. So with all that said, what is one piece of action that you’re gonna take this week? I’d be curious to know. Let us know on Facebook group or shoot me an email, Jordan@lawnmowerresource.com, and let me know what action you are taking this week as a result of Stacy’s interview. Alright. We’ll see you next week. Peace.