We used to call it “neon light business.” Those were the companies where every laundry salesperson knew there was business—so they had an imaginary neon light over them that said, “We use lots of uniforms!” The good news was that you always knew they were a prospect. The bad news was that when it came to contract time, the ROI was so low that you might not bother bidding on it.

For decades, industry thought leaders have asked this question: “How do we expand and grow the industry?” For this article, we talked to several laundry executives to try to ...