Neat&Clean Laundry Service Business Plan
BUSINESS IDEA
Every person needs clean clothes. On campus, keeping track of your laundry is difficult task. Neat&Clean is an online laundry service. Our vision is to exceed the expectations of the customers in quality of laundry services. Neat&Clean will provide door to door convenient laundry experience. Neat&Clean will provide fully washed, dried, ironed clothes with optional folding services. It is an app based booking system where the user needs to select the time of pickup along with the number and type of clothes he/she needs. Payment of the service can be done through cash on the initial stages of implementation and can be further taken up by online payments. What will set Neat&Clean apart from the competition is our commitment to providing professional, friendly, prompt, and, most importantly, convenient services on campus.
Market Demand
With the change in the living standards, people are becoming more conscious with cleanliness. People of today are very particular about their clothes. People prefer to wear well cleaned and ironed dress materials. Students at campus cannot take up daily laundry services by themselves due to lack of time and expertise. Also, some of the clothes require professional laundering services. Using campus provided washing machines for the same isn’t sufficient, hence Neat&Clean will be one kind of laundry service helping students to keep their clothes well maintained and thus providing an online experience of booking this door to door service.
Relevant Products in the market
The current market has lot of laundering services which comply with customer needs and satisfaction. We have to face strong competition with the already existing services which have a fair share of loyal customers. But keeping all this in mind Neat&Clean is modelled in such a way that at the initial stage we are targeting the campus students only. Hence the competitive markets narrow down thus making Neat&Clean relevant in terms of services. Some of the already existing products are:
· UClean
· Urban Dhobi
· Tooler
· Laundry Anna
· Wassup Laundry
But these are not the service which target our campus. Neat&Clean will be first on campus based laundry service. The pricing of our service will be affordable by the students and hence making its own value among the customers.
Target Customers
One of the upper edge that Neat&Clean targets is that in the very initial stages of the implementation it will provide services only to the campus students and on campus faculty residents only. In today’s fast paced growing lifestyle having cleaned and ironed clothes is a must thing. But this task seems to be difficult for the students staying in campus due to lack of proper equipment’s and knowledge. Also time plays a major constraint in student’s life to take up laundering daily. There are some clothes which cannot be handled by students single handily. This is where Neat&Clean comes into picture. The on-campus faculty residents also have a fast growing busy daily routine. There are some clothes which cannot be handled at home, Hence Neat&Clean helps the families of on-campus faculty residents with laundering services. And not to forget Neat&Clean is a door to door service which can be booked on a single click takinga leap in the world of digitalization. I hope to build a brand that is for the students and by the students of the campus. Neat&Clean will target the students to make their routine easier with just clicking and booking the laundry services as per their needs.
Your Solution
To solve the laundry problem in day to day busy life, Neat&Clean is a web-app based solution which provides door to door puck up and drop of the laundry services for the on-campus students and faculty residents. The architectural flow / usage of web app is as follow:
Required Knowledge or Expertise
Software:
Neat&Clean is a web-based app. The website development will require knowledge and expertise in following languages and framework. It will be a JavaScript based web app. Languages used will be as follow:
· React
· HTML
· CSS
· JavaScript
· Python/Java
Software development also require knowledge about integrating front-end and back-end functionalities.
Hardware:
Neat&Clean will require machinery installation. Machineries will include installation of washing machines, iron machines, packaging systems etc. Hence through study of the latest features and technology in market is needed. Neat&Clean values customer hence installing, best in market product is the first step.
Estimated Budget
Total budget required to setup Neat&Clean laundry services for the initial phase is as follow. These are just estimated figures which may vary depending upon the flow of the process:
Software:
As Neat&Clean is a web app therefore development of website is time consuming. The deployment of website can be initially done on open sources like netlify/ heruko (for front-end) and heroku (for backend). The software deployment is hence 0 incurring but may cost 3,800INR/month at later stages.
Hardware:
Neat&Clean requires machinery installation. Machinery includes 3 fully automated washing machines. 3 iron presses.
