Gin Ho is an entrepreneur well worth studying. Gin is my local dry cleaner who came to the United States only 19 years ago, not even speaking English. He started his own cleaning business in a small shopping center. It is definitely a modest little shop and the owner, or his wife, is always there. They keep incredibly long hours. However, Gin is a shrewd business man. He totally understands that to become wealthy you need to have multiple streams of income.
In his case, he owns the shopping center. The rents more than make the monthly mortgage payment. So he has used the extra money to accelerate the pay-off and will soon own the entire place, free and clear.
Gin has also created several private label products, including one that cleans leather. He not only markets this product in his store but also through other stores. Furniture stores that sell leather furniture and a couple of stores that specialize in leather clothing and handbags carry his label.
As a final note, Gin has four independent contractors who go and pick up and deliver laundry and cleaning... for an extra charge, of course. He doesn’t make much money on the pick-up and delivery but he has a much greater volume of cleaning.
Gin is very quiet about his activities. He was willing to share the story with me when I made a couple of suggestions on how to use auctions. He now buys abandoned clothing from many other cleaners. He pays the other stores the amount of the cleaning bill, then he sells his products through me and we split the profits equally. Our relationship has now developed so that I take a lot of the clothing on consignment. It costs us nothing but the insertion fee and we often make big profits.
Does Gin sometimes buy clothing that is not saleable? Sure, it happens. And what does he do with it? It is a tax write-off, of course. Here is one of our ads...
We sold the dress for $171.02. (Why in the world didn’t the owner come back for a garment like this?)
