Wing Tips: Modern Solutions for Business Travel Relief with FlyCleaners
How two busy guys created the on-demand laundry service that is taking New York by storm.
The last couple of years have seen an explosion of technology companies emerging to make every day tasks more convenient. But for the most part, whether it's catching a ride across town, or having food delivered, the average customer might consider those treats to be splurged on occasionally.
One thing that isn't exactly optional, however, is doing your laundry. Although we might often end up putting it off for as long as possible, eventually everyone has to trudge down to the laundromat or dry-cleaners. That's especially true in New York City, the home of the on-demand laundry pick up service FlyCleaners, where so few people have a washer and dryer of their own.
There has to be a better way to handle this, founders Seth Berkowitz and David Salama thought. Particularly for those who work too late in the evening to make it to the dry cleaners in time, or for business travelers sick of paying exorbitant prices for hotel laundry. Berkowitz had just been to his fourth unsatisfactory dry cleaner in a row last year when he dreamed up the idea. A completely shrunken sweater, which now fit his four year old son perfectly, was the epiphany moment.
“That was when he said 'Ok, we need to do something differently,” says Salama, who at the time was working as the director of product at Capital IQ's innovation lab.
Having already founded the successful Insomnia Cookies, the idea of going to customers instead of making them come to you was a process that Berkowitz was already familiar with. Why not do the same with laundry then?
“We started to talk about what was holding the industry back, and what could be done with technology in order to change the paradigm to create a scalable and consumer-centric business out of it,” Salama says. To narrow in on the ideal concept, they laid out all of the hassles involved in doing laundry.
“Back when I was living in the city a few years back, I would have somebody that would come clean my apartment, and they would spend half the time doing my laundry. I knew it was a completely wasteful way of going about the process, but I didn't really see any sort of fantastic other options at the time.”
Salama says he went so far as to stop wearing dry clean-only clothes because he was never going to be home by 7 p.m. in order to pick it up. “I was always working too hard, and if I wasn't, the last thing I wanted to do was be hanging out with my dry cleaner.”
It's a problem that stretches across economic boundaries.
“It works for anybody who places a lot of value on their time. That encapsulates business professionals who want to dedicate a lot of time to work. It also captures students who would rather be studying, creatives who would rather be working on their passion projects than doing their laundry, young parents and families, and a lot of business travelers, people in town for a week or two weeks working on a project, dedicating all their time doing what they need do while in New York so they can go home as soon as possible.”
Two to three hours spent doing your laundry means less time to focus on what you actually want, or need, to get done.
The way FlyCleaners, which operates in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the moment, and has plans to expand into other cities starting next year, is simple. You sign on through the application, enter your preferences – starch or no, bleach, eco-friendly options and so on – request a pick up, and, they say, usually within 20 minutes a driver will arrive to pick it up. Prices for laundry range from $1.15-1.25 per pound, with dry cleaning being around $2.50 for a shirt, $12 for a suit, and $6-7 for pants, or skirts and so on. Then, when you're home and ready to pick it up, you let them know, and they bring it right back. That can often be as early as the next morning.
The service, which employes about 130 people at the moment, is particularly well-suited for business travelers. They open at 6 a.m. and close at midnight.
“Our laundry is done over night, so if you get it to us by 11 p.m., it can be ready as early as 7 a.m. the next day,” Salama says. “While you're sleeping we're doing the work that needs to be done.”
“If you're staying in a hotel in a New York and you're getting dry cleaning and laundry done, our prices will be 1/4 of the prices that you'll pay for hotel laundry. When you get back to hotel late at night after a long day of work, or going out for dinner meeting clients, we will be there to deliver you a fresh shirt so you can walk into your meeting tomorrow and look good doing it.”