{"id":3662,"date":"2019-09-09T17:16:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T17:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flat6labs.com\/new\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2025-06-23T16:30:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T13:30:28","slug":"washmen-the-future-of-laundry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flat6labs.com\/washmen-the-future-of-laundry\/","title":{"rendered":"Washmen: The Future of Laundry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Story Behind Amounting Millions of Investments From Laundry<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Washmen\u2019s Co-Founder Rami Shaar at our Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi Demo Day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Leaders are catalysts of change, they innovate after years of wear and tear to civilisations-old manuals. After graduating from Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi\u2019s Spring 2015 cycle, the laundry startup, Washmen, was already on a path to becoming one of the leading laundry shops in the UAE. We sat with its CEO & Co-founder, Rami Shaar, to talk about how they are revolutionising the laundry industry, the backstory to their success, their plans for the future in regards to their services, and how they plan on allocating the most recent investments towards scaling and development.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did you decide to localise your service in a plant of your own instead of outsourcing to local laundry shops?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u00a0isn\u2019t a lot of good quality, or big players<\/mark>\u00a0in the market who\u2019d give us a\u00a0price that makes sense for the business and the quality<\/mark>. Hence, we thought that it\u2019d be a good idea for us to build our own facility, which would eventually give us a\u00a05x scaling opportunity<\/mark>. It helped us \u2014 significantly \u2014\u00a0improve the quality<\/mark>. Also, we had gotten into a stage in the business where running a\u00a0very large facility is equal to the cost of outsourcing<\/mark>. It just didn\u2019t make sense to outsource anymore. Especially given that if we start scaling further past it, it will give us more gross profits; since we will have the ability to acquire new customers with more items for laundry. So the reasons are mainly financial and operational.<\/p>\n

Do you think owning a plant brings with it more operational complexities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a certain\u00a0limit to how much we can force our suppliers to use our tech<\/mark>, and to\u00a0integrate them deep into their operations<\/mark>\u00a0because they are not willing to accept certain ways on how to do business.<\/p>\n

We can say that the way we do things is more operationally efficient<\/mark>, and we collectively have decided that the best way to move forward and to manage our supply chain was by owning the facility. In addition, owning our own facility allows us to build tech that was very\u00a0deep into the supply chain<\/mark>, and to be consistent with out quality.<\/p>\n

Hence, with our dependence on our own factory, our services can be more customisable, especially given that we can build more tech within the operations to be able to follow up on specific instructions of our customers.<\/p>\n

We are also working on developing a camera monitoring technology that will allow us to monitor, pinpoint and know where to put accountability when it comes to damages and lost goods. It goes towards monitoring employees and processes to see how efficiency can be improved.<\/p>\n

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Photo is courtesy of Arabian Business<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What differentiates your services from similar ones in the market?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If something gets damaged or lost, in this industry, consumer rights dictate that companies are to pay 10 times the price of the service<\/mark>. For us, we are more confident that we won\u2019t damage or lose any goods,\u00a0so we offer 20 times the price of the service<\/mark>. Sometimes we even go above and beyond if we know that there is negligence on our part. That\u2019s really the overall quality, the overall operations, and how it translates to lower risk towards the customer.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in our app, we have a call centre and a live chat function; and we also have founders who are very involved with our customers. Having a direct channel of communication with our customers allows us to also improve our services through feedback, and to understand what is it exactly that our customers want in order for us to have a better product-market fit.<\/p>\n

Logistically speaking, using the app is much easier than calling somebody. This can be attributed to having a pickup and drop off service, so the customer doesn\u2019t really need to drive anywhere. We also have online payments, and not a lot of players in the market offer that, and we have a much higher quality that is non existent in the market at the moment.<\/p>\n

Something that really stands out now at washmen, is that we have introduced commercial hand washing, and commercial hand drying. Basically, it is a process that mimics hand-wash, and hand dry, but we do it industrially in the facility. This is mainly done through very special machines. Also, we have plans for a shoe cleaning service because a lot of our customers have been asking for it, so that\u2019s next in line.<\/p>\n

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