Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 255. And I’m pumped to hear today because today, something interesting is happening in today’s episode. And I’ve been talking about a lot of ways things have been shifting. This is one that maybe I should have anticipated, but I didn’t anticipate. Suresh is on the show today share his story about getting into laundromat ownership and his multiple laundromats that he owns. But even more importantly, the back half of this interview talks about something that he’s doing that might have some big waves in our industry. It could be very interesting.

Jordan Berry [00:00:44]:
I think this is following a trend that’s happening all over the place, not just in our industries. This is happening all over the place. We talk a lot about it. I don’t want to give too much away because this is Pretty cool what he’s done and how he’s set it up. And I’ll be interested to see if this catches on and this model catches on in our industry because it has the ability to, dare I say it, revolutionize some stuff in our industry. So, hopefully I didn’t build it up too much, but I’m really intrigued by it. And huge shout out and thank you to Suresh for coming on and sharing his experience. and what he’s up to in this industry.

Jordan Berry [00:01:22]:
So without further ado, uh, let’s jump into it. I guess real quick I want to mention, so maybe a little bit of ado, uh, but real quick is we’ve got a Pro member live Q&A coming up. So if that’s something that you’re a Pro member and you want to, uh, jump onto that, make sure you jump onto that. And if you’re not yet part of the Pro community, you want to jump on, I’ll be on there answering questions live. Should be great. And then also, this is a lot of ado. There’s a whole lot of ado here. I apologize.

Jordan Berry [00:01:53]:
But also, I wanted to mention that we are going to be putting together some new mastermind groups. So if you want to get into a group with other laundromat dorks like us who want to talk about laundromats, whether you’re in the phase of you’re trying to buy your first one, or you’re in the phase of you already own one or multiple and you want to talk with other laundromat owners, Uh, that’s a part of the Pro community there. So head over to laundromatresource.com/pro and, uh, go check it out over there. So now without any further ado, let’s jump into it with Suresh and hear how he’s revolutionizing this industry. Suresh, man, thank you for coming on the show. Super excited to have you. How you doing today, man?

Suresh Alluru [00:02:36]:
Good. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Jordan Berry [00:02:40]:
Oh man, it’s my honor. And we’ve met a couple times already to chat about your story a little bit and about what you got going on. And I’m super excited for people to hear a little bit about you and your experience in the industry and then what you’re doing to kind of contribute industry-wide, which is something pretty unique, I think. And I think some people are going to be pretty excited about it. So can’t wait to dig into it. But let’s start with you. Like, Give us a background on you and who you are.

Suresh Alluru [00:03:11]:
All right. Hey, thank you, Jordan. And I’m super excited to be part of this show. And my name is Suresh Alluru. I live in Austin, Texas. So, I spent about like 25 years in building products and also leading engineering teams in companies like Amazon, PayPal, and Wells Fargo. Like a decade ago, I don’t know, surprisingly, I kind of got into the laundromat industry. I have no idea.

Suresh Alluru [00:03:39]:
I didn’t have any experience. And obviously, like many people, we always wanted to have something on our own. So that’s how I got into it. I thought it’s like a passive, you just kind of go and start collecting coins and make money, right?

Jordan Berry [00:03:57]:
That’s right.

Suresh Alluru [00:03:57]:
Easy peasy. That’s not easy peasy, but yeah, again, that’s not what it is. so much more beyond it, like to run a business. But yeah, I think, you know, I really like, that was kind of my goal. But after I got into it, I learned I really love the industry. I really love to see the customers and what we are doing. Yeah, here is what I am, you know, I always like, and as a person, you know, when I see the problem, like wanted to, solve it. Like, that’s what like my corporate world like shown me and I try to do the same thing, right? You know, I started with the coins and obviously like, you know, we did like so much of improvements like, you know, in the laundromat that I owned it.

Suresh Alluru [00:04:43]:
And first we started with the one and I started, now we have like 3 laundromats like in Austin area. We automated like so much and, you know, that make myself easy, you know, to operate. And I always like wanted to, you know, give the same thing to my fellow laundromat owners. So yeah, that’s kind of pretty much—

Jordan Berry [00:05:07]:
Yeah, cool. And yeah, we’ll get into exactly, you know, how you’re doing that and how you’re giving back. But let’s go back to that first. I mean, you know, again, the dream of just going to collect coins and then taking them home and dumping them in your giant safe room like Scrooge McDuck and swimming through them. You know, that’s, I think that’s how a lot of us got into this business. And, you know, it’s funny, it’s kind of a running joke in the industry, right? Of like, yeah, passive income, totally passive. And, you know, you know as well as I do that it doesn’t play out that way most of the time. So, but out of curiosity, so you were kind of looking for some, that income, were you looking at multiple different kinds of businesses? Did laundromats specifically stick out to you, or how did that play out?

Suresh Alluru [00:06:02]:
Yeah. So I basically looked at laundromats as one, and restaurants was one, and a few others also I looked at it. But honestly, I think laundromat definitely stood out the best, not because it’s so much passive and it’s easy. I think it’s kind of the customers that we deal with. Like, it’s like, you know, every day, like every week, like same type of customers, right? So you kind of like, you know, come back and, you know, it’s so much good to see, even though I was so busy, like doing my corporate job, I really like love to go and, you know, and greet those persons, right? Just people come, like insane people come and, hey, how are you? How is everything? I think that’s kind of the more stood out, like a mode. So then it’s passive, it’s kind of additional income source. Honestly, initially I lost money, right? I mean, because I didn’t know how to even hire the employees. I had the employees and they were not really good managing customers.

