Summary of Research Findings

Domestic retail and commercial laundry services market (as a total of retail laundry service for general households, coin-operated laundries and non-store laundry services dedicated to home pick-up and drop-off) in 2022 is estimated at 271,350 million yen, 105.9% of the preceding year, based on the sales at businesses. In view of the market by sales channel, size of the “retail laundry services” market, which indicates business establishments that perform laundry and dry-cleaning services for persons who bring their laundry and dry-cleaning to the establishment, rose to 110.0% of the previous year to 160,000 million yen, recovering from the sharp drop in 2021 due to pandemic situations. Meanwhile, “coin-operated laundries” that continued to grow during the COVID-19 pandemic and “non-store laundry services dedicated to home pick-up and drop-off” both grew marginally, to 100.4% to 100900 million yen, and to 101.5% to 10,450 million yen, respectively.

Although the industry of retail and commercial laundry faced predicaments in 2020 and 2021, due to the influence of the pandemic situation such as increase of telework and sluggish sales of apparel products especially business shirts and suits, it recovered in 2022. The upturn attributes to the more outings triggered by the lift of state emergency declaration/quasi state emergency declaration in March 2022, as well as to the fact that more enterprises reduce the use of teleworking.

 

Noteworthy Topics

Trends of Coin-operated Laundry Market

Size of the coin-operated laundry market in 2022 is estimated at 100.4% of the preceding year to 100,900 million yen, based on the sales at businesses. While some coin-operated laundry business operators keep on expanding the number of outlets from 2021 onto 2022, there are also number of businesses that perform poorly, as seen in deceleration of store expansion and yearly decline of sales per existing facilities. For these reasons, it is assumed that the growth rate of the market slows down for years to come, and thus forecasted to grow barely to 100.3% in 2023 to 101,200 million yen, and to 100.3% to 101,500 million yen by 2024.

Along with the active market entries from other industries that intensified the market competition, business style and space of coin-operated laundries are diversifying in recent years. For instance, there are manned-establishments that are attached with cafes or convenience stores, or with a ‘laundry agents’ that undertake washing on behalf of the customer. Others elevated the coin-operated laundry space with sophisticated décor.

In addition, whereas traditional coin laundries used to compete by price to stay ahead of the competition, the new businesses that deliver “customer value” are starting to penetrate, such as those that combine IoT technology and smartphones with laundry equipment to increase user convenience, specifically, the installation of code readers and cashless payment terminals to enable payments with electronic money and credit cards. With increasing number of market entrants, competition in the market is expected to intensify hereafter.

Research Outline