Yahoo Finance On-demand laundry start-up expands to America following coronavirus surge in demand
A British on-demand laundry start-up has expanded to the US following a surge in demand during the coronavirus pandemic.
Laundryheap, founded in London in 2014, raised new funding in April and has launched its on-demand laundry and dry cleaning service in New York and Boston.
The business now plans to expand to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Chief executive Deyan Dimitrov said he hopes to eventually reach 20 American cities.
“The fact that people stayed at home actually opened a lot of other possibilities for us,” he said.
The start-up saw a drop in customers for its dry cleaning service, but picked up more business from people who were self-isolating and wanted to clean their laundry with a hotter wash.
Laundryheap has also seen a rise in enterprise business from companies such as hairdressers, restaurants and bars which no longer wanted to entrust washing their linen to employees.
“A lot more businesses realised that this should not be done by themselves and they can find a company to do it outside more efficiently,” Mr Dimitrov said. “We've seen more companies getting in contact with us. This became a bigger issue for them.”
The impact of the pandemic has also encouraged family-owned laundrettes to partner with the business to offset a drop in walk-in customers, according to Mr Dimitrov.
“While they might have been sceptical about the on-demand space in the past, with Covid they realised how important online and on demand is,” he said.
Laundryheap is now preparing to close another round of funding, its chief executive said. It previously raised £2m from backers Simon Smith and QVentures in 2017.
The pandemic has seen a surge in demand for many online laundry services in the UK. Rival business Oxwash announced in May that it had raised £1.4m in funding from backers including Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter.
Mr Stone owns around 1.4pc of the start-up, which uses electric bicycles to collect and deliver laundry and washes them using ozone technology to sterilise clothing.