Suresh Alluru [00:07:05]:
And I have no idea tracking-wise how much money I’m getting. And I just kept putting the money that I needed to be, right? But that never bothered me, right? But over the time, again, like in putting that customers first and thinking about how can we kind of make it like a better and better experience for customers, then I kind of like try to put a lot of things around it. Like, you know, just real quick, like to start with, you know, going from, you know, Coins to like Laundryworks was to me like, you know, biggest step for me, right? You know, it kind of made it so easy. Then I started to see how things are like progressing. Okay, I invested in these machines, right? The new machines and, you know, keeping the machines up to date and having hot water ready, like, you know, cleaning the facility. And I started to see like how the business has like grown and the Laundroworks was kind of like showing that for me, right? And then obviously it’s kind of the motivation like to even think about, hey, going to second laundry and the third laundry, right? So then I think in other things that I think I’m sure like we will go into a little bit more details too, like the wash and fold definitely has come up a lot. 6 to 7 years ago, I have no idea like how to do it. And we used to a little bit like customers come in and drop in and we were doing like maybe $1,000 a month, that type of a thing, right? Then we started using some of the softwares available at the time.

Suresh Alluru [00:08:33]:
And which obviously had some gaps and everything. But anyway, we definitely got into wash and fold as well and then found some gaps. And like I said, I’m a builder and I’m a software builder. And when I see something is not right, there’s some opportunity, we can solve it to make it better. And that’s what I did to build the software myself. That’s what the smart laundry basket that I know we’re going to a little bit more get into more details than that.

Jordan Berry [00:09:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you just, you just unloaded like a whole bunch of like stuff there that you did that, I mean, I think the kind of big picture as I’m listening to you, like big picture takeaway that I’m taking away here is like, there’s a whole lot of things you didn’t know about how to run this business, but it sounds like your main focus or the filter that you funneled all of your decisions through was like, how can I make the customer experience better, right? So if you’re out there and you have a laundromat, maybe you’re trying to improve that laundromat, throw up that filter and funnel everything through it, right? If you’re out there and you’re trying to get your first laundromat and you’re scared because it’s super scary and you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you don’t feel like there’s more to learn about the business because there’s always more to learn about the business, you know, to get started. I mean, if you can just Ask yourself and ask your customers, like, how can I give them, or how can I give you a better experience? And funnel decisions through that. You know, whether or not to buy new machines is gonna be an easier decision to make. Whether or not to utilize a card system is gonna, you know, be, uh, you know, an easier decision. You know, uh, automating things is gonna be easier to figure out what to automate and how to automate stuff.

Jordan Berry [00:10:24]:
Adding wash and fold, it’s gonna be an easier decision, right? Um, And I, I mean, I, I hear this theme. This is like a theme that I hear over and over and over as I talk to owners on the podcast. And then just in general too, of the people who are successful in this industry, their primary concern is customer experience in their stores.

Suresh Alluru [00:10:44]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:10:45]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:10:45]:
Yeah. No, 100%.

Jordan Berry [00:10:47]:
Yep. Yeah. So, okay. Well, let’s, let’s, I mean, if you don’t mind, I’d love to ask you a couple questions about some of these decisions that you make because a Some of them are hotly debated still in the industry. And I’m just curious on your take on, maybe we could start with going from coin to adding a card system, that Laundry Works system. Can you talk to me about how you decided to do that? I think a lot of people are afraid to do that because they’re afraid that their customers are going to rebel and go somewhere else so they can use their beloved quarters. But How did you decide to make that decision?

Suresh Alluru [00:11:25]:
Yeah, so I also had the same fear, right? So people basically got used to the coins and also some of the demographics kind of may have this like cash, like coins is the kind of the king, like, and they’ve kind of been used to for so many years. And suddenly, like, if I just ask them, hey, we just stop coins and start using cards, right? And I also had a scary part, like, and they might run away, right? And we are not the only laundromat in the area. We have a few other laundromats. Back then, they were also still using coins. And what if suddenly everything gone away? I had the same thing. But I think what we thought at that time was, Like, you know, okay, you know, why do you think about like, you know, why? Yes, they’re used to the coins, right? But, you know, how can we kind of make it like easy transition for them, right? So, is one thing that came to our mind. And the second thing is that, you know, keeping still the same customer experience, like, you know, having the same like smiley face and, you know, and finding out like, hey, how are you doing? Like, and is, How is your week gone? Like, and all of that, we still kind of didn’t want to compromise on that one. Just like kind of keeping those, right? Then like, then what happens? Like, one of the things that the people kind of scared about, I have to buy a card, right? It’s not like I give it $20, then I get the $20 value back, right? So, people kind of charge like $2 per card and everything.

Suresh Alluru [00:13:10]:
Then the decision that I made was, I’m not going to charge anything for the cart, right? It’s kind of free of cost. I know the cart costs us business, but it’s fine for customer’s sake. Like if they put $20 and give the $20, right? And also like we kind of implementing some kind of bonuses like, hey, you know, just like, you know, buy a cart with the $50 and I’ll give you, you know, $2, like an extra bonus or $3, whatever, $5. I think we had when we started like $100, $10, right? So that’s kind of slowly creating that easy transition, right? And then, yeah, some customers still kind of said, hey, no, we still like coins. Then what we did, we bought the coins when they brought in, then we gave the card, right? So I think we just tried to make it super, super easy for the customer to transition, right? It kind of took maybe a month or 2, but after that, there is no look back. Customers loved it. Same customers, that who said, hey, I have a problem. Why are you changing all of that? I really don’t know how much money I’m using it.

Suresh Alluru [00:14:16]:
You just deduct how much you want. We have no idea and all of that. And the same customers came back and said, we loved it. We really don’t have to carry this much bag of coins to come to the laundromat. It’s there, you are there, it’s already available, right? And the last thing that I’ll say for how that really benefited the business is that we kind of created loyal customers, right? So, when we had coins and we really don’t know, like, yes, I mean, with the facial, like, you know, look at and we know that same customer’s coming back or not, but from the systematically, like, I have no idea, like, you know, how many customers are like repeating customers, how many of the new customers, right? And do we need to do anything different, like, you know, to increase that repeated customers? And this Laundry Works, when we digitized this, that really kind of gave all the data, right? And even the customers became loyal too, right? The same card and they don’t have to worry about losing card because we always gave the card free. Yeah, I think overall, to me, it’s a wonderful experience. To me, if I’m kind of sitting in a happy that I own, and happy to say that I own the laundromat. I’m also recommending many other people like me who had the corporate job, like tech companies or wherever, and want to ask me, hey, what’s the best business that you recommend for us if you want to think about it? I just say laundromat without any question.

