Venture Concept No. 1

The opportunity I plan on pursuing for my doorstep laundry delivery service will be targeted at young professionals and familiar who are too distracted by their busy schedules to deal with laundry on a consistent and efficient basis. The nature of the need is time management and added value (time and money), as my service will free up their own time to do other activities, as well as increase value of the newly found free time (i.e. some interviewed customers have stated their time for doing laundry is worth $50-$300, which is a chore I can complete for them for less money).

As our lives become increasingly busy (more opportunities for leisure time, vacation, more time at work, and various other family outings and events), there is less and less time to complete the basics of a house hold. I view my opportunity as only increasing over the next few years as people’s lives become busier and busier. Geographically, my opportunity will be targeted at urban and suburban areas. Demographically, my service can be made available for a reasonable price to anyone from lower-middle class up to the top earners in any city I launch in.

Customers are currently satisfying this need by doing the laundry themselves or hassling with dropping laundry off at laundromats, both of which are inconvenient because self-serviced laundry is time consuming and a laundromat can become expensive. I do not think customers are loyal to either alternative, as both take up time and my service will give a majority of that time back to them.

I would consider the opportunity large, even with competitors entering the market. I think my service can become as commonplace as corner laundromats as efficiencies are created over the brick and mortar retail establishment. I firmly believe this opportunity window will be open until we have machines sophisticated enough to clean and fold our laundry with minimal effort, which will be a long time.

My innovation is taking a common household chore and automating it for the customer for a low cost. The customer will fill a laundry bag provided to them with as much laundry that can fit, place the bag(s) on their doorstep, and request a pick-up via our app. Once picked up, our team will wash, clean, dry, iron, fold, and return within 48 hours. Their card on file will be charged at time of delivery and they will have time to examine their clothes to make sure there were no unintentional damages.

The opportunity will be addressed by my innovation in the essence of saving time. By simplifying the traditional laundry process to a few steps (place dirty clothes in bag; put clean, folded clothes away), the customer will free up time in their busy schedules. Customers will pay for my service because they value their time so highly on such a menial, yet important and necessary, task. If someone values their time at $50 an hour and I can provide that same service to them for $20, then they are essentially saving $30. Do-it-yourselfers and laundromats will be the initial competition, but once I am able to show value in my service, customers will gladly pay for my service. Price and customer service will be my two primary focuses as I will need to price my service less than what a customer thinks their same time spent on the task is worth, and customer service is necessary to make timely deliveries to my customers and resolve any issues of damaged/missing clothes. I will need to split my company into delivery/pick-up drivers and in-house cleaners who will actually do the laundry.

 My most important resource will be building a corporate environment around customer service. Anyone can wash laundry, but providing seamless integration into my customer’s lives, by making sure they always have clean clothes at an affordable price without any lapses in service will be extremely important for the success of my venture. Creating this customer service atmosphere will be a one-up I have over competition because companies are notorious for letting things slip through the cracks, which is not something that can happen at this price point.

The next step would be to provide rush services for same-day turn-around, adding even more value to the customer’s experience. I think a rapid delivery/pick-up system on top of my existing standard service will give customers options that fit their lifestyles.

This venture gives me a wealth of experience of taking a simple process and making it even more simple and efficient. It also will provide experience of logistics and customer service, both of which are things that will benefit me in nearly any endeavor I participate in for the rest of my life. Since this will be a low-cost entry service that I can provide, using resources I already possess, there is not much risk involved and I can make mistakes since they won’t be overwhelmingly expensive.