MEET THE DISRUPTOR

brilliant ideas can come from the strangest places. Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook started as an interfacing app for Ivy League kids. Uber came to its creators’ minds when they had trouble hailing a cab. And Wash Cycle Laundry founder Gabriel Mandujano? He was thinking of dirty diapers when he came up with his business plan.

But more on that in a bit.

Wash Cycle, which has been around for six years, puts its own spin—pun incredibly intended—on industrial washing. They supply some of the standard laundering fair, including linens, sheets, towels, custodial supplies, floor mats, and clean clothes in bulk for universities and hospitals. They commit to the environmental bit, using all-natural detergents and high-efficiency laundry machines. But it’s the trip that the laundry takes that really sets it apart: Wash Cycle’s wares are carted around via bicycle to their local facilities. The company currently has campuses open in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and currently employs roughly 50, just about 40 of whom are stationed in Philly. (It also had a short-lived franchise in Austin, Texas.)

“Our work is directly in the city that we serve,” says Leigh Goldenberg. “Many of our commercial competitors are sending laundry maybe 90 or 150 miles away. But we’re never more than three miles away from our customers.”

https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/wash-cycle-laundry-gabriel-mandujano/