Technology has simplified almost every aspect of our lives, from food delivery to transportation, but one home duty has resisted change: laundry. Enter Poplin, an app-based service that changes laundry from a stressful task to a smooth experience. Poplin is transforming the laundry industry with a novel business model that links clients with independent contractors, known as “Laundry Pros,” via an easy-to-use smartphone. This peer-to-peer marketplace approach enables users to outsource their laundry jobs easily. Customers simply put their laundry outside, and a Poplin Laundry Pro picks them up, washes, dries, folds, and returns them the next day, all for around $1 per pound. “Poplin solves laundry. It’s beautiful. You just tap the app, you take your laundry, you put it outside your front door, back door, whatever your designated spot. And that’s it. You go on, you enjoy your day, do what you really want to do, which of course, is not laundry,” explains Mort Fertel, CEO of Poplin.
This seamless process epitomizes the convenience that Poplin aims to provide, liberating users from the burdensome chore of laundry and allowing them to focus on more critical aspects of their lives. The inspiration for Poplin came from a moment of frustration experienced by Fertel’s wife in 2017. Realizing the vast potential for disruption in the laundry sector, Mort and his son Nachshon Fertel founded Poplin in 2018 in Baltimore, Maryland. “Poplin started because of one comment my wife made in 2017”, Fertel says, “She was home with our five kids buried in laundry and she’s like, this is crazy. I can tap an app and get to the airport, FaceTime someone on the other side of the world, but I’m still doing laundry like my grandmother.” They aimed to provide a modern solution to an age-old problem, leveraging technology to create a hassle-free laundry service.
Poplin has a basic yet successful business concept. Customers use the app to schedule laundry collections and pay per pound. Laundry Pros, who are independent contractors, get 75% of each transaction, while Poplin keeps 25%. “Just think of it as Uber for laundry,” Fertel says, “Poplin is a two-sided peer-to-peer marketplace. On one side, we have our customers that outsource their laundry. They pay a dollar per pound.” Poplin’s is portraying itself as a middleman that enables transactions between two user groups: clients and laundry professionals. Poplin’s target market is diverse, including busy professionals, parents, pensioners, and those with chronic health conditions. Essentially, anyone wishing to recoup the time and effort spent washing is a prospective client. Poplin works in the on-demand services industry, defined by businesses that use gig economy workers to deliver accessible, technology-driven solutions to common issues. This business comprises big firms such as Uber and Airbnb, with Poplin carving out a niche in the laundry service market.
Poplin has attracted significant investment, underscoring its potential for growth. Fertel explains, “we’re the first and only nationwide laundry service company. We’re in 500 markets, 8,000 zip codes, 48 states. And all the growth attracted the attention of Silicon Valley.” The company raised $10 million in a seed round, with contributions from notable investors. This funding has enabled Poplin to expand its services and enhance its technology, setting the stage for continued growth and market penetration. Poplin has grown rapidly, employing around 70 people and supporting a network of over 150,000 Laundry Pros across the United States. This impressive scale reflects the company’s successful business model and the growing demand for its services. This extensive geographic coverage makes Poplin the first and only nationwide laundry service, providing a consistent and reliable experience for customers nationwide.
Poplin has been making significant strides in expanding its market presence and improving its service offerings.
“Our goal is to create a new norm where your average person outsources their laundry. We’re starting to see this transformation take place with our customer base. We’re getting five to 7,000 new customers a month. And the growth that we’ve been experiencing has not compromised quality. 96% of Poplin’s customers give Poplin a five-star rating.”
In addition to its impressive customer acquisition rate, Poplin has taken steps to encompass SMBs. “We think this is a ginormous opportunity. I mean, there’s 125 million households producing 50 pounds of nonstop laundry every single week. If you do the math at a dollar per pound, which is what we charge in most ZIP codes, this is a $300 billion market that’s in the U.S. alone, and that’s even before you count SMBs, which are actually the fastest-growing portion of our customer base.”
Poplin plans to continue enhancing its app and service offerings, making it even easier for customers to outsource their laundry. The company is also focused on expanding its network of Laundry Pros, ensuring that they have the resources and support needed to deliver high-quality service consistently.
“Our mission is to help each other live a better life,” Fertel explains, “notice that that’s happening on both sides of the marketplace, right? It’s obvious that the laundry pros are helping our customers live a better life because they can outsource their laundry and use that time to do things that they consider to be more valuable and more important than laundry. But our customers are helping our laundry pros live a better life also because they’re giving them this unique opportunity to work from home.”
As Poplin continues to grow and expand, it remains committed to helping people live better lives by freeing them from the burden of laundry.