Suresh Alluru [00:15:49]:
I think to me that is possible, at least like I was able to say it because we were able to move From the coins to the digital cards. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:16:01]:
Do you know, I mean, did you lose a lot of customers? I mean, that’s the fear, right? Is that you’re going to lose a lot of customers?

Suresh Alluru [00:16:07]:
So really not actually. I can say business has increased at least like 35 to 40%, right? I didn’t lose customers. Like, you know, the customers loved it. Like they came back even though like maybe a couple of people like, you know, mentioned it, like I saw it in the Google reviews and all of that, but everyone like came back and essentially like, you know, I increased the— I mean, like I was telling in the beginning that I probably have lost money, like, you know, when I initially got the Lomrite again for various reasons, not just because of the coins I can say, but, you know, for all the reasons. But once I resized it, like, and I know for sure that I’m making money, I know for sure that business has actually increased. quite a bit. And it has been kind of then going upward trend, even though like we’re, I’m in the area, like, you know, we are surrounded by like, you know, really big laundromats, like 3 or 4 laundromats, just like a mile away. But still, like, you know, my business has kind of like, you know, has been growing up.

Jordan Berry [00:17:07]:
Yeah. Well, and that’s a big fear too, right? If you’ve got a Texas-sized laundromat coming in down the road from you. But You know, again, the, the, the, not to like, I don’t want to like simplify it, right? Because it’s, this is a whole lot of little decisions that add up, but the, the best way to guard yourself against, you know, a larger laundromat down the road taking all your business is focusing on the customer experience, right? And—

Suresh Alluru [00:17:34]:
Yes. Yeah. I completely agree. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:17:36]:
Yeah. It is. And, and, you know, I hear, I put out an episode not too long ago talking about, you know, some of the stuff that’s happening in the industry and stuff. And, you know, I think there’s some big implications of some of that stuff that’s going on with some of the manufacturers and, you know, some stuff like that. But I got some of the feedback I got was like, well, you know, I’m not worried about any of that stuff, you know, because I’m just going to focus on, you know, it all comes down to, you know, Speed Queen could put in a franchise store across the street from you, but it’s going to come down to, customer experience, which is true to an extent.

Suresh Alluru [00:18:11]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:18:11]:
I do think that there’s other implications to all of that, but to an extent that’s true, right? I mean, ultimately the stores still have to be operated. The customers are still going to have the experience they have. And if you can outwork everybody else in your market, you’re going to do well. Small, big, it doesn’t matter. You are going to do well.

Suresh Alluru [00:18:33]:
Yeah. I will say one thing here, right? So, I mean, I always tell my employees and like myself also, like I take it too, like, you know, customers should come to basically like talk to us, right? You know, regardless whether they even like have the laundry needs or not, they don’t even have to have like, you know, wash their clothes, but we have to create such an experience like where, hey, I want to like go and see Suresh and like say hi. I think we really have to get to that level of customer service and create the customer experience where if they even don’t have the laundry needs, they should basically try to come and talk to us and see the facility. I think once we do that, like you said, no matter what, even if we have a world-class, whatever, a big corporate and a big size thing, and people still want to come to us. Right? I think I will leave it that I’ll keep that in big writing, like on the wall, like, you know, so that employees can see it and myself also like see it, you know, and kind of make that like personal connections with the customers is what I have to say.

Jordan Berry [00:19:47]:
Yeah, huge. It’s definitely huge.

Suresh Alluru [00:19:50]:
Yeah, awesome.

Jordan Berry [00:19:51]:
Okay, so thank you for sharing about your experience with the card system. And I guess kind of along those lines, well, okay, real quick, I want to get to what you’re doing, what you’re trying to do in the industry right now here in a second. So listen, I just don’t want to lose anybody here because Suresh has built something. I mean, he’s already mentioned a couple times he’s a builder, he builds stuff. He’s built something I think is really cool and that some of you guys are really going to benefit a lot from. So I want to get to that in a second. But you mentioned at Talking about the card system and even kind of before that, you mentioned like, hey, you know, for sure the business is going up. You know what customers are staying, which ones are going.

Jordan Berry [00:20:33]:
And I just want to kind of just pick your brain a little bit as somebody coming from sort of that tech side and maybe a little analytical side about, you know, how are you using the data? Like what data are you paying attention to from like your card system, for example, or your Your software for your wash and fold. What data are you paying attention to and how are you using that? Because there’s still debates and every now and then I get sucked into ’em on like the Facebook groups and stuff like coin versus card. And people are like, use tokens or use dollar coins. And I’m like, why are we having this debate? Like, you can’t get the data. The data is the valuable part here. I mean, the payment options are Right. But the data is the valuable part here. Um, but I, I think I’m having a hard time convincing some people.

Jordan Berry [00:21:24]:
I think a lot of people get that, but some people are, are not convinced and I’m having a hard time, uh, expressing to them why that data is valuable. So I don’t know if you have anything to add to that conversation, but I just want to hear like, how are you utilizing, you know, data in your business to help you have a better customer experience, uh, in your stores?

