SpotlessCity launched in January and is just now building up steam to disrupt the entire “going to the laundry” industry. Built by Sonny Bajwa and his Brooklyn team, the site allows you to find a dry cleaner and request a pick-up. Bingo, bango, and your clothes are clean. God forbid you should go for a walk of an evening to drop off your unmentionables, but let’s not get into that here.
According to a January article about the service, Bajwa founded the company after seeing that his wife’s chores – cooking, buying food – could be done via laptop, while his chore – taking the laundry down the street – required him to leave the house. Thus, SpotlessCity was born.
The service is fairly simple and places the onus on the dry cleaner to follow through with the order. SpotlessCity doesn’t take a cut from the customer but instead gets a little cash from the dry cleaner to streamline a service they already offer. They operate in the Village, SoHo, and the Upper East Side in Manhattan and in and around Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn. They’re expanding to all of NYC shortly and will slowly expand to take over the world.
These friction-reduction services are valuable, but difficult to scale. For example, the SpotlessCity folks actually have to go from laundromat to laundromat to gain service providers, a speed bump that could slow down overall adoption. As it stands, however, I think there are plenty of people who would love a fire-and-forget system for warshin’ and foldin’ their britches and SpotlessCity seems to be the first to market.
Incidentally, you can get 20% off with the coupon code “NYTECHM”. They attended last nights NYTM in Manhattan.
Sadly, they don’t offer service in my area so I’m stuck sitting in my own filth.