Manpower:
As Neat&Clean is a door to door laundry service, it will require some manpower for the same. Also operating machinery and packing the clothes will require manpower. Hence hiring 2 people initially will help the business grow.
Electricity/ Water Expense:
As Neat&Clean is a laundry service which will require electricity for machinery and water for cleaning part of the process. Other products like washing powder of premium quality will also be required.
Marketing:
The market strategy for Neat&Clean is described in detail in the Marketing Plan section. Hence posters and pamphlets will also incur cost to the overall business budget.
As the machinery installation is only needed at the beginning of the setup hence may not be included in the following years to come. The expenditure is written as below:
Product Pricing
Marketing Plan
In order for our laundering service idea to thrive it should reach more and more students on campus. It should reach out to students in such a way which depicts benefits of our services to them. The marketing should have genuine reasons of why people should subscribe to our laundering services. Socialization will be our main marketing plan. Apart from the website we will take Neat&Clean onto social media platforms, college notice boards and magazines.
Social Media Plan:
Neat&Clean will create a following and engagements through social media platforms. These platforms include:
These platforms will target the young generation and build a brand of its own and keep the followers informed about the launch of the business, benefits of our services and other timely offerings and updates by Neat&Clean to keep its customers/followers engaged with themselves.
Sales Plan:
Neat&Clean will provide introductory offer to first 15 customers to have a discount of 15% on the bill prices for availing our services. This will interact more and more students towards our laundry services. The initial launch will be publicized via college notice boards. Banners and posters will be put up along sides the cafeteria and mess areas of the hostels to interact students. Hostel to hostel advertisement will be done once a month to let people know about the upcoming services for their benefits.
Risk Analysis
Entrepreneurship developments comes with risk in the path which need to be taken care of at every stage to thrive the business. The Neat&Clean laundry services can be divided into three parts. The first one is software implementation, second one is hardware infrastructure and third one is manpower.
Software risks:
After the development of website, deployment and yearly maintenance is a task of its own. The deployment can be carried out via open-source, but maintenance need to be done timely so as to not incur and user experience. Also tracking the traffic on the website at somewhat later stage needs to be analyzed when the business grows after some point of time.
Hardware Infrastructure:
Setting up fully automated and high quality washing machines and ironing machines to satisfy customer needs is a big task. Compromise in quality cannot be done. There needs to be a detailed analysis of the machines to be used as they cannot be changed often. Long run analysis is need to set up hardware infrastructure. We will begin will just 2–3 units of machine installations at early stage of the business to analyze the flow. Also electricity and power backup and machine failure analysis plan needs to be done to ensure safe and timely delivery to our customers.
Manpower:
As Neat&Clean is a door to door laundering service i.e. we ensure timely pickup of customer’s clothes and timely drop off of customer’s clothes. This process is digitalized but manpower is needed to carry out this door to door service on campus. There can be times when manpower may fall short or not adhere to the timelines. Hence analysis of manpower and backups need to be done. Manpower is needed to operate the machinery and ironing also. Skilled persons are needed to ensure loyalty and friendly experience to the users of Neat&Clean.
Milestone and Timeline
The timeline to setup Neat&Clean for its first initial launch is depicted below via a Gantt chart which includes planning, analyzing, research, manual effort, marketing and final implementation of website.
Every person needs clean clothes. On campus, keeping track of your laundry is difficult task. Neat&Clean is an online laundry service. Our vision is to exceed the expectations of the customers in quality of laundry services. Neat&Clean will provide door to door convenient laundry experience. Neat&Clean will provide fully washed, dried, ironed clothes with optional folding services. It is an app based booking system where the user needs to select the time of pickup along with the number and type of clothes he/she needs. Payment of the service can be done through cash on the initial stages of implementation and can be further taken up by online payments. What will set Neat&Clean apart from the competition is our commitment to providing professional, friendly, prompt, and, most importantly, convenient services on campus.