This as-told-to essay is based on conversations with Erin and Jon Carpenter, a married couple living in Charleston, South Carolina. The two have residential-renovation experience, but bought their first commercial property, a laundromat, in 2022. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Erin: It was definitely Jon’s idea to buy a laundromat.
He went down a rabbit hole on YouTube with laundromats — and he is an entrepreneur, he went to business school — so he’d always heard that they were a good investment.
So we were thinking — well, he was thinking — why not try a laundromat?
Jon: I had a marketing business that I saved some money from, and I was just seeing it deflate. I think the inflation had started, and we started seeing high inflation numbers at 8%, 9%, and 10%. And I was like, “What is a good recessionary business that does well?”
We had a background in traveling and going to laundromats, and then this one came.
Erin: It was very, very cheap. And we went to see it, and we saw why it was very, very cheap.
It was in absolutely horrible condition, and I was horrified. I was like, “Oh, wow, this is crazy. This is going to be a funny story to talk about later.”
And then we walked out, and Jon said, “I love it.” I said, “Then let’s do it.”
Jon: It was a little over $50,000. The guy who owned it wanted to move on.
Erin: And we had no idea what we were doing. We were kind of just learning as we went.
Jon: We thought we’d love to be in the local business community, it’s not far from our house, and it would be a fun pet project to renovate. Then we got into it knowing that if it lost money, it wouldn’t make or break us if we lost it. At least we’ll learn something. Or maybe we can sell it before we get into it, but it wasn’t a huge risk.
The laundromat doesn’t make us that much money, but we love the community
Erin: Thankfully, all the machines in the laundromat were still good, so we didn’t have to replace any. We just rehabbed the seating areas and how they looked on the inside, making it a more comfortable place for people to sit, because it didn’t even feel safe to be inside.
It just felt very dingy and gross. All the furniture was broken, and there were trash cans and trash everywhere. It was not a great place to be.
We just threw ourselves into that.
We put in new flooring. We ripped out the old front desk. We did all new ceiling and new lights. We built out a back office. We painted all the existing dryers, and built a window counter in the front with stools up at the counter for seating.
Jon: Over the past three to four years, we’ve probably put $75,000 into it.
Erin: The renovation took about three months. It’s definitely our shortest renovation.
We knew nothing about that neighborhood. Our initial thought was: This will be a really good business investment.
Jon: When we got it, it lost $800 a month, and then we got it to about breakeven, then to about making $1,000 to $3,000 a month.
The problem is that machines break down, and then that costs, or we have to redo something, and that costs a couple of grand, so the net income goes down.
But our highest months have probably had a net of $5,000 to $6,000. We’ve started getting our pickup and delivery business going, so that’s starting to grow at a rapid pace.
Erin: But the moment we walked in the door, we met Steve, the attendant who’d been there for 11 years. And then throughout the whole renovation process, we got connected with all sorts of people in the neighborhood, like Leroy, who is at the church across the street, but he’s also a painter. He painted the dryers, and his wife, Emily, would stop by and help us out with whatever we needed.
It really gave us a window into this tight-knit community. We did the first free laundry day, and that’s when we really got to know people and felt like it was way bigger than just a laundromat.
Ever since then, we’ve been doing free laundry days about once a month, and also trying to do more events. It’s been really cool to see.
That’s why we hang on to it. We’re stressed all the time; it’s not a passive business, but it’s just this awesome community, and it’s a good business too. I think the people are really what make it so memorable and so valuable.
Jon: We fell in love with community. My goal was to make $1,000 a month of net income off of it. I thought that’d be equivalent to getting a rental house. We’re doing better than my initial goal. And I think if we keep growing it and do more, we can do even better.
If there’s anything that I’ve learned about this investment, it’s that we went in there to not make a lot of money, but it ended up doing so much good in the community that the money didn’t matter that much.
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