Sneaker dry cleaners or dry cleaners for sneakers began to appear actively in many cities of Russia. Read about this business, what you need to know to open it, and how much you can earn from it, read in our article.
Dry cleaners are called specialized dry cleaners that provide a range of professional cleaning and grooming services for sneakers. As you know, sneakers are very picky about ordinary washing, so independent experiments often end in death. Startups in this area began to appear recently. Sole Fresh, the Russian pioneer, opened its first collection point only in September 2015. Two years later, shoe cleaning services can be found not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in other major Russian cities, which either bought a franchise or, inspired by an example, began to create something of their own.
By the way, a curious fact. Although professional shoe cleaning is common in Europe and the USA, it is quite rare. It is possible that in “unwashed” Russia, the problem with dirt on shoes is much more urgent than in a well-organized West. In September 2017, some media outlets talked about a sneaker cleaner Dominique Trishman from the German city of Kassel. So, Dominic claimed that there were no analogues to his mini-project called Sneaker Cleaner in Germany at the time of the interview. Therefore, if your first thought at the word “sneaker-dry cleaning” was something like “another foreign dead business idea is not for our lands”, then you are mistaken.
Snickermania or where the legs grow from
If at least sometimes you pay attention to other people's shoes, then you could not help but notice that the sneakers have become No. 1 shoes. By the word “sneakers” here we also mean other sports shoes - these are sneakers, slip-on shoes, sneakers ... We will not go into the classification now. Moreover, a tracksuit with sneakers - the neighbors are already infrequent, because the sneakers have become everyday and versatile. They are worn with street and business clothes, with jeans and dresses, with trousers and skirts, shorts and sundresses. Yes with anything.
Combining clothes of any style with sneakers is a global trend. People's life has become more dynamic, and running shoes are most suited to the needs of the time. Radically, for example, the role of women in the world has changed, which has affected the decline in sales of shoes with heels and stilettos. Preference was increasingly given to the convenience that sports shoes provide.
Snickermania is easily confirmed by numbers. According to Fashion Consulting Group, sports shoes account for more than half of the Russian market. In the spring-summer and autumn-winter shoe collections in 2016, the share of sneakers in the men's assortment was 50-60%, in the women's 50-70%.
What sneaker dry cleaners offer
Sneaker dry cleaners mainly provide comprehensive shoe cleaning, although fractional services like cleaning soles only are also possible. The essence of comprehensive cleaning is to completely remove any external and internal contaminants, eliminate stains, stubborn dirt and stains. Additional service - easy restoration. This is tinting materials, restoring the shape of shoes with the help of special spacers, gluing the soles, removing creases. Related services - washing or replacing shoelaces, disinfection, flavoring of internal surfaces, covering shoes with grease to add shine.
Price gradation primarily depends on the materials and fabric of which the shoes are made. There are three categories of your price: fabric / rubber sneakers, synthetic and artificial leather sneakers, leather and suede shoes. Each material requires its own cleaning program and its own cleaning products. The main difference is that leather and suede shoes do not tolerate machine wash - only hand wash is suitable here.
The category of special orders cleans collection and rare sneakers. They are approached with special attention and tenderness - applied again, only hand wash. Of course, there are no strict restrictions on the type of shoes accepted: a sneaker-dry cleaner can accept winter boots, ugg boots, classic shoes and boots.
The principle of operation of sneaker dry cleaners is quite simple: the client either brings dirty shoes to a stationary collection point, and then picks up the completed order or uses the services of a courier who delivers the client’s precious shoes in a special protective container. Cleaning itself usually takes no more than 2-5 days, but can increase up to 4-10 days. According to the founders of Sole Fresh, the term of work will increase if the result does not satisfy the masters themselves.
Who are the customers of sneaker dry cleaners
Basically, now anyone can wear sneakers. Both schoolchildren who want to show off their peers and serious uncles-entrepreneurs who collect and cherish rare and expensive types of sneakers can go for shoe cleaning. These can be hipsters, street culture and fashion lovers, dancers and football players, healthy lifestyle lovers, a creative class and other personalities who have a weakness for sneakers.
