Alumni Gazette

A ‘Brand’ New Laundry

Green

Notoya Green ’98 was just looking for a place that would do her laundry with the same care that she would do it—if she had the time.

But as a young lawyer starting her career in New York City, time was one thing she didn’t have. That’s when the idea hit her: What if there were a place that would pick up your laundry, clean it with diligent attention, and then drop off the clean clothes in a nice, tidy bundle?

In December 2004, Green and her partner, Fred Mwangaguhunga, launched the Laundry Spa, an upscale laundry service in Manhattan, to do just that.

“Fred and I noticed that we often had problems with laundry that we sent out,” Green says. “We realized that there is no national or regional brand to guarantee quality—all laundry services are mom-and-pop operations.”

While currently only available in parts of New York City, Green and Mwangaguhunga have visions of a national high-quality laundry service chain that people could recognize and trust.

“We want to change the industry the way Starbucks changed coffee,” Green says. “The quality is consistent from Starbucks to Starbucks. We want that for laundry.”

The service is gaining some attention among young professionals, including a spotlight mention on the New York Post’s “Hot List” and positive reviews on Web sites and blogs such as Shefinds.com and the New York site for UrbanBaby.com.

To use the service, customers schedule a laundry pickup on the business’s Web site (www.laundryspa.com) or by phone, and get their meticulously cleaned, neatly packaged items 48 hours later.

The service isn’t cheap—laundry is $2.25 per pound, and diapers are $1 apiece—but Green says it’s worth it.

“Some businesses compete based on price, but we compete based on quality,” she says.

One of the business’s core values includes a guarantee that each item will be cleaned according to its care instructions.

“We had contracted with others to do the washing, but so many people don’t value our approach,” she says. “They didn’t get it—they just said, ‘Who’s going to know’ and didn’t follow the washing instructions. So we bought washers and dryers and took over all stages of the process. We needed to, to maintain the integrity of the brand.”

Green says the approach is paying off. In less than a year, “We almost have more customers than we can handle.”

And that’s just in certain parts of New York City. She hopes to expand to other metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles and Chicago and, later, sell the company’s own brand of detergent and fabric softeners with signature lavender and lime scents. (“They’re made from essential oils,” Green notes.)

But first she wants to build the value of the brand.

“When we were planning the business, our friends kept saying, ‘What’s taking so long? It’s just a stupid laundry service.’ But we wanted to create something special.”

—Jayne Denker