Page 20 - Clothesline - November 2020

PAGE 20 / NATIONAL CLOTHESLINE /NOVEMBER, 2020
Don Desrosiers

Doing shirts with limited service

nored. If we were looking at lesson in figuring your costs. pressers, to clock out during them anyway.
Continued from page 18
average cost per shirt, we Even though you only need to the time that those wholesale Note that in the lower table
anything near $1.25 per shirt. It would be forced to compare it press these wholesale shirts shirts are being pressed. That’s (page 18), the total cost per
is more like 75 cents. That to the average revenue per and not touch them up, bag not going to happen. shirt for the wholesale shirt is

sounds like a 1980s price (and it shirt. Average revenue per them or assemble the orders, it The support staff (that is, a hair under 79 cents. That is
is), but the rationale is, once nearly 400% of your knee-jerk
again, that you only pay two reaction price! For a gross rev-
people to press them. There is I have seen shirt launderers miscalucate enue of $1.25 per shirt, you do
no washing, bagging, assembly. net $.45 per shirt. This is a
Nothing. their costs over and over again.
good margin, but you won’t
So, even at that price, you think so if you were expecting
nearly triple your money. You I think they weep at night because they two times that much.
r eceive 75 cents to press the Remember, you were think-
cents to get them pressed. Net- can’t figure out why they aren’t laughing all ing 20 cents per shirt, no 79
shirt and only pay a mere 20
cents. So, if you expected the

ting a clear 55 cents per shirt, line item to read $150 (750
which, at 150 shirts per day for the way to the bank. shirts times $.20), you are hav-
21 business days per month, is ing a bad day.
$1,732.50 in pure profit. Or, is it? Your volume is now up to
Remember, we are not try- shirt used to be $2.25. The doesn’t cost you 20 cents per the staff members aside from 4,250 shirts per week. This ac-

ing to figure out average cost wholesale shirts have caused shirt. It is still 50 cents! The the pressers) will have it easy counts for your 3,500 retail

per shirt. We want to figure that to plummet to $2.07. only way to reduce the labor because they won’t have much shirts, plus 150 shirts per day
our cost for the additional 750 This is not a testament as to expenditure to 20 cents per to do during the 90 minutes for five days. This is already a
shirts. There is an important whether or not you should do shirt is to get all of your em- per day that you are doing the problem. Now you are looking
difference that must not be ig- these wholesale shirts; it is a ployees, aside from the wholesale stuff, but you’ll pay at overtime.

At 100 shirts per hour —
certainly respectable by any-

one’s evaluation — isn’t
enough to curb overtime. So,
now your total gross payroll
isn’t $1,750, it is five people at
$10 per hour for 40 hours
($2,000), plus 10 overtime
hours at $15 each for a total of
$2,150. This raises your cost
per shirt for labor from 50
cents to a little more than fifty-
and-a-half cents. But, we are
trying to determine the cost of
the additional shirts, not the
average cost.
Therefore, the extra 750
shirts add $400 in payroll,
making the cost per shirt for

labor over 53.3 cents! This is
more than two-and-a-half
times as much as you thought
it would be! This is a huge mis-
calculation. You thought that
you could do these shirts for
less money because they cost
you less, but what a surprise to
learn that they cost you more!
I have seen shirt launderers
miscalculate their costs over
and over again. “All I gotta do
is press ‘em and put ‘em on a
hanger.” They chuckle with
glee as though they had just
found the key to the treasure
room. I think they weep at
night because they cannot fig-
ure out why they aren’t laugh-
ing all the way to the bank.
“If you do what you've always
done, you'll get what you always
got.”
Don Desrosiers has been in the
drycleaning and shirt laundering
business since 1978. He is a
work-flow engineer and a man-
agement consultant who pro-
vides services to shirt launderers
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