What Program Is Right For Your Business?
Stephen Driscoll January 9, 2020 Laundry Education
Rental programs, lease programs, or purchase programs are not always the “right fit” for your business! When we look deeper into this, we find that in most cases, typically in our experience that 8 out of 10 customers have the wrong program in place for their business.
This goes beyond just workplace apparel or uniform programs, but it extends to products such as your facility services as well. When the wrong program is in place this dramatically affects the overall profitability of your business. You are then paying for services and goods that are inaccurate or all together improper.
Let’s first understand What Program Is Right For Your Business…
Rental Program Uniform Services
Rental programs are designed to be convenient where a provider issues an inventory of products for the exchange of an agreed dollar amount. Although this is a great program when utilized at one hundred percent, not everyone maximizes the value of a rental program. As an example, you are a business owner that employs ten staff members. You have a rental service agreement with company A who issues each wearer eleven tops and eleven bottoms for a five-day work week.
How often have you noticed that only seventy-five percent of the staff are utilizing the rental program? Meaning, they turn in the garments each week for laundry, or that they are using the replacement/repair process that is included in your rental program. You see in most businesses where a rental uniform program is in place there is a percentage of participants that truly maximize the rental program and a balance that does not yet you as the business owner are not only expected to pay but have agreed to pay for a service that is not being utilized by some.
So, what is the answer? Do you just buy them their uniforms, or do you lease them their uniforms? Well, I am glad you found this article! One of the great things that we do that separates us from our competitors is that we design programs with you the customer in mind. Such as the scenario above, here we have seen a business owner paying for one hundred percent of a product/service and a percentage of staff members are not participating. Ultimately this is costing this business money week over week. How we change this is we initiate our Hybrid Uniform Program, here we identify in the very beginning the wearers who have a preference in maintaining the garments themselves and only issuing these wearers the adequate amount of garments needed to complete their employment task. As an example, if seven staff members choose to have us handle laundering the garments for them as part of the rental service, we will issue them the eleven tops and eleven bottoms. The three wearers who have chosen to maintain the garments and launder themselves we will issue them five tops and five bottoms, enough to complete the work week with the need of only laundering their issued workplace apparel once a week.
As you can see by doing so we have reduced the expense of the program for this business owner and organically created profitability for this business as their overhead has been reduced and their program has been maximized.
Lease Program Uniform Services
Opposite to a rental program is the lease opportunity. Lease programs are ideal for employers who wish to have their staff in a company uniform but operate more remote than in a designated address. Some employers opt for this style of a program as it is less expensive of an investment on their part, but it does come with sacrifices.
Again, understanding the right program is critical when deciding whether a lease program is a right direction for you. Let’s take and look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of a lease program.
First, the advantages!
To start the weekly investment or cost to you the customer is considerably less than if you were participating in a full-scale rental program. Next, the complaint of shortages to the wearer is eliminated as they are the responsible party for maintaining the garments and the issued inventory. In the event of voluntary or involuntary termination of an employee and garments are not returned, the cost burden for the lost product is drastically less as only three to five sets were initially issued.
So, what are the disadvantages? Surely there cannot be any after seeing all the advantages of a lease program. Unfortunately, there are a few and this helps us when communicating with you the customer on designing the right program.
The number one reason most customers enter a uniform program is uniformity, right? The desire that all staff members are reflecting the company image. This is where a lease program becomes a disadvantage. Not all wearers are going to maintain the garments equally and because of this when you line up employee to employee and although the garments can be of like material, like age, and like environments, the garments are going to look drastically different.
Another popular reason a customer chooses a uniform program is that their employees have a crisp, clean, and pressed appearance. When a lease program is installed all wearers are responsible for the finish of the garments that have been issued to them. How often have you had an employee show up to work with wrinkled shirts or pants? This is where the rental program is an advantage so long as they participate and submit the garments for laundry. Then and only then can you as the customer be assured the garments are clean and crisp ready for wear.
There are numerous variables when it comes to designing accurate, functional, and economical uniform programs that truly are the “right fit” for you and your business. The unfortunate is that most customers only have the same problem repeatedly even when they change to another vendor. Nine out of ten times the new vendor has only duplicated the exact same program and never offered a real solution.
This is where we separate ourselves from all others in the industry. When you are a PENN customer you are provided solutions from the beginning to the concerns you share with us. We work alongside with you in developing a program that is going to maximize the total value of your investment.
Visit us at www.pennenterprises.com
Feel free to contact us to schedule a Discovery Appointment to learn how we can design a program with you in mind and take advantage of our proprietary Account Assessments.