Basically, of course, the target audience is young people living in millionaires. Moreover, if you look at the contingent of popular sneaker dry cleaners on social networks, it turns out that in most cases (more than 70%) these are guys rather than girls.
The dominant age in half the cases in both men and women is 19–25 years. In the range of 17.5 - 21% - the audience is under 18 years old, 19.5-26% - aged 26-35 years.
Regardless of age, all these people have one thing in common - a love of sneakers, especially when it comes to expensive or branded looks. Adherents of sneaker culture believe that sneakers can tell about the inner world of a person more than anything else. So the idea that “we are all different, but we are united by sneakers” should be the main philosophy of the project.
Dry Cleaning Technology
The first thing to think about when opening a sneaker dry cleaning is technology. Here you can go in different ways. The first way is to join those who have already mastered the art of cleaning sneakers. The second is to learn for yourself. In the presence of the Internet, social networks, training video tutorials on Youtube, the second option is quite feasible. As they say, there would be a desire. To begin with, it is better to conduct a test period - to conduct experiments with different types of orphan or old sneakers in order to assess the capabilities of various cleaning products and without fear of destroying several pairs. After the first results, you can test the technology on the sneakers of friends and acquaintances. You will not need substantial expenses except your nerves and patience - chemistry, brushes and shoe spacers can be purchased without practically anything in your pocket. In general, the costs of this type of business are small. The main consumables are cleaning products, and other variable costs are water and electricity.
If you take up the matter thoroughly, then in addition to chemistry, brushes, shoe spacers, you will also need quite expensive equipment. In an interview, the founder of Fresh Look sneaker dry cleaner in Minsk Sergey Slyusarenko mentioned that he uses a small machine for industrial dry cleaning that can hold up to 8 kg of clothes for washing shoes. Spending money on more spacious cars, in his opinion, does not make sense, because only one pair of sneakers can be washed at a time. Throwing two pairs into the drum is already fraught with breakdown of equipment or damage to sneakers. If you believe the prices presented on the Internet, the cost of such a machine will be more than 400 thousand rubles. It should be remembered that such machines are suitable only for synthetics, but not for leather with suede.
There are also special devices for professional steam cleaning, drying and disinfection of shoes or, more simply, steam generators. A presentation of the principles of their work can also be found on the Internet. In the videos, advanced shoe makers steam the outside and inside with steam guns, clean and then dry and disinfect. Steam generators are good for working with leather, suede, fabric or canvas. Such devices are manufactured in Italy and at the time of writing, are in the region of 145-150 thousand rubles. Of course, it is not worthwhile to immediately acquire expensive equipment without having learned to pick up brushes and not understanding the features of various fabrics.
Dry cleaning room
In principle, no one obliges you to have any kind of premises, conclude a lease agreement, carry out repairs, hang up a sign and so on. Moreover, the business is new and the risk of burnout is extremely high. All procedures can be carried out somewhere at home, and shoe reception can be arranged with the help of a courier. Another option is to open a permanent shoe collection point, put a rack there, a computer and put a person for it who will receive and issue orders. A reasonable approach in this case is to find an option with a minimum rental. A large area is not needed - just a few square meters is enough to have a place to turn around. The same Sole Fresh started from a minimum - only 300 thousand rubles were spent on the start of the project, and the creators rented the premises on a moored ship with a minimum rate. Ideally, sneaker dry cleaners are best located in the places where the target audience is concentrated - the closer to the sneaker hangout, the better.
Dry cleaning sneaker
Dry shoe cleaning is a know-how. Therefore, simply opening a reception point, creating a website or a page in social networks, drawing a logo, and, calming down, idly waiting for customers is the way to a guaranteed failure. The project is simply obliged to engage in demand generation. Around the dry cleaning should be a whole community of fans of sneaker culture. Here, the best way to make yourself known is by holding promotions during various events, festivals and exhibitions. At them, employees of the sneaker dry cleaners can clean sneakers for everyone for free, conduct workshops on shoe care, and play certificates for the free provision of services. You can run a sneakermobile around the city that rides people’s shoes and sneakers, you can open a museum of old sneakers by organizing a massive urban gathering of old shoes ... Naturally, the entire process should be taken by an experienced photographer, everything is laid out on Vkontakte, Instagram and so on.
