Wash It Yourself

Nobody has made such a good thing out of washing dirty linen in public as Manhattan's Telecoin Corp. It is chiefly responsible for the boom in wash-it-yourself laundries, which have all the get-rich-quick lure once possessed by miniature golf courses. Last week, Telecoin sold a "Launderette" in Owosso, Mich., the 1,322nd store which Telecoin has franchised in 700 U.S. cities.

The boom has grown so fast that no one is sure just how big it is. But the gross from the stores of Telecoin and competitors is estimated as high as $80,000,000 a year.

Old Hands. Telecoin is run by a couple of old coin-machine hands: handsome Harvardman Eugene Farny, who once sold jukeboxes, and ex-Piano Salesman Arthur Percival. Percival was branch manager of Wurlitzer Co. when he teamed up with Farny, Wurlitzer's general manager, to launch their new business. In 1938 they began installing Bendix washing machines, which ran 30 minutes for a dime, in New York apartment houses. Soon the dimes, which were divided with the apartment owners, were rolling in from 20,000 machines.

Telecoin got exclusive rights from Bendix to operate its coin washers, and took on a big job (providing washers for the 12,272 tenants in the Parkchester apartments in The Bronx). For this, Telecoin tried another angle. It installed ten machines, quarter-operated, in an empty store near by. Thus, outsiders could use them in slack times. The plan worked so well that Telecoin soon had 35 such stores. Its hands were so full collecting quarters that it established a franchise system to sell machines to the eager beavers who wanted to get into the business. Last month, Telecoin made it even easier. It got the Bank of the Manhattan Co. to finance 85% of the cost of starting new stores. For a fee of $1,000 Telecoin handles the accounting and advertising, and grants the use of the Launderette name for two years; the renewal charge is $300 a year.

The promise of quick profits has already been fulfilled for some Launderette proprietors. Example: Bert S. Good, who has four stores in Manhattan, is netting $800 a week, and recently opened a store in Switzerland, the first foreign Launderette. But some, unwilling to put in the long hours and hard work required to run a small business, got caught in the wringer. Said Percival: "You can't hire someone to run a store and just watch the quarters roll in. You have to keep a tight grip on it all the time or it'll get away from you."

Competition. Percival and Farny have kept such a tight grip on the new business that Telecoin netted $550.000 in the first nine months of this year. In fact, the grip has been too tight to suit the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. In a civil suit, it charged Telecoin and Bendix with monopolizing the field. Last week, Telecoin was trying to settle out of court. To Telecoin, the question of monopoly was already becoming somewhat academic, thanks to the up-&-coming competition of Telecoin's chief competitor--Chicago's "Laundromat," which has national distribution rights to Westinghouse washers. Laundromat, which fell behind when Westinghouse production lagged, has now sold franchises for 500 stores. Both Laundromat and Telecoin think that the field is barely scratched. In the next year, they expect to swell the boom by another 3,000 stores.

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