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Sisters start pick-up laundry business in Frederick
Ryan Marshall, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
5 min read
Marissa Misner decided to make a business out of other people’s chores.
In March, Misner and her sister Miranda started Frederick Laundry, a company that will pick up your laundry, wash it, and return it.
While they’re still expanding their clientele, Misner has been glad to see a lot of interest in it.
“People are happy to just take one thing off their to-do list,” she said.
Marissa handles the marketing and administrative work, while Miranda, who was diagnosed with autism, works more behind the scenes with washing, folding, and other aspects.
As the sisters thought about starting the company, Misner was unhappy at her corporate marketing job and looking for a new path.
She thought about going into jewelry making, but didn’t think the work would be steady enough.
Laundry seemed like a stable area. It isn’t seasonal, and it’s something everybody needs to do — or, have done.
She needed something that offered jobs that someone with an intellectual disability like her sister could do.
She originally wanted to open a full-scale laundromat, but after talking it over with several business mentors, bankers, and other laundromat owners, she decided that the up-front costs and permitting process would be too great.
The machines needed for a commercial laundromat cost about $1,000 apiece, and she was told she would need an initial investment of about a $300,000 to get a laundromat off the ground.
“I definitely got let down a lot,” she said of her hopes of breaking into the laundry business.
Her new business does clothes, bedding and towels. It recently added a new element in which the business will put clean laundry away, make beds, and perform other tasks, and it’s thinking about offering a service to clean shoes.
One of their earlier clients had some blankets to be washed that were used for bedding for a pet guinea pig, Miranda Misner said.
The prices are mostly determined by the weight of the loads, and orders include a delivery fee, Marissa Misner said.
Wash-and-fold service starts at $2 per pound, while cleaning a king-sized blanket runs $20, according to the website.
Customers can download the CleanCloud app — one commonly used by laundromats and dry cleaners — from the business’ website with pricing information, and pick options such as wash/dry/fold, ironing, pet hair removal, and others.
Then, people can pick what day and time they want their laundry picked up and when they want it brought back.
Once their payment information is entered, the app will ask for their address, as well as their preferences for detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheets, and whether they want their colors separated from their whites.
EXPANDING PART OF THE ECONOMY
Plenty of Americans use Uber to catch a ride or DoorDash to have a meal delivered.
Indeed, ride-for-hire and food delivery services are among the most common types of platform workers — workers who use a platform such as a mobile app or website, to provide goods and services — at 61.5% and 13.7%, respectively, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2021.
But the so-called “gig economy” that provides services that people don’t want to handle themselves stretches further into the U.S. economy than that.
In 2023, there were more than 72 million independent workers in the U.S., making up 45% of the country’s workforce, according to a study by MBO Partners, a company that seeks to bring organizations and independent workers together.
And the number of workers who work independently on an occasional, part-time, or full-time basis has increased 89% since 2020, according to the study.
Some of those are more specialized positions that help large corporations with video production or other unique assignments.
But others will walk your dog, pick up your groceries, or handle other tasks you either don’t want or don’t have time to do.
In some ways, the gig economy has been around for years, said Mahesh Joshi, the dean of the George B. Delaplaine Jr. School of Business at Hood College.
“If everybody loved cooking, there wouldn’t be any restaurants,” he said.
Anything that used to be called a chore now has the potential for someone to start a business to do it, Joshi said.
“If we don’t want to do something, then we’ll find someone else to do it,” he said.
Such work is more common now than in the past because creating a market has become easier with the use of digital platforms, he said.
The technology has made it easier than ever to bring providers and consumers of a service together, he said.
The key factor is finding enough people in an area who are willing to pay to have a task done for them.
“Anything can be outsourced. Anything can be made into the gig economy if economies of scale exist,” Joshi said.
A PASSION RATHER THAN A CHOREFor now, Marissa drives around to pick up their orders, limited to within about a 15-mile radius of Frederick.
But she would like to get a central location where people can drop their loads off to be collected.
Eventually, they would like to expand to other parts of Maryland and beyond, and to be able to provide jobs for other people with intellectual disabilities.
For now, they’ve gotten partnerships with sports teams such as the Frederick Flying Cows basketball team and the Skyline Frederick soccer teams, as well as organizations such as the Student Homelessness Initiative Project of Frederick County and Living Water shower ministry, which provides portable shower facilities for people experiencing homelessness.
As the business continues to grow, Misner hopes to live up to the first line of the company’s website, which describes the venture as a place “where laundry isn’t a chore, it’s our passion.”