Suresh Alluru [00:21:44]:
Yeah. So the one thing that I think in any given day, right? Sorry, in a given month, right? Or a given week, one thing that we know, like how many new Laundromats are being issued and how many cards are in use, right? Kind of reused, right? That kind of data tells us what is your new customers adding to the Laundromat, right? Or and how many repeated customers, and also how much are they spending. I mean, spending, it may change a little bit, but you can still see it. That kind of can tell all the time, new customers versus repeated customers, right? And then on a week-to-week basis or a month-to-month basis, if I see a negative trend, month over month, and if I start to see a downtrend towards new customers, that means that I have some opportunity, either through customer experience or kind of start putting some ads. Maybe I have to do a little bit more SEO so that when somebody is searching for laundromat near me or washing pole near me, I should come up fast. Then I spend a little bit, increase my budget to the ad budget, right? Then I can see that this new customers kind of going up, right? That’s one data that I always look at it. And even the repeated customers too, like repeated customers also should kind of go along the same lines. So it should increase.

Suresh Alluru [00:23:22]:
If it kind of goes to the negative trend, then I really kind of look at it and I talk to the employees like, hey, are we doing anything wrong? Are we supplying? Sometimes there are, we call silent sufferers, right? not all the customers go and tell the issues on the Google reviews or talk to us. They simply stop coming to us. They just go somewhere else. But how do we kind of capture those silent sufferers and introspect, right? And try to do things differently, right? So I think I look at those 2 data, like new customers and the repeated repeated customers. And I also a little bit look at this spend tracking also, like even the repeated customers, like are they kind of like start to spend less or like start to spend more type of thing? Again, I use the data more around this mission’s quality. Like if the missions are not doing good and there is always some problems, right? So then I kind of look into this, my operations, like everything is doing good, right? So yeah, I think the 2 of the things that I look at it, I think it’s very hard to get like if you’re using like coins, right? I mean, obviously we can just generally trend like, hey, am I making this much money? Like you can just tell it. But to me, that’s probably like not, it informs a little bit, but it may not give the other information. And other thing I will also tell you that we added a feature like when the customer comes in and gets the card, like we ask them to register, right? So just kind of put the phone number and we also incentivize that if they put their phone number and they get like $5, right? And I think that’s so useful that we are always in constant communication with the customers, engagement, right? So, hey, we have like July 4th coming or this much coming, then we just kind of send out, hey, we have this going on or we have, a raffle thing going on.

Suresh Alluru [00:25:28]:
I mean, just a little bit. It’s all about how do we kind of make engagement alive. That’s so useful. Now, if you look at it, I have like 10,000 registered people just in one laundromat. I can kind of communicate, tell the things. And if there is sometimes game going on, we tell our, hey, there is a game, you all do it. So again, I think that’s kind of possible with, I think, the digitization. Specifically, I think you’re talking about the Laundromats, but, and we can talk a lot more about the wash and fold, like when we get to that.

Suresh Alluru [00:26:04]:
But I think for the Laundromats card, new customers, repeated customers, and also make it engage, connecting to the customers is kind of a lot more easier with these systems.

Jordan Berry [00:26:19]:
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I mean, I think that’s huge and I think you nailed that on the head. I mean, I think there’s even, Other things that we can do, like for example, you mentioned like, hey, if business is negative year or month over month, maybe I can run some ads. Well, when we start talking about running ads, we can actually look at, okay, well, how much, what’s the customer lifetime value? How much is one customer worth to me? Right? Because if you’re going to say, hey, I got to pay, you know, on average, I’m just making up extreme numbers here, but if it costs you $200, To get a new customer with ads, that doesn’t sound all that appealing unless you know that your customer’s worth $1,500 for, you know, from you. And, uh, and then all of a sudden you can spend a little bit more than your competitor would, who’s just, you know, looking at a strict number, you know, of ad spend and is like, man, I, I’m not spending more than, you know, $20 a day or whatever the ad spend is. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:27:15]:
A better way to look at it is, well, How much can I spend to acquire customers? If I can get it for less than that, that’s all gravy, uh, for you there. So lots of things like that that we can do. You just can’t do that without the data.

Suresh Alluru [00:27:30]:
Uh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:27:33]:
And I, and I think that gets even more potent when we start talking about wash and fold and pickup and delivery, which, uh, I, we should probably just start talking about that now. Um, but that, that ad spend, You know, becomes even more powerful as that side of the industry is growing right now like a wildfire, and a lot of owners are integrating that into their business. And so you have a huge advantage if you’re able to, you know, track the data that you, you know, that you need to help you make decisions about your business, and then you’re able to utilize that data and leverage it in ways that other owners aren’t leveraging it. But let’s talk about the wash and fold. What, at what point did you decide, or did the first laundromat you bought, did that have wash and fold already or did you add it?

Suresh Alluru [00:28:28]:
So yeah, no, that did not have it. So I added it. I added it, right? You know, obviously like this was like a decade ago.

Jordan Berry [00:28:37]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:28:37]:
Sorry. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:28:38]:
I was going to say, what made you decide to do that?

Suresh Alluru [00:28:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good. Yeah. I think, you know, the, I mean, really like at that point of time, I have no idea about this wash and fold. I even used to think like, you know, why would like, and if somebody has their washer dryer, right, in their home, like, you know, why would even like they come, right? So, and my belief was that people who come to the laundromats are usually the people who do not have the, like, you know, washer and dryer. And then, like, you know, and when the people, I mean, this is just kind of the misbelief, but, you know, just correct me, you know, sorry for it, right? But the, you know, I always like thought like, you know, people, you know, who cannot afford like to do the washer and dryer, like, you know, how can they even afford, you know, for the wash and fold service, right? So I didn’t even have to think about it. But I think initially, like, I started to see like some customers, like, you know, they say, you know, can I drop off? Like, can you just like do it for me? Right. And, you know, this was kind of like no cost to it.

