Ask HN: Student laundry? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Student laundry?

Doing laundry sucks. Especially when you live in a dorm as a student.

Most washers and dryers charge somewhere around $2-$4 for washing and drying. Do you think a student would pay five bucks for someone else to do the laundry and return it SAME DAY?

Think campusfood.com except for laundry. We'd pick it up, wash it, dry it, (fold it?) and return. Then collect $5. Charge extra for stain removal, better detergent, etc. But this is simple, not a dry cleaners.

At first, I could just use a laundromat and me and another person could swap pickup/delivery and laundry duties.

Do you think people would pay for this? I'm almost willing to try it due to the extremely low cost to me at first.

I already have hosting and stuff, I can make a dead simple website that just accepts addresses and phone numbers for us to pick up and possibly for them to specify how many pieces they have (or loads).

Opinions?

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I see laundromats in my area (NH) that offer this service for $0.79-$0.99/lb typically.

I would find such a cleaners in your area, and strike a deal to funnel business to them for a discount rate.

Structure it such that pickup/dropoff is $2.00 or so, and service is $0.99/lb and try to negotiate a rate for yourself initially at around $0.89/lb.

Pickup/dropoff would be at scheduled times, and a 24 hour (not same-day) cycle. Same-day is a $4.00-$5.00 premium.

Basically start out as a middle man with a website and a marketing effort. College students are notoriously cheap and broke. If you find that you can actually make a business out of this, you can then find your long-term strategy (push the local laundromat to drop their price, invest in your own equipment, etc.).

My gut reaction is that there is a business in there, but the balancing point is rather more precise than you would first expect. Liabilities are also somewhat moderate when dealing in real-world goods and services (someone claims (rightly or wrongly) that they gave you a $100 special edition shirt that was a gift from their dead grandmother that you lost/damaged/ruined). Best, IMO, to limit liabilities and overhead until you have all the kinks worked out.

If in a pure college environment, picking a catchy name ("Your Girlfriend") and giving away sloganed T-Shirts ("Your Girlfriend Did My Laundry") ("Your Girlfriend Washed My Undies") could get you a lot of exposure.

Thanks, that's incredibly valuable input.

I'm actually a little fuzzy on how much a pound of clothing is. Would that be, say, 2-3 lbs per load? I mean, obviously it varies, but roughly....

The catchy name is a particularly insightful tip.

I was actually thinking that pickup/delivery would be part of the included price. I was trying to keep it incredibly simple and cheap, so that college students might pay for it.

I've run a few numbers and you're right about the balance point being precise. I think $5 for pickup and delivery of ~1 load plus $3 for each extra load was a decent price (which is pretty close to what you suggested).

I'm going to sleep on this idea. If I wake up tomorrow and it still sounds feasible, I may pursue it.

I have no idea how much an average load of laundry weighs. Mine probably comes in around 8lbs or so for a load, but is probably also not at all indicative of a college students laundry...

Simple/Cheap is good, but where does it scale? How do you ever make enough money to cover your gas/transportation costs AND have enough left over to make this more worthwhile than just getting a $5.00/hr job?

You're going to gross about $3.00/load after paying the laundromat, and will probably net out about $1.50-$2.00/load if you outsource the actual laundry (the other costs going to vehicle overhead, small marketing dollars, etc.).

If you DIY, it's probably pretty close to the same numbers (you might fit 2 students worth of laundry in 1 washing/drying cycle, but you'll have to buy some of those netted laundry bags to keep the clothes separated.) But then with DIY it seems like a HUGE time suck to make $2.00.

What else can you deliver WITH the laundry to offset your costs? Adverts for local businesses? Tie-ins to online clothing retail (I see you wear brand X, and your stuff is looking worn-out, here is a coupon (with your referral code) for 5% off at foo.com).

Somehow the actual clean clothes seem like the loss-leader in this idea.

http://www.collegebellhop.com/

College Bellhop does this, but with long-term pricing: you pay for a term, not for a load of laundry. There were a few people that used it where I went to school.

It always seemed overpriced to me. I realized early on that the card-based laundry systems tended to have very simple control outputs, so all you had to do was pop the cover off and short the right connections--bam, free laundry. Errr, not that I ever did that.

I'd pay for this.

Note, though, I'm not a student and I don't live on campus.

There might be more of a market for this service off campus than on. Figure out some way of charging for pick up, put up some sort of map or other way of showing your delivery/pick up area, and you might have a larger market than you think.

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