Published: April 06, 2008 10:08 am            

Laundry owners take time to know their customers

As co-owner of Boomer Laundry, Karla Stone has one thing that all workers want – job security.

“There’s always going to be laundry,” she said.

However, Stone hasn’t always been so confident about her family’s venture into the laundry industry.

In fact, when her husband David first approached her with the idea, which he had gotten after looking at an ad in a PennySaver magazine, Stone “thought he was crazy.”

Nevertheless, she supported him through the eight or so months that it took to renovate the building at First and Main in Woodward.

Even within the first few months after opening, Stone still had her doubts.

“We’d probably been open maybe four or five months, I guess, before I began to think he wasn’t completely out of his mind,” she said.

When the business opened in March 2007, Stone said she and her husband both had full-time teaching jobs, which made her wonder “how in the world are we going to make this work?”

The answer, of course, was lots of long hours as well as lots of help from family.

Since Stone and her husband did already have full-time jobs, David’s parents Bryne and Bobbie were asked to pitch in.

“At the time they were retired,” Stone said. “He (David) thought maybe that might be a good thing that they could help run it and get them out of the house, keep them young.”

His father Bryne couldn’t have been more excited about it. “I was ready to go from the time he mentioned it,” he said.

However, his mother was somewhat less enthused, but still happy to help.

“I thought ‘oh no, he’s putting me to work,’” Bobbie said with a smile.

Having “always been a people person,” Bryne said he was thrilled about the opportunity to get back into the mix of things.

While he knew that helping to run a laundry service would introduce him to new people, he said he was surprised at just how many new and different types of people he would meet.

“I don’t think we expected to meet as many people from other places as we have,” he said.

Stone agreed, noting that not only have they had customers from all across the nation, they have also had customers from other countries, including Canada, Asia and even Greece.

A lot of these out-of-towners are with construction crews that have just come to Woodward for a job and are basically passing through, she said.

But however short a time they are in Woodward, Stone and her in-laws said they still take the time to get to know their customers.

In some cases Bryne said they have become “friends, and not just customers.”

That has been their whole goal, Stone said, noting that from the beginning they wanted to establish “a friendly, homey atmosphere.”

Toward this end, Stone said they have even set up a toy corner known as the “Kid’s Korral” to help entertain children and “keep them from pulling on their moms’ apron strings for at least a little while.”

“We do try to cater to the moms,” she said, noting that it is just one of the things that sets Boomer Laundry apart.

Other offerings include a softened water supply and special services like vacuum packing, Stone said.

And while they may cater to moms to a certain degree, Bryne said they try to meet everybody’s need.

It doesn’t even matter if the clothes have been through fires, floods or tornadoes, Stone said, noting that Boomer Laundry did provide special assistance to several disaster victims over the past year. She said they helped one family whose home had been flooded last summer, three families that had smoke damage from house fires, and some victims of the Greensburg tornado.

As Bryne said, when it comes to helping customers and meeting their needs, the Stones “take it to heart.”

        

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