Suresh Alluru [00:29:35]:
Like, you know, I’ll just like drop off and, you know, can you do like wash and dry? I’ll just give you like, you know, some few bucks, like do it. Like that’s kind of how, you know, it was like, you know, back then. But, and that’s basically like what, you know, it triggered. Right. And, you know, and no online, you know, orders or anything. It is just basically people come in like a drop-off. It was kind of super, super slow, right? Then, we kind of like, and again, since I’m in the tech industry, like an internet and all of that, I kind of live and breathe like everyday thing, right? So, then, at that time, I kind of like had this little like a Wix, the website, like just a little bit like, hey, this is my laundry and if you want to place an order, just send a message. Then it used to come, then, you know, and I used to drive too, like, you know, during the evening because I didn’t want to kind of even hire a driver at that time, right? Because you have no idea like how this business even come.

Suresh Alluru [00:30:39]:
Like we used to come like, hey, like we got the one online order. Then, you know, me and my wife like, you know, used to go after the work and just pick it up and then drop it back. And then our employees basically do the wash and fold. And, you know, we used to deliver like the next day, right? So that’s kind of how we just got into it. It was super slow, right? And then around the time, then I obviously like, then we got like around the pandemic time, I think I signed up for the curbside like back then. Then obviously like, I don’t know how it is right now, but I think at the time, curbside, like you have to like sign up like a contract, right? So whether you do the business or not, like, and you just basically signed up to the contract and pay, I think $400, I think a month at that point of time. Honestly, like, you know, I didn’t even do like $400, right?

Jordan Berry [00:31:37]:
Volume.

Suresh Alluru [00:31:38]:
Yeah, volume. You know, I just kept paying it because there was, you know, we already signed up. And then business was like, you know, it’s kind of stayed the same thing. Then, you know, I didn’t like some of the things, because of the initial time, like some software issues and things like that. Then after that, I switched to Sense also. I think by then, like, you know, we definitely business side grew a little bit where, you know, whatever the monthly subscription wasn’t like a really big deal, you know, at that point of time, right? But yeah, overall, yes, you know, I started like with washing folds, you know, just, you know, somebody was asking me. Then, you know, I started using the online digital channels to like, you know, kind of spread out and, you know, get more orders. Then use some of the softwares that are available like at that time, you know, to even kind of increase the business.

Suresh Alluru [00:32:38]:
So yeah, right now, like I can tell, just think about it, like almost $0 like a decade ago, right? You know, now, right now we can say, My 50% of the revenue that comes to my laundromat, actually a laundromat business, like comes from the wash and fold, right? So just, you kind of see the shift. And I can definitely tell that like, you know, leveraging these softwares definitely help because there is so much of online orders, you know, out of this growth, right? You know, online orders, you know, is kind of the major contributor. Just do it.

Jordan Berry [00:33:17]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:33:18]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:33:18]:
And I think a lot of owners, not everybody obviously, and it’s, you know, it’s something I, I don’t want to like paint it as like, hey, you start a, a drop-off or pickup and delivery and all of a sudden your business is going to double. Um, because there’s a whole lot of work that goes into doubling any business ever.

Suresh Alluru [00:33:35]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:33:36]:
Um, you know, but that, that, that’s the potential, right? And, and more probably. I, I guess, You know, if we have you back on, hopefully we’ll be able to, you know, in like a year or two, that percentage will probably have kept going. And I think we’re seeing more owners starting to see their wash and fold and pickup and delivery, you know, surpass their self-serve revenue.

Suresh Alluru [00:33:59]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:34:00]:
And it seems to be where we’re moving kind of just as a culture, sort of that DoorDash, Uber Eats culture of like, hey, just You know, do it for me and get it done. And I don’t want to waste my time, you know, washing and folding and stuff.

Suresh Alluru [00:34:16]:
Exactly. I will tell you one thing real quick, right? So I think the trust piece, the kind of the, you know, major, like a barrier, right? So for the, you know, customer to basically, you know, think about like doing the wash and fold, right? You know, just imagine like, you know, your own clothes, And you are sending to like a person X and they’re taking to somewhere and doing whatever they want, right? And then kind of bring it back, right? So if there is no trust that like their laundry picked up right and handled it right, right? And kind of bring it back like nicely, like properly folded without like any damage to it. And also without missing a single sock. I think because again, some of the operation issues that what we have, and obviously there are several people involved, right? So you have a driver, we have an employee, and one employee does sorting, another employee does washing, another employee do drying. I mean, there could Possibility of things can go wrong. When the customers see an issue once, then that means that they lost the trust. They’ll never again do it again. Like, hey, I have no confidence that these things handled right.

Suresh Alluru [00:35:43]:
I think anything that we do, either through SOPs or the processes or with the technology, I think if you kind of like, you know, have that trust, you know, is done right, then like, I think this business will even have like much more potential. To me, it’s maybe we’re just still scratching the surface, right? I mean, you can tell like how many of our friends, right, you know, next to us, like actually using the wash and fold, like maybe we’ll see like here and there, right? So there is still so much more to untap. I think if you do things right, I think this Washing pole business will probably go like, you know, 10 and, you know, more and more poles up.

Jordan Berry [00:36:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. And the trust is huge, right? And I mean, I think that’s where, you know, obviously word of mouth comes in, Google reviews come in, and then having sort of that, almost that franchise mentality of like, hey, same experience every time you come in, high quality experience, focusing on that customer experience. Every time you come in and, you know, that, but that’s honestly like, that’s the hard part. I mean, I’ll just speak for myself here for a second, but that to me, that’s the hard part of business, right? Is like, yeah, yeah. I especially, you know, people like me who are kind of like more visionaries, we’re like the big picture. We like, you know, coming up with ideas, implementing new ideas, building things, trying new things.

Jordan Berry [00:37:14]:
But really, I mean, like the key to business is like, this is what I’ve learned just doing Laundromat Resource here, right? Like the key to business is like doing the things you need to do that you know you need to do, basics to be successful, and then just do ’em every day. Like, yeah, for a long period of time. Like that’s what it means to be successful.

