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Japan’s online laundry service, Lenet, is growing fast

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See the original article in Japanese WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago. The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days. The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction. Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that. The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much? Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership…

See the original article in Japanese

WhitePlus is a Japanese startup that offers an online laundry service called Lenet. It lets users request a pick up of their laundry, which will then be cleaned and delivered to their home. Recently, on December 2nd, membership for this laundry service surpassed 40,000 people. That total is three times bigger than a year ago.

The latest upgrade of the service took place on September 30th, with the price reduced, and the minimum delivery time being cut to 2 days.

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The company raised funds in August of 2013, and since then they have been growing their business. For such a paid service, one of the indicators we should look is the rate of repeat customers, a sign user satisfaction.

Ryosuke Saito, the company’s CEO and CMO, told us a little about that.

The Bridge: It seems sales has been growing well for you. Do you have any indicators that show how much?

Saito: We cannot disclose detailed figures, but as an example, the CVR of new users is increasing since our renewal at the end of September. To increase our repeat user rate, we changed the price as well. Since we implemented our membership fee (premium membership costs 315 yen, or about$3 per month), we have reduced the discount rate for members from 20% to 35%, with intention of making the price lower than regular offline laundry services. Also, by making a delivery time of two days, we hoped to increase user satisfaction.

Lenet doesn’t own a cleaning facilities. It uses those of partners. And by reviewing the process from inspection to packaging, the overall process is made even more efficient. As a result, they could shorten the delivery time. But to do all this, they have also hired industry professionals who have much experience.

クリーニングの宅配ならリネットのクリーニング

The Bridge: The business model is to use available resources without having to own your own cleaning facilities. But can you easily scale this business without owning such facilities?

Saito: Our next challenge it to increase our capacity. And yes, that means we need to find facilities. Now we are planning to establish a facility with a business partner. From there we can expand out from that, sort of as the center of other facilities to come later.


For the business model of this type of business, one advantage was that it didn’t require too many resources. That’s why Linet utilized partners, tying up with five different facilities.

However, as he told me in a previous interview, the industry is quite closed. I heard some stories about how the business can be quite hard on young new-comers. And perhaps that’s why they need to establish their own facilities.

Partner factories have the advantage of receiving more orders through the tie-up. According to Saito, he wanted to make his factory into a center where they can check and ensure operations are streamlined.

This attempt by Linet to bring a traditionally offline service online is definitely worth watching. So stay tuned to see how they do!

Japanese startup raises $3M to bring laundry services online

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See the original story in Japanese. Lenet is a web service that allows users to order a pick up of your laundry and have it delivered to your home when it is done. White Plus, the startup behind the service, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (approximately $3 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco. They said there would be no way to sell laundry services online. When users order online, the startup’s courier will come and pick up the laundry within a couple of hours. Subsequently the laundry will be washed at partnering cleaners and then returned to your door. We had a chance to hear from the startup’s CEO Takayuki Inoshita about why there has been no startup taking advantage of this opportunity so far: When I visited industrial laundry facilities to explore partnerships, many of them got angry at me. They said there would be no way to sell laundry services online. The laundry industry is a space where facilities requires a lot of time to respond to claims from consumers. This frequency depends very much on how a clerk at the shop behaves in the inspection process when receiving laundry from customers. For a laundry…

lenet_screenshot

See the original story in Japanese.

Lenet is a web service that allows users to order a pick up of your laundry and have it delivered to your home when it is done. White Plus, the startup behind the service, announced today it has raised 300 million yen (approximately $3 million) from Japanese investment company Jafco.

They said there would be no way to sell laundry services online.

When users order online, the startup’s courier will come and pick up the laundry within a couple of hours. Subsequently the laundry will be washed at partnering cleaners and then returned to your door.

We had a chance to hear from the startup’s CEO Takayuki Inoshita about why there has been no startup taking advantage of this opportunity so far:

When I visited industrial laundry facilities to explore partnerships, many of them got angry at me. They said there would be no way to sell laundry services online. The laundry industry is a space where facilities requires a lot of time to respond to claims from consumers. This frequency depends very much on how a clerk at the shop behaves in the inspection process when receiving laundry from customers.

For a laundry company, if you bring your business completely online and experience difficulty in the inspection process, you’ll receive more complaints from customers. That’s why nobody has tried it online so far. But the startup took a unique approach and established its own laundry shop to examine what to do to make the service work. The company’s CMO Ryosuke Saito explains:

We actually built up our own shop where we were testing the inspecting process using laundry that we picked up from our customers. The reception process was the toughest part. We spent three years to learn how to refrain from wrinkling customer’s laundry when packing it for shipping to laundry facilities.

CEO Inoshita has received national qualification as a cleaning master. And as a result, the company has succeeded in standardizing the inspection process and bringing the entire service process online. By partnering with courier companies to pick laundry up from customers, they will complete the inspection process within two hours of receiving an order.

The company’s concept is very similar to that of Raksul providing discount printing services, in terms of make the most of downtime at factories. But unlike Raksul, laundry services are more difficult to standardize, so the company is still limiting its partner facilities for now.

The startup was launched back in 2009 by three co-founders, and they’ve been devoting themselves to developing the service, with a vision of a world where everyone is connected to the internet all the times.

With the new funds, the company plans to intensify its marketing efforts to get its user base to 1 million soon.