The more information noise around the project, the better. Organizational and networking skills will help a lot here. Sole Fresh, for example, works with shoe brands like Nike, Vans, and Kixbox, which in turn provide prizes for competitions. Good partners can be anticafe, creative spaces, coworking centers, barbershops, fitness centers and other places of mass habitat for the target audience. If visitors to such places do not know anything about your existence - this is very bad. They should talk about you, write, tell others. Attract local opinion leaders - bloggers, rappers, popular presenters who can promote you.
While sneaker dry cleaners have not become a mass phenomenon, the project is best positioned as mega-cool. The fact is that “budget dry cleaning sneakers” cannot be a principle. If you tell people that we will clean your sneakers for 50-100 rubles, then it will look cheap, people will think that they are trying to breed them for the last penny. You should not count on a non-cash audience - it will not come to clean sneakers even for free. On the contrary, the initially expensive presentation of the project and not the lowest prices will emphasize the seriousness of your intentions and help attract an audience from more affluent castes.
Of course, the entire PR company should be backed up by business. The cleaning result should be at a high level, otherwise the game is not worth the candle. At the beginning, you will need to win the trust of customers, so each order must be fixed on a photo in the style of before / after, take a review from the owner, take a picture of him, shoot a video. The site and social networks should be something like a file cabinet of your successful work with examples of cleaned sneakers of various materials. At the same time, you need to try not to jump above your head - if the owner brings shoes that are clearly not recoverable, then you should not promise to perform a miracle. It is worthwhile to be careful about accepting dubious shoes and Chinese fakes - during washing, the material of such sneakers may behave inappropriately. Always remember that one angry review will cost you hundreds of positives.
How much dry cleaning sneaker earn
There are no clear boundaries. Of course, you should not believe those who promise you sky-high profits, you should not worry too much about skeptics who will surely tell you that “nobody needs this”. Examples of first startups show what is needed. Whether you sit on single sales, or earn a hundred or two thousand rubles a month on your business purely will depend on you, your ambitions and promotion strategy.
If you look at the prices of existing dry cleaning sneakers, where prices for services range from 450 for a standard cleaning of fabric crosses to 2500 rubles for cleaning a limited shoe, you can roughly imagine what you can count on. If we are talking about 70-80 orders per month at the lowest prices, then this will be more a side job than a business. If you plan to make at least 150-200 orders for an average bill of 1000 rubles, then this is something more serious.
Sole Fresh in the first three months of sneaker dry cleaning managed to fulfill more than 1000 orders for cleaning sneakers. This means that counting on 300 standard orders per month and 10 orders per day is quite a possible and achievable figure. This number may be lower if the client orders additional services, say, to restore shoes.
Sneaker Dry Cleaning: What's Next
Let's say that you mastered the technology of cleaning sneakers, promoted, got regular customers, some monthly amount that you can count on ... And then what? What if the fashion for cleaning sneakers will pass? Suddenly there will be stronger competitors in the city? Suddenly, shoe polish can be bought at any store?
So that clients not only do not run up, but also invite friends to clean their sneakers, you can turn a dry cleaning sneaker into a kind of car service. Car service, in which not only professional “mechanics” work, but where you can buy “spare parts”. For example, shoelaces. Or you can buy cleaning products or for washing “cars” - your own products for cleaning sneakers, wet wipes, water-repellent impregnations and so on. Or sell, finally, the sneakers themselves. For example, the rarest or most dirt-resistant. After all, if they start trusting you with the cleaning of your favorite sneakers, then why won't the purchase of the sneakers themselves trust you?
Mikhail Semynin(c) www.clogicsecure.com - a portal to business plans and guidelines for starting a small business 08/18/2019