Suresh Alluru [00:37:35]:
I agree.

Jordan Berry [00:37:35]:
That was a tough adjustment for me, honestly, when I, especially when I started my, my pickup and delivery business like a long time ago. You know, that consistency, that steadfastness, that is where the money is.

Suresh Alluru [00:37:52]:
Yeah, 100%. I agree. You’re spot on. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:37:55]:
Yeah. And you gotta nail that.

Suresh Alluru [00:37:57]:
Okay.

Jordan Berry [00:37:58]:
So, I mean, you mentioned we, maybe we’ll go back later and talk about, you know, picking up location 2 and 3, but I really kind of want to get into, you started this like wash and fold business again. It was kind of like, hey, will you just do it? Here’s a couple bucks. And then eventually you got, you know, built it into like an actual business and got some software to manage it. Talk to me about that progression a little bit more into where you’re at now.

Suresh Alluru [00:38:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think, you know, the, I mean, like anything that when we start new, right? So we obviously like can have, you know, some misfires and then we’re going to, we will learn from it, right? So to just make it better, right? So the one thing that—

Jordan Berry [00:38:45]:
The other key to success, by the way, is make misfires and learn from it.

Suresh Alluru [00:38:50]:
Learn from it. Yeah, exactly. Right. So one thing that we, you know, definitely had some issues with the, like a mixing app, right? Mixing up is one thing that, because when we, sometimes we get too many orders, right? Sometimes we don’t, but sometimes we have too many orders, but they’re the same employees, right? So we cannot just add one day 10 employees and the next day this thing, but it’s basically the same resources, but have to handle a huge amount of loads. we basically mixed up the customer X and customer Y laundries. And then when we just deliver it, right? And then when they see like, hey, this do not belong to me. I mean, that’s really, even if I’m a customer like that, then I would definitely feel frustrated and upset, right? And we had that problem for a while. And obviously we try to put some process around it, like labeling, right? And the mentioning employees like, hey, handle one order at a time.

Suresh Alluru [00:40:10]:
Don’t try to basically pull 2 customers’ orders at the same time. And I think we basically came up with a few processes there. And other thing also, like a misfire was that Missing garments, right? Sometimes when we wash, employees may forget to pick up a lost cloth in a washer because there’s a pile and when they just pull it up, they just miss one, right? It’s like there and next customer come in and they either can see it and throw it to the trash can or whatever, they’ll just do it. We lost it. And sometimes when we put in the dryer, when we pull it up, we miss it. Then customer complain like, hey, what happened? Then there is no way to track. Like, I have no idea. First, sometimes what happens, it could be true that we missed it, or sometimes it’s like customer also may have forgotten.

Suresh Alluru [00:41:06]:
They thought they sent it, but actually they did not send it, right? So we definitely had issues with this missing garments, I will call. And we ended up paying huge amounts of money too. Some customers say, hey, this is my most favorite one. I cannot really afford to lose it. This is branded, whatever. And just to kind of make the customer happy. And end of the day, we want to keep customers happy and we just kind of ended up paying that, right? And the third thing that also consistency, employee to employee, some employee fold it nicely and stack it up correct and bag it right. And some employees, and put like a lot of 5 to 6 things together, right? And then when they kind of like deliver it and everything like fall apart, which is again, bad experience, right? Even though like we try to basically tell it like, hey, do this, do that, but still like we kind of like messed it.

Suresh Alluru [00:42:07]:
But yeah, I think every time like when we saw this issue, there are big issues, like I said, like a trust issue. Like once we have this issue seen by the customer and we lost that customer. Then we have to hunt for a new customer, right? So rather than having the same customer repeated, that customer is gone, then again, we have to go to Google and add it and get the new customer, but that won’t sustain, right? So then I kind of came up with the strict standard operating procedures, some kind of a training to the employees, like, hey, when you come in, here is how you do it, right? And even as part of the interview itself, we made them do it and we just made them follow it and do it. If they do it right, they’re able to do it, then only we kind of hired them, right? But still, some of the missing garments thing is not something that we couldn’t solve. Like until recently, I think that’s where we talk about the software that I built and how that is helping. But yeah, I think we were able to get that consistency. We were able to fix that mixing of the customer in our plots is through proper operating procedures we did it, right?

Jordan Berry [00:43:24]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:43:24]:
In terms of the growth, right? And like I said, we were not even doing like $1,000 a month type of thing. But right now, like, we’re basically— I can give the absolute numbers from single laundromat. Like, we make about like $25,000 just on the wash and fold, right? This is not the self-service. That’s altogether like a different thing. And I don’t do any like marketing. I stopped it. Like, yeah, initially, yes. I mean, we kind of have spent some time, some money onto it, like Google Ads, like every month, like $500 to $600, just on that and then a few hundred bucks on Facebook.

Suresh Alluru [00:44:03]:
But now I don’t do anything, right? So people know it and people know that we deliver quality and we don’t do the mess-ups like how we used to do it. And it’s kind of over the time, like once we got a customer and if you’re doing it right and they become your lifetime customers, who doesn’t? Everybody wants to wash their clothes, right? So I think we kind of like can have, built this customer base over time and it’s consistently growing. I don’t see any downtrend. And like I was telling, and I think it could be like customers shift as well in thinking too, right? Earlier, maybe they were thinking, hey, why should I give? I don’t know how they handle it. Now that they have some kind of trust built in. So now that we are getting more and more wash and fold orders. So that’s kind of my, uh, you know, wash and fold, uh, journey.

Jordan Berry [00:45:01]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:45:02]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:45:02]:
And I think too, um, the, the service in general, not like yours specifically, but the, the wash and fold or pickup and delivery service in general is gaining trust, which will just help everybody, right? Like everybody who’s trying to run this. As people, like, I, I remember hearing, I don’t know, like a decade ago or maybe more than that, people were like, I’m not letting somebody else wash my underwear. And I know there’s still people like that. But now people are like, well, whatever.

