Is starting an online Laundry/Dry-cleaning business profitable or loss making?

• As I told you in my previous articles, any business online or offline is always a successful/profitable but it solely depends on the person or team who is operating it. Coming into the specifics that is the Laundry or Dry-Cleaning(LDC) business below are my view points-

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/laundrydry-cleaning-business-profitable-premanth-kundurthi-pk-/

Online LDC business is as such a different concept to people. 

Example:

When compared with a normal food delivery company or an e-commerce company the logistics of a LDC business is quite different. In this sector the delivery executive should visit the customer’s place twice for the same order. 

He has to visit the customer’s place for pickup, take the garments back to the processing center. Once the garments are processed he should again deliver them back at the customers place. Effectively for one single order the delivery executive should visit the customer’s place twice. 

In case the customer wants to rewash the clothes then again the logistics doubles.

Logistics is only one of the points, there are many details where a person venturing into a LDC should check in detail for more in depth understanding of the business.

In this regard the service providers should first educate people on-

• What are the various types of services they are offering?
• What is the process on how they will be offering their services?
• What are the delivery timings?
• What are the areas in which they are offering their services?

And so on..

By answering these questions, customers will get an understanding on how actually an online LDC business works and start using them accordingly.

It’s always better to start a LDC business in the offline mode and then taking it in online. In the offline mode it is wise to start a single store and then scale it to multiple stores. By starting a single store they will know how to handle the- 

• Operations
• Human Resources
• Logistics
• Customer Relationship

LDC business is usually a volume business. A service provider can derive profits from this business only when he processes huge volume of garments.

If somebody is passionate about starting a LDC business online, here are some of the steps which they should follow-

• Do a market survey on what percentage of people will use such type of services
• Design a website
• Mobile application is not mandatory in the initial stages
• Have a call center team(where people can order your service by dialing the call center as well)
• Have a good human resources team, as LDC business is a labour intensive business, human resources is the heart of this business
• Have a dedicated logistics fleet which is mandatory for online 

After running the above online model on a trial basis then people can scale it up based on the results. 

For more information on how to start a LDC online and how to turn it into a profitable model you can connect with me.

People can get in touch with me in LinkedIN, Facebook, Instagram

PK,

PK Enterprises.