News has just arrived that the Laundry startup Washio has managed to trick the VC firm Pejman Mar Ventures and investors such as Sherpa Ventures, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Three Six Zero Group, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Ron Burkle, Nas, Anthony Saleh, Larry Rudolph, Jay Brown, Zod Nazem, Troy Carter, Scooter Braun, Yael Cohen, Tom Ryan, and Frank Cooper.
The startup is basically this, it’s your currently neighborhood laundry service but with a mobile app. That’s it, nothing unique, instead of talking to a person and scheduling a pickup you’re pushing buttons into a phone. Additionally it sounds like they can’t even get the washing part right, according to founder Jordan Metzner, the company has expanded the number of zones that drivers make pickups and deliveries in, and even had to switch to a 36-hour turnaround at one point to catch up with demand.
So you’re actually paying a premium to avoid a human and possibly have to wait even longer for your clothing than if you were to deal directly with the laundromat. Oh and who is Washio? They are just a middle man between you and your neighborhood laundromat. They aren’t even washing the clothes.
And what is their cut? They charge $1.60/lb for their Wash & Fold service And after calling around their current market you’ll find that most prices are in the $1.00 range. So profit isn’t bad, they make roughly $0.60/lb, check out their prices here.
Either way, it’s a shame that this startup is even managing to get in the news. But luckily another startup, PRIM, tried the same idea last year and shut down, so it’s only a matter of time now.