Suresh Alluru [00:45:30]:
Like, exactly. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:45:32]:
People do it. So I guess I’ll do it.

Suresh Alluru [00:45:35]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:45:36]:
So I think we’re starting to hit like some sort of tipping point here where, you know, there’s going to be more and more people doing this for sure.

Suresh Alluru [00:45:44]:
Yeah. I completely agree. I think as an industry, I think, you know, all of the, you know, as an industry, like, you know, being part of this laundromat industry, I think we all have to really work on this, like Trust factor. That’s kind of the big thing. And once we do that, I think this has so much potential. I think I said like $25,000, I’m sure reaching $100,000 is not hard at all, right? So I think, but it has to be done all across, like everyone need to really use technology. Everyone need to use the belief in the standard operating procedures. and kind of work as a whole to build that trust, I think there is so much more potential to increase this industry big time because we’re just scratching the surface.

Suresh Alluru [00:46:36]:
Still, people are— I think to me, I really want to get to the place where people think about not even to think about buying a washer and dryer for home, right? They kind of do not have to have a dedicated space for the wash and dryer, right? I think once we can get there, I think to me that’s the ultimate place, right? I think I was kind of hearing something like Elon Musk was telling about, hey, when we have the robotaxis working and in the next 10 years, then we will not have garages in the home, right? You don’t need to because you have robotaxis coming, right? And whenever you want to—

Jordan Berry [00:47:16]:
Always out driving around.

Suresh Alluru [00:47:17]:
Yeah, exactly. Then they just imagine like, you kind of relate the same thing to the automatic industry. When you need your clean clothes and somebody’s coming automatically, like picking your dirty laundry and washing and giving it to you back, then you don’t need to waste your space for wash and dryer at your home. Anyway, that’s kind of like how I kind of think about like where we need to go and all of us can work through that. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:47:49]:
I think you’re right. And even better is when the robo-taxis are picking up the laundry for us and bringing it to us.

Suresh Alluru [00:47:55]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:47:56]:
Yeah.

Suresh Alluru [00:47:56]:
Why not?

Jordan Berry [00:47:58]:
Yeah. Why not? No, I mean, it is interesting to see where we’re at right now. And, you know, one shift, which I want to get into this now, but one shift that I see happening is, you know, for a long time, in our like recent history, information was valuable, right? Whoever had the knowledge, whoever had the information had the power. Then the internet came around and especially with like, you know, chatbots and stuff now, like information is free, right?

Suresh Alluru [00:48:35]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:48:35]:
And so the thing that became valuable is the tools, right? The software and all that. I think we’re starting to get to a point now where the tools are not going to be all that valuable anymore. I mean, we have all these mega software companies. This is like a hot take, controversial, I guess, right now, but we’ve got these software companies, but we’re at a point now where software is cheaper and easier to—

Suresh Alluru [00:49:06]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:49:08]:
to make than ever before. And yes, you know, technology, they say technology’s deflationary. It’s kind of interesting to hear your arc. You started off, you know, just no software or anything. It was just like $0 to kind of run this, like, okay, we’ll do your laundry. And then you went to, you know, one of the software companies and, you know, you’re paying whatever, $400 a month or whatever it was. And now, I mean, I want to start talking about what you’ve built, you know, you being a builder and stuff, what you’ve built, but it gives owners the potential to go back to where you kind of originated at cost-wise to, I mean, you could run this business for free basically now if you want to.

Suresh Alluru [00:49:54]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:49:54]:
And the valuable thing, I mean, the valuable thing is, Julian, it is valuable. But the costly part of it is just implementation, right? Like that’s the costly part of it. So it’s an interesting arc that we have going on and there’s a transition here. It’ll be really interesting to see how it, not just in our industry, but all over the place. There are like mega valuable, obviously software companies, which I’m sure will still stay valuable, but I’ll be interested to see how those valuations change as AI continues to develop, AI coding gets better and better, which I’ve seen it get better and better over even a relatively short amount of time. So I don’t know if you want to have any take on that, but if not, I want to hear about what you’ve built as well.

Suresh Alluru [00:50:43]:
No, I do. I do. Like, you’re spot on, right? So I think the knowledge was valuable, right? Before And now, you know, that’s pretty much there. Like everyone, you know, is basically knowledgeable, like, you know, with the ChatGPT and the AI, like, you know, there is nothing that, you know, that anybody like should feel that I don’t know, right? So as fast as like, you know, they type and say it, like, you know, it’s there on the lap, right? And then evolution, like you mentioned, like, you know, AI, like, obviously, like, it’s kind of like, you know, evolution is like, you know, it’s super fast, right? Like, things that were, you know, not there like a week ago, like, they are there now, right? So you cannot imagine, like, the moment that we are speaking now, like, you are seeing, you know, something new and, you know, something better, right? So that’s coming. And also you said like building. Yes. I mean, building is like a lot easier. Like if you think about like building like a wash and fold, like a software, like what we are, a lot of us are kind of using it, right? Back then it wasn’t easy.

Suresh Alluru [00:52:01]:
Like you have to hire a product manager, you have to hire an engineer, you have to hire a tester, and you have to hire somebody who can deploy it. And it kind of requires so many resources, right? So to build the software, to run the software, and to support the software and to maintain it. So right now, anyone who really do not have to have any software background or coding background, if they can tell what they want, Hey, just like when you go to the Google Studio or like Anthropic or Claude or anything, and if you are able to say that, hey, I own the laundromat, I need to set up the wash and fold business, right? And then where customers can place orders, right? Wash and fold orders and where my employees need to kind of look at the orders and enter the weight and then manage it. And where my driver needs to deliver, right? You know, when it is ready to deliver, simply say it, right? And 100%, I’ll tell you, within 10 minutes, you don’t need longer than that. You will have the mobile-friendly website ready where customers can place an order and immediately, like, you can see that that order came through, then they can just manage it. and then it’ll show up in your driver portal and the driver can deliver it, right? That’s simple, right? So that’s simple. And I think it’s going to even get better and better. Now I’m saying all of it, like, you can even kind of simply say, hey, hello laundromat, and then probably it may give you— like, I think things basically even getting like more simpler and simpler, right? So building is like you said, knowledge became free.

