We’ve all been there: your laundry basket is overflowing with smelly gym clothes, your outfit from the day (or week!) before is discarded haphazardly on the floor, and you can’t find a single clean thing to wear to class. We go to the notorious Work Forest…who has time for laundry, anyway?
Lucky for us, several years ago some entrepreneurial students with a knack for business launched Wake Wash, a laundry service that delivers freshly laundered clothes right to your door!
This student-run business venture is now in its third generation of ownership. Juniors Alex Smereczniak and Quentin Robert, along with two friends, outbid other teams for the ownership of Wake Wash last year, and have totally revamped the business model.
The new owners have a contract with the school allowing them to market on Wake’s website, and they have the support of the University to be the only on-campus, student-run laundry and dry-cleaning delivery service.
Robert, a mathematical economics major and entrepreneurship minor, is responsible for the financial bookkeeping for Wake Wash.
“I make sure we have enough revenue to cover our costs and try to predict what our margins are going to be,” he explains. “This data enables me to compare our performance with previous owners.”
More and more students are forgoing the trek to the ever-crowded laundry room (we all know it’s practically impossible to score an empty washer), and have signed up for this service. 118 students have registered this semester, and 53 are preregistered for the spring semester, compared to the 93 students for the entire 2011-2012 school year.
Smereczniak, a finance major with an entrepreneurship minor, was pleased with these results.
“Guess our marketing paid off!” he said.
“We plan on implementing a faculty dry-cleaning service as an expansion of the existing contract we have with the University,” Smereczniak continued. “We are hoping that they might someday include our service in the cost of room and board – a long shot – or at least make it one of the checkmarks parents have the option of choosing when they pay for room and board, meal plans, and parking.”
Weekly and bimonthly services are available with laundry pick-up on Tuesday morning and delivery on Thursday. And Wake Wash doesn’t just serve residence halls – they’ll pick up your dirty clothes from off-campus houses, apartments and town homes.
As their website says: “If you have dirty laundry, we’ll take it!”
Smereczniak is initiating impressive projects for the future.
“The biggest plan we have for Wake Wash is expanding the same business model and structure we have here to other Universities across the country,” he said. “We’ve already seen a lot of interest and are currently negotiating contracts with a few other schools.”
And it seems that students are more than enthusiastic about the re-vamped business.
“I put my bag of laundry outside my door on Tuesday and it magically reappears on Thursday…my sheets and everything! It saves me a ton of time,” said sophomore Charlotte Knobloch, a recent Wake Wash customer.
The bottom line? All of you laundry-phobes out there need fret no longer. Stop shrinking your favorite tees, or accidentally turning your whole load an unfortunate shade of pink, and check out the new and improved Wake Wash!
For more information about pricing and signing up, visit: http://www.wakewashwfu.com/