Whether you’re a retailer or a distributor, there’s always pressure to raise sales and make more money. Sometimes, you have to get creative when you’re looking for new opportunities to increase revenue.
As an example, the automobile industry is worth over 2.5 trillion dollars, resulting in a whole sub-industry — automobile repair and maintenance — that itself is worth billions of dollars.
In a similar manner, the tumble dryer market is worth nearly 15 billion dollars, resulting in a whole sub-industry — dryer repair and maintenance — with millions of dollars in sales opportunities.
At HY-C, we manufacture a clothes dryer maintenance product called LintEater under our Gardus brand name. It’s in retailers all across the country, and there’s a chance it should be in your store or warehouse, too.
In this guide, we’re going to provide some quick insight on what LintEater is and how it works, and we’ll outline six reasons why your business might be a good fit to carry LintEater. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have all the information you need to decide whether LintEater is the right product for you and your business.
What is LintEater?
As you use your clothes dryer over time, lint builds up in the lint trap. After a cycle or two, you need to take out the lint trap and remove the lint — something you’ve probably done on countless occasions.
What you may not know, though, is that in addition to your lint trap, lint also accumulates in your dryer vent. This lint is much harder to clean out, especially because many dryer vents are over 10 feet long and installed inside the walls of your home. That lint still needs to be cleaned once or twice a year, though — and that’s where LintEater comes in.
LintEater is a rotary cleaning tool. It consists of an auger brush and four extension rods that attach to your drill. Just assemble the kit, hook it up to your drill, and slowly push it through the dryer vent with the drill powered on. The drill helps propel the auger brush through your vent, and after a few minutes, it will be lint-free — no professional cleaning service required.
6 Reasons Why You Should Stock LintEater
Now that you know what LintEater is and how it works, let’s consider how it can help you to grow your business and create more sales. Whether you’re a retailer or a distributor, here are six reasons why your business should consider adding LintEater to your product catalog.
1. LintEater Can Save Your Customers Money
When Energy Star-labeled clothes dryers first hit the market, the EPA estimated that they could save consumers up to $1.5 billion annually. How? Well, dryers use up a lot of power, adding more money to peoples’ monthly energy bills. Newer, more energy-efficient dryers helped to cut down on these bills by billions of dollars nationwide.
A dryer vent clogged with lint operates much less efficiently, requiring longer drying cycles and adding to a monthly energy bill. LintEater eliminates this lint buildup, keeping dryers operating efficiently. A LintEater costs between $30 and $60 at retail (depending on the model), but it can pay for itself in energy savings in a matter of months.
2. There are 89 Million Clothes Dryers in the United States
A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that there are over 89 million clothes dryers in the U.S. That’s a lot of lint that needs to be cleaned, and a lot of shoppers looking for ways to clean it.
As a retailer, it’s important to carry ubiquitous products that will appeal to the widest possible customer base. And, as a distributor, it’s important to supply those kinds of products to retailers. In any case, if a customer walks into your shop (or a shop that you sell to), the odds are very high that they could use a LintEater in their home.
3. LintEater Works Especially Well in Apartment Complexes
Many apartment complexes provide washers and dryers to their tenants. It’s an amenity that’s much-sought-after, especially as laundromats fall out of style. The good news is that LintEater appeals to maintenance workers who clean apartment dryers, too — maybe even to a greater degree than a homeowner.
A maintenance employee whose job it is to clean dozens of dryers certainly doesn’t want to clean them manually. LintEater’s drill-driven operation helps to cut that worker’s task down from a day’s work to just a few hours.
4. LintEater is Cheaper than Hiring a Professional Dryer Vent Cleaning Service
Customers don’t want to pay a professional to do a service that they can do themselves. There are companies out there who professionally clean dryer vents, and they charge a premium for their services.
Let’s take a look at The Lint King as an example. They’re a residential dryer vent cleaning company out of Illinois, and they list the average prices for their services as follows:
- $125 to $135 for a basement laundry room
- $135 to $145 for a first-floor laundry room
- $145 to $185 for a second-floor laundry room
- $185 for roof dryer vents and attic access
Considering it’s good practice to clean your dryer vent at least twice per year, homeowners can easily spend $250 at a minimum for dryer vent cleaning services. A LintEater, on the other hand, costs a one-time payment of $60 at most (for the Pro model), and can be used in perpetuity.
5. The Packaging Helps Sell the Product
Let’s focus specifically on retail for a moment. We understand that retail employees don’t have time to learn the ins and outs of every product. There’s so much to learn about a store’s product offering, and even if a particular employee becomes very knowledgeable about your selection over time, there’s no guarantee that they’ll work in your store forever.
For these reasons and many more, we believe that packaging sells products best. We’ve done this perhaps most creatively through our Good Vibrations product packaging (our line of outdoor power equipment upgrades), but LintEater is no exception.
From a cross section of what LintEater looks like in action to some features of the product itself, we include as much information on the box as possible to help consumers understand what LintEater is and how it works. If you put LintEater on your store shelves, its packaging will be your best salesperson.
6. LintEater Doesn’t Take Up Much Shelf Space
We know that retail stores (and warehouses, too) fight to optimize every square inch of shelf space. Planogramming is an art and a science in and of itself, and we try to make it as easy as possible for our sales partners to display our products efficiently and effectively.
LintEater’s packaging measures 36 inches tall, 4.5 inches wide, and 3.5 inches deep. Its 3-feet height requires a good bit of vertical space, but its small width and depth means you can pack plenty on your shelves with room to spare.
Should You Stock LintEater?
The challenge of growing your revenue never stops. When it comes to choosing which markets you should buy for, the products to serve those markets, and optimizing the space in your store or warehouse to accommodate those products, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.
Thankfully, LintEater is designed to help take on all those challenges. It’s an easy-to-use product with space-optimized packaging that has a proven sales history and serves a large, ever-growing market need.
If you’re looking to grow revenue in the cleaning and maintenance category of your store or warehouse, LintEater is a good bet. With its cost-saving opportunities for your customers, educational and space-efficient packaging, and relatively low sticker price, we’re confident that it can perform well for you — just as it has for us.
Interested in stocking LintEater? Be sure to get in touch with our sales team. Whether you’re a sole proprietor, a retail chain, or a distributor, they’ll work with you from purchase order to delivery to ensure you have everything you need to be successful.
