SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fairmeadow Did 1500 Bins of Laundry Last Month, $240k in Revenue, 300 Customers
17 Nov 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
So if you do 90 per day, four days a week, and there's about four weeks in a month, you did about 1400 bins of laundry in July. You are listening to conversations with Nathan Latka. Now, if you're hearing this, it means you're not currently on our subscriber feed to subscribe, go to get latka.com. When you subscribe, you won't hear ads like this one. You'll get the full interviews.
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Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Miriam Quintana. She's building a company called Fair Meadow Home, which is a doorstep laundry service. They do not price by the pound.
They price per the bin, which is a big deal. We're going to jump into it. Miriam, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes, of course. Okay, so first off, when did you launch this business? When did you get it going? So we started in June of 2018, and we started working on the idea for a couple weeks, kind of like, nitpicking all the details.
There were three co-founders at the time, Javier, me, Carmen, and myself. And this was an idea that they had actually been thinking about before. It's not something that they were truly getting into at all because Javier has a software background. So they didn't really have the time for this.
And we were just sitting in a living room one time thinking about the kind of business that we could start because we were actually doing it from more software wise. And they just started telling me about the idea and we just started calling people and making the arrangements and it just started going from there. So what do you charge per bin and how many pounds can a bin hold?
So in a bin, you can fit up to like 25, 30 pounds of laundry, depending on what type of garments are in there. You can fit a quilt, you can fit a small medium comforter. It costs $15 to have a basic service, which includes just having the side screen clear detergent. This summer, we also have a payment service which will cost $18. And with that, you can add software, you can add a sense.
And that also includes in-home delivery for people who have just any doubt of moving their laundry out on their coach. And in June, so last month, well, July, I guess, how many bins did you guys process? We processed an average of 90 bins per day. day. We work only Monday through Thursday.
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Chapter 2: What is FairMeadow and how does it operate?
Okay. So we're talking about $10,000, um, give or take. So like, it just, it all varies depending on how many bins we have, because all of our folders are being sued by the bins. I see. Now, does that $10,000 a month in payroll, that's just for your facility manager, the washers, the drivers? Does that include you three paying yourself or no? No, not right now. When do you start paying yourself?
I have no idea, but I have really just mainly focused on growing the business because I feel it's the most important, like taking off and making sure that it's supplying itself because we haven't had any investments other than the initial investment that Javier and Cara put in. And at this point, they moved out to Puerto Rico and they started a new venture out there.
So right now we're separating... And like all of the, you know, legally separating them from the company. Why have them separate companies? Why not build a massive global brand that does a million bins of laundry per week?
Chapter 3: When was FairMeadow launched and what inspired its creation?
That is actually, that was our very first insight right now. We're not separating the company like in half or anything. They just left the company. They're doing something else at this time. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So if you're not making, if you guys aren't paying yourself from this, how are you, how are you making money?
How are you paying your rent as a founder and putting, you know, and having, you know, having food? Well, I actually, before starting this, I had been working with my mom. She has a laundry, I'm sorry, she has a home cleaning service. So I have been helping her with that. That's actually how I met Clara and Javier.
Back in, you know, back in probably like 2015, 2016, my mom's company was cleaning their house and Clara and Javier actually helped.
introduced me to coding and they um they helped me kind of get started and i ended up going to a coding boot camp um after that they uh hovered let me um go on with him on to the company he's working at called crown peak and i did a an internship there which after that that's when when he left the crown peak i left with him and we started this company together How cool. That's a great story.
So you guys have not raised any capital outside of what the founders put in at the beginning, correct? Correct. And are you guys profitable today or are you breakeven? No, we have some profit. I mean, we've been able to purchase like the vans that we do our deliveries with. We've been able to... How many of those are there? We have four vans. Wow. Okay. Okay.
So, I mean, we've just been able to make sure that all the money that is spent back into the company, that it's not an extra investment. Like, it's been able to supply itself so far. And, you know, have a little extra sometimes. We like to make sure that our employees have a great environment to work in. It just all goes back in. Yep. Now, while I ask this next question, okay, here we go.
Yeah, your video just froze, but it's fixed. How many people are on the team today? We have six holders, the facility lead, facility manager, and three drivers. So that's... About 12 people with me. Sometimes, you know, I like to kind of be there and on the ground with everybody and try to make sure that everything's running smoothly.
Six folders, one facility manager, then you, then three drivers, and then one or two other co-founders as well. So 12, 13 total. Okay, interesting. And is this a sticky product? So, I mean, do customers ever cancel? What's your churn rate? Yes, so most of our customers that have canceled it because they're moving out of the service area.
We do have, I mean, it's really, it's hard to tell you a clear number right now because of the pandemic. When it first started, we had a lot of customers pause their accounts. And it doesn't mean that they're canceling. It's just like some are taking longer than others to come back.
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Chapter 4: What are the pricing details for FairMeadow's laundry service?
I can't remember what number that was, but just as soon as we kicked off, it seemed like it would just stick pretty fast because all the demand in the area that we started, it was pretty high. Back then, it was kind of taking care of all the numbers, and it's not something that I have on my books. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Let's wrap up with the famous five.
Number one, what's your favorite business book? Um, I think that Toyota, the Toyota way. Yep. That's one. Yep. Number two, uh, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Not at the moment, but that's a good, good idea. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building fair meadow home? Um, I think Facebook has been great. It's really been because of the community that we started in.
There are so many Facebook groups that give us access to kind of like that ground into each one of the communities that we're in. We have several groups that we have been added to by our customers, and that has really made our numbers go up. Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?
um maybe like four to eight depending on the thing it's a big range what's your situation married single kids uh married with two oh two kiddos very good and can i ask how old you are i'm 29 29 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um
That's a hard question because there are so many things that I want to tell myself, but I think the most important thing is to just try new things because you never go anywhere until you start trying and failing and getting back up and trying again. Guys, Fairmeadow Home. They did over 1,500 bins of laundry in July. They service the Denver area.
It's an app where consumers, about 300 customers, pay $14 to $18 per bin to have their laundry done. Customers, on average, are doing three to four bins per month. That's how we got that revenue number. The company is bootstrapped today. Miriam is running it with her two co-founders. They have a facility with six folders, one facility manager, and three drivers, four vans that they own.
As they look to continue to scale, 12 people... on the team. They are profitable today. Miriam, thanks for taking us to the top.
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