- Laundry startup Washboard took the scorn of the media in 2014 for saying it would sell coin-operated washing machine quarters with a 35-50% markup. It closed after six days.
- But now, as more stores and customers turn to debit and credit payments to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, there is a nationwide coin shortage that causes people to rush to change to do laundry.
- Washboard co-founder Caleb Brown says he has no plans to bring the service back, despite people telling him “he’d like to see it come back.”
- Meanwhile, mommy laundries are turning to mobile payments or debit and credit card payments, according to the Coin Laundry Association.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
There’s a grainy 28-second vertical shot Youtube video from 2014 of a guy named Charlie Pizza raving about a new startup called Washboard. The startup promised to ship customers $ 20 in quarters for coin-operated washing machines at the low price of $ 26.99 per month.
Charlie Pizza, of course, isn’t real: the video was a marketing gimmick for the company that shipped customer quarters with a 35% markup (or 50% markup, if they chose to get $ 10 in quarters for $ 14.99).
In 2014, as analysts scratched their heads as Silicon Valley pumped $ 1.5 million into Yo, an app that texted people “yo,” company co-founder Caleb Brown put Washboard on Product Hunt, a website where people can vote in favor of new products or services. Are you interested in. Washboard quickly made it to the front page.
“We’re having fun. I didn’t think it would be rated that high,” Brown said. “I thought maybe we would have two clients.”
The startup went viral, and Washboard received extensive media scrutiny – and general mockery – during the company’s short six days.
Pittsburgh-based software developer Brown says he and his co-founder Shaun Chapman discontinued the service because his payment processor, Stripe, claimed that Washboard violated its terms of service (does not allow money orders ) and not finding another one is worth the energy.
Now, however, the company’s main idea of a coin subscription service seems viable again. The U.S. faces a nationwide coin shortage due to the coronavirus pandemic, as people are discouraged from using cash in stores and many cash-accepting businesses ask for an exact change to limit customer and employee contact. People who are desperately trying to do laundry they are driving to friends’ places to exchange money for coins, asking their parents to send housing, or relying on an escort from your employer.
Brown has heard from more than a dozen people asking him to restore the service, he tells Business Insider.
“People have told me many times over the past few months that they would like to see him come back,” Brown said. “Someone like a month ago said, ‘This is so ahead of its time.'”
Unfortunately for Washboard’s melancholy fans, Brown has no plans to restore the service anytime soon. “While I believe Washboard solved a real problem for real people, I didn’t think there was really an opportunity to grow Washboard beyond quarter delivery,” Brown wrote in 2014 when he and Chapman shut down. Brown, who currently works at a staff development startup called X-Team, isn’t interested in a relaunch even as the quarters have new value due to the pandemic.
The shortage spurred by the coronavirus crisis means that the 30,000 laundromats in the United States are taking a hit, according to Brian Wallace, CEO of the Coin Laundry Association. While many come with coin acceptors, many of them have little or even empty funds, leaving mom laundries to pivot on mobile payments or debit and credit card payments.
Wallace says 89% of laundromats offer coin payments, while 59% of those offer his only payment method.
Coin payment is still the most popular method for laundromat owners because it is the cheapest. Any laundry-specific payment app that aims to make a profit, he said, would take away from the laundry’s already low profit.
Washboard has never had a chance to reap many profits of its own. Only 41 people signed up for the subscription service before closing – Washboard made about $ 1.50 per order, bringing them to a measly $ 60 in profit by the end of the week.
“The concept is not really different from Venmo,” Brown said. “We weren’t making crazy money.”
Venmo charges a 3% transaction fee for credit cards, which, on the surface, is very different from Washboard’s markup on change. But the startup’s efforts were high and margins low: Brown had to open a separate bank account, buy hundreds of dollars in quarters and manually count money and coins in the mail to customers.
Shipping was free for users, but “obviously there is no free shipping,” Brown said.
Brown and Chapman actually raised a lot more money after they decided to shut down the site – the domain sold for $ 1,300.
Now, as companies have turned to delivering groceries and conducting virtual doctor visits during the pandemic, laundry remains one of those chores that still require in-person visits for many people across America. And while many laundromats have taken social distancing measures, coins are still hard to come by. Customers can try to get change at their local bank or in stores, but they can leave empty-handed due to limited availability. The problem relates to one of the few remaining YouTube comments on the original Charlie Pizza video:
“lol, but you had to wait 2 days to get the quarters and that’s plenty of time to get to the bank,” commented Jacqueline Marsh.
“That’s plenty of time to do it obtain in the bank but you still have to do it leave to the bank, “Brown replied.” And that, my friend, is the real problem. “
See also: Code collaboration startup Sourcegraph has raised $ 28 million and plans to double its staff during the pandemic. That’s why companies like Amazon and Tinder love its developer tools.
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