A Melbourne startup is offering to take care of an annoying but necessary task so you can focus on the more important things.
Dryz is an online platform and smartphone app providing an on-demand dry cleaning and laundry service for those too busy, or too lazy, to do their own.
It’s based around a simple concept: “You have better things to do.”
It’s a straightforward process, with users simply entering the time and location for a clothes pickup on the website or app. The dirty clothes will then be picked up, thoroughly cleaned, and returned freshly pressed within 48 hours. It’s the same concept as LaundryRun, another Melbourne-based startup which launched recently.
Dryz co-founder Tuan Vu has experience with mobile application development, and has also been immersed in the dry cleaning world through his family.
“I’ve always been around dry cleaning,” he says. “I’m a regular user of dry cleaning too, but it’s a cumbersome and inefficient process. I needed to do it and there wasn’t a solution.”
Vu says he wants to capitalise on the recent surge of online, on-demand services, driven by the success of Uber.
“With the momentum of the on-demand economy, coming from the Uber model, a lot of services come from our smartphones now,” he says.
The team is preparing to soft launch the service in a proof of concept phase, where a driver will pick up the clothes from users, deliver them to partnering dry cleaning companies, and then return the goods.
“The aim is to keep it simple and minimise the many tasks that you have to go through,” Vu says.
“There are four steps you need to do normally to get your dry cleaning done. By using this app, we’ve eliminated these.”
Dryz will be using a handful of “very reliable” dry cleaning partners, who are also environmentally friendly.
“We have a good product, and we want to help the environment and make people’s lives easier,” he says.
The startup is offering competitive prices for the service, with jeans costing $10, a dress $18, while a shirt will set you back $4.50.
“It could even be cheaper than driving to the dry cleaners and dropping it off, then driving back to pick it up,” he says. “There are so many overheads that way.”
The startup has been entirely bootstrapped by the founders so far, who are waiting to see how the service is received before looking for outside investment.
“We’re not raising any capital in the near future because we want to see that this model will take off,” he says. “We don’t know what the demand is, so we’re going to have a soft launch.”
The startup is currently pre-launch, but Tuan hopes it will be available on the App Store by the end of the month.
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Denham Sadler is a former editor of StartupSmart. He was previously a journalist at the publication and has worked as a freelancer for the Guardian, the Saturday Paper and the ABC. In his spare time he likes puns and jaffles.
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