Suresh Alluru [00:53:57]:
Now building became easy. To me, the way I see it is that I think going forward, I don’t think so any laundromat owner need to be using third-party softwares to run their business, right? So they can actually either build it or just kind of use something that’s available there. and start like, you know, kind of like doing their wash and fold business, like, you know, with like $0, right, a month, right? So that’s kind of how I see it. And I did this, like, you know, like I think you kind of like wanted me to touch on it too, right?

Jordan Berry [00:54:38]:
I do.

Suresh Alluru [00:54:39]:
So, you know, I have seen it. I’ve seen like, you know, some, you know, either problems with the software, like whatever that I have used it. I kind of used the AI, right? You know, did exactly like what I just said it, like, and I said, hey, I own this laundromat, like I do all of this and just like, give me, these are the problems that I have with the existing softwares and, you know, give me the solution, right? And it just kind of built it for me. Like, you know, that’s the software that I use it like for my own laundromats and I don’t pay anything. And obviously, like in order to run these softwares, there is some cost, like obviously there is power, energy, and all of that. There is some cost to it, but I no longer pay like a monthly subscription fee or anything because everything adds up. Like, it’s very important to basically save the money so that you can give that money back to the business and the customers, right? So yeah, you’re spot on. I think your observation is right and it’s going to get better.

Suresh Alluru [00:55:41]:
And the way I see it in the future, And there is no, at least the way I see it is like, you know, there is, you know, laundromat owners do not need to pay any subscription fee, you know, to run their wash and fold business. And, you know, that they’re doing it today.

Jordan Berry [00:56:01]:
Yeah. And I mean, I’m already doing this kind of in my, you know, just in like Laundromat Resource and some of my other businesses, right? Is like, I don’t usually go buy softwares anymore. I’ll, you know, if I need a CRM, I’ll just go build it because it takes me maybe 2 hours to get it all refined. And the other part about it too is like, I know this is a complaint about a lot of the software. I’m not trying to put down our existing softwares because I do think they’re still useful and valuable for a lot of people, but you know, one of the complaints is like, hey, if I have a problem or a use case that I need that’s maybe specific to my market or something like that, it gets put on a product roadmap, right? And it can take a lot of time. Well, now for me, like we run our, we have like a done-for-you program where we go out and source deals for people who are trying to buy their first laundromats, right? We build a software platform for that where we can basically deliver deals to our clients. And whenever we come up with a new use case, like, hey, we need to have a broker CRM so that we can keep track of our brokers. And then we just go build it and it takes 30 minutes.

Suresh Alluru [00:57:21]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:57:22]:
And then we test it and it works, and then we’re good to go. And now we have that feature and we can tailor make it specifically for our businesses. And you can even say to like an AI coder, you can say, hey, look, I like this software. I want to build something similar. Walk me through the steps. How do I do it? Right?

Suresh Alluru [00:57:43]:
Exactly. Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:57:45]:
So, well, tell us about what you built and why this is unique. I mean, this is super unique for our industry, but tell us what you built and if you’re using it yourself or not. And And then maybe the model kind of behind it and what you’re trying to do in the industry here with it.

Suresh Alluru [00:58:04]:
Yep. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So I think the first thing that, you know, the reason that I basically built it, right, and, you know, is to address one of the issues that I’ve seen in my land permit. I don’t know whether it’s very common with other land permits, but I think I have seen it. One is this garment tracking, right? So a lot of times that, because we get the laundry like 100 pounds or 200 pounds sometimes from customers and we deliver it like they’re nicely folded and super clean because we already, like I said, like configured out like process and everything, right? And the customer calls me and, hey, I missed the red shirt that I sent. And there is absolutely like, there is no way to like, you know, find out that particular red shirt is like, you know, out of that 200-pound pile, right? And even though like we have some kind of like cameras, right? But they’re like very hard, like it’s kind of kept recording.

Suresh Alluru [00:59:12]:
Like there is no way like I can go back and check each one and see whether they folded it, whether they received it. Like it’s It’s really hard. And I think that’s where I got the idea, right? So how can we make something that basically makes sure that we never miss a single garment from a customer, right? And also make this employee or laundromat operators accountable like, you know, to ensure whatever they receive, then they’re delivering it back. So that’s kind of like my triggering point, right? So then I also had like a dream, like I was mentioning before, and I kind of pivoted to a later phase. Like really, like, you know, I wanted to build something called like smart laundry basket. Like that’s why the name You know, say the smart laundry basket, like the product that I built is basically like what I wanted was originally that, you know, instead of a basket at each of their home, like we will have like smart laundry basket, right? So that means like whenever you go to like, you know, shower or anything, we just like take the like shirt and, you know, anything like put in the basket. Instead of putting in the basket, like they put it in the smart laundry basket, right? We basically, you know, creating that product, right? And what it does is that as soon as it kind of gets full, they don’t have to tell like, hey, place an order, like somebody to pick it up. That automatically places an order.

Suresh Alluru [01:00:50]:
And then the order goes to like a nearest laundromat, like nearest authorized good laundromat. And they just like come in and then knock the door and say, you just like do it. And they pick it up and they deliver it back into their garage, right? And automatically garage door opens and they just put it. And then in this equation, that customer never have to worry about, hey, when I have to place an order, like it automatically place an order. It’s kind of mostly run on the monthly subscription model or whatever. And then driver automatically come in, like you mentioned, maybe in the future, robotaxi will come in and just kind of pick it up and then deliