Stephanie and Claudia started a successful laundry pickup and delivery business in Des Moines Iowa WITHOUT a laundromat, helping both residential and commercial clientele. They share their marketing tips which helped their pickup and delivery business thrive. Find out about their target clientele, marketing techniques, and they share their TOP TWO ways of bringing in new customers, which is their laundromat website made by Curbside Laundries AND…
- Stephanie and Claudia share their success story of starting a lucrative laundry pickup and delivery service without owning a laundromat.
- They tapped into an untapped market by catering to busy families, especially moms, who need laundry services but have limited time.
- Stephanie and Claudia efficiently use the Curbside Laundries business solution, including a website and software, to allow customers to schedule pickups and deliveries.
- With their strategic approach, they target bigger families, optimizing their operations and focusing on areas where they can generate maximum business.
- Their creative marketing tactics, like using door hangers and branded vehicles, have proven highly effective in attracting new customers and building brand recognition.
[Transcript]
Speaker 1: 0:00
Welcome to state of the laundry industry with laundry mat. This is episode 13, starting a successful lottery pickup and delivery business without a laundromat . So I’d like to welcome Stephanie and Claudia there with we washed laundry company they’re over in Des Moines, Iowa, and just wanted to add on . And I think the audience is in for a real treat . They are marketing geniuses. They have a unique take on their , both their customer segment, who they’re marketing to and the way they market to people, the way just the images they use, the way they visualize their , their audience. And, and they’re bringing laundry pickup and delivery to their, to their area. And one thing just to, you know, something unique about Stephanie and Claudia is they do not have a laundromat . So you guys are pickup and delivery only, which I think a lot of people are going to find very, very interesting. And just a little bit of a background is normally when, when somebody calls up without a laundry, without a laundry mat , I kind of make it , they got to jump through a lot of hoops. So I’ll put it that way. And the reason being is I’ve seen people without a laundry mat, get into pickup and delivery and without a business plan, without an idea of how to get customers. And, and so we had signed people up in the past and, and then it just doesn’t work out because, because they don’t, they don’t know how to bring in customers. And, and, and they may not, they don’t have the laundry mat to support them while they’re growing their business. And Stephanie and Claudia are both very successful in growing their laundry pickup and delivery service. And, and I think you’re in the thing that when we first started talking, but I saw is unique and it was, you guys had your own business plan already to go. And I thought that I’m like, well , they could do it. So , um, so I just wanted to find out like what brought you into the laundry business and, and , um, yeah . How you got into the laundry pickup and delivery business.
Speaker 2: 2:08
Well, you know , um, we just jumped right in, so I love Matt that you think we had this perfect business plan because we didn’t. So we’re kind of planning as we were learning, we were learning. Yeah. So just a little bit of background about us. Um, I’m Stephanie, this is Claudia. We have been friends for over seven years. Our daughters actually introduced, they became friends at daycare, and then we introduced us and then we became friends. And as you know, mom, friends love to chat and gossip and complain to one another. Um, so one of our major complaints was our lack of time. She has three kids, they’re all seven years apart, which is crazy. So they’re in different activities. Her oldest son is track. I mean, he’s like in every year he does cross country track baseball. I mean, very so. And then her son , she was seven at the time. Um, when we started, this was in competition, gymnastics, and then she had a baby and then I have three kids and they’re all really young. So like, we, it was hard to keep up with life and we’re like, okay, we can get our groceries delivered to us. We can get our lawn care, brought to the house and taken care of for us, we get our house clean , like there’s ways to help all these moms and families, but there was not anything for laundry. And that’s like the one thing that we , we need to spy laundry, we’re not supposed to say,
Speaker 1: 3:30
I love your shirts. I’d say laundry haters
Speaker 2: 3:34
And the laundry agents . But , um, we found really great people that love laundry. So that’s our team. But anyway , um, so as we were kicking around ideas, we already know that there’s laundry services in California and New York and Chicago. And we’re like, where’s that here in the Midwest. And yes, we’re a different demographic here, but there’s a real opportunity for busy families. And , um, we , we looked around, we started the research process. We looked at other wash and fold services reached out, asked what called you guys, you know, tried to figure out like, is this really practical? Can we really do this without a laundry mat? Um, and here we are today.
Speaker 1: 4:20
Yeah. And , and as far as, and who’s your target clientele, are you just going for a , you know, everybody is a , do you have somebody a particular in mind?
Speaker 2: 4:30
No. Like ours or families, but I would say busy moms. I mean the bigger the family, the better as you guys know, because we do have to make the trip to their house and we want it to be worthwhile. Um, we do have a pickup and delivery minimum amount, which helps with that because we are spread out here. We service 11 suburbs. And so that’s a lot of ground to cover. Um, a lot of people say to us, Hey, you should really go for like the senior centers. Right. But you don’t have to think a one person household. I mean, where are we going to get more business? Is it going to be a mom and dad with three, four kids? Or is it going to be the senior with one bag of laundry? And now don’t get me wrong. We’re open to all the business , but our target demographic would definitely be the bigger families ,
Speaker 1: 5:22
Um, sense . He has a very interesting dynamic and never thought about which is, if you’re more spread out, you really need more clothes per pickup. You know, if it’s a tight, dense, you know , city in a sense, then you can kind of get away with more going after some of the smaller orders in a sense.
Speaker 2: 5:39
Well, and here’s the thing that’s great about having a partner is we remind each other, we are a business because we get these stories that are really sad and we want to help everybody, you know , but we do have to make it work for us and to be able to pay our employees and make sense. And it’s sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. And we’ve had to learn the last two years to say no to business . And that has been really hard. We have a hard time saying no, but we can’t just go and work for free 30 minutes away to pick up one bag of clothes. It doesn’t even hit the minimum and then we have no business. So we are, we’re trying to grow and grow in a way that makes sense for everyone.
Speaker 1: 6:19
Yeah. And on the flip side, sometimes when we expand to a new area, that first pickup is so expensive because we’re in, we’re doing a kind of like, I guess, longterm , but it has to be a part of the overall strategy, you know? So, yeah. And it’s kind of, there’s a saying the most expensive transaction for bank is the first one because he had to build a whole bank. And so , um, so we experienced that too. Like when we go into like a new area it’s, you know, at first it doesn’t really make sense, but then it does. But at the same time , um, yeah, especially when it spread out, got to make sure is that part of our big strategy, are we targeting that area or is that someplace where if we only have one customer there, then it’s better to focus on other areas.
Speaker 2: 7:02
Yeah . Well, and it’s funny, you bring that up because we do have a suburb it’s about 25 minutes away from us. It’s Huxley . They have such an opportunity for growth, but we literally have two customers there. So you know what we did with your software, we were able to just in that location up the minimum order amount. So it makes sense for our drivers to go out there. So they know that they’re okay with that. And we’re okay then making that extra drive .
Speaker 1: 7:27
That’s great. And then a lot of times they see your vehicle over there and then it just starts building. So
Speaker 2: 7:32
No, and just little we’ve come up with little marketing things. Like we recently had one of our part-time folders who was interested in working more hours. We throw her in the band with our driver on a Friday and said, Hey, while he’s doing his pickup and deliveries, why don’t you hit two houses to the left and two houses to the right, with door hangers? Why not
Speaker 1: 7:58
Love it, love it. That is so smart. I, you know, I have a real estate background and I didn’t learn some of the strategy is towards the end of when I wasn’t a real estate anymore. One of them was very similar to that, which is, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I should’ve been doing that the whole time after you get a listing, the best place to market to is all the houses next to that listing because they saw you did a good job and, and they’re going to see your vehicle there, like twice a month. And, and then every time they see it, they go, oh, there’s we wash ? And, and so that’s great marketing because yeah. Yeah. I love that because
Speaker 2: 8:32
Marketing works, it works. He had found out of all the ways that we’ve marketed. Yep . That is the best. We’ve done the most business besides that website, besides Google the website, but it’s just old school marketing hanging door hangers. So we’re cutting through the clutter, you know, it works. Yeah. And it
Speaker 1: 8:55
Works great together because you’ve got a beautiful brand of vehicle. And now every time the neighbors see it, it means something more because they already got the brochure for it. Whereas if they just saw the vehicle by itself, that’s effective, but it’s even better when there’s two tattoo , unique types of touches, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and podcast because Claudia and Stephanie will be sharing many more of their secrets to success. They couldn’t rely on their laundromat to help them ramp up. They had to focus on marketing to make their business thrive. So if you’d like to learn more about the curbside laundries wash and fold point of sale or pickup and delivery solution, please go to curbside laundries.com. See you next time.
