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>They raised more funding so it's a matter of time before they all die? I know where I'm placing my bet... edit: Ok, apparently overly snarky given down-votes

>They raised more funding so it's a matter of time before they all die? I know where I'm placing my bet... edit: Ok, apparently overly snarky given down-votes... How about this? Dry cleaning is a low-margin, capital-intensive business that already has a huge existing base of experienced competitors. If you live in a major city, your local dry cleaner already has pick-up and drop-off service on-demand. They can already keep your credit card on file. They already reap economies of scale by outsourcing the actual cleaning to huge centralized facilities. How much extra value does a company like Washio think they can really generate by letting you schedule it via app instead of via phone, and how much capital investment are they willing to make to capture that value? This is a tough business, and if any company is going to succeed at consolidating it like Washio et al are trying to do, they will have to spend a lot to get there.

trhway 10y ago
> If you live in a major city, your local dry cleaner already has pick-up and drop-off service on-demand. if they wanted to be an "Uber for laundry" they should have similarly tapped into underutilized resources - ie. their contractors should have been doing the laundry on personal washer/dryers in homes/garages... We'd see garages in residential neighborhoods full of washers/dryers, without permits, etc... Such an increased efficiency (due to the disruption in particular by cutting off the regulations related and commercial lease expenses) would have generated the required margins like in Uber and AirBNB cases. Of course, whether the world would be a better place for that - that as usually would depend on whether you're the one getting that margin :)
- wott 10y ago
  > We'd see garages in residential neighborhoods full of washers/dryers, without permits, etc... Using city water and plugged on the neighbours' electrical power line.
ghaff 10y ago
I'm not sure how capital-intensive it is; there's probably a fair bit of (low-cost) labor. But, yes, to all your other points. I'm not sure what about the current services is most places can really be significantly optimized from either an efficiency or a customer experience perspective. I've never used services that picked up and dropped off at my house/apartment but I'm not sure I'd ever have paid much of a premium for that but the Wash-and-Fold services I've used have always been just fine--if I lacked easy access to a washer/drier myself.

trhway 10y ago

> If you live in a major city, your local dry cleaner already has pick-up and drop-off service on-demand. if they wanted to be an "Uber for laundry" they should have similarly tapped into underutilized resources - ie. their contractors should have been doing the laundry on personal washer/dryers in homes/garages... We'd see garages in residential neighborhoods full of washers/dryers, without permits, etc... Such an increased efficiency (due to the disruption in particular by cutting off the regulations related and commercial lease expenses) would have generated the required margins like in Uber and AirBNB cases. Of course, whether the world would be a better place for that - that as usually would depend on whether you're the one getting that margin :)

wott 10y ago
> We'd see garages in residential neighborhoods full of washers/dryers, without permits, etc... Using city water and plugged on the neighbours' electrical power line.

ghaff 10y ago

I'm not sure how capital-intensive it is; there's probably a fair bit of (low-cost) labor. But, yes, to all your other points. I'm not sure what about the current services is most places can really be significantly optimized from either an efficiency or a customer experience perspective. I've never used services that picked up and dropped off at my house/apartment but I'm not sure I'd ever have paid much of a premium for that but the Wash-and-Fold services I've used have always been just fine--if I lacked easy access to a washer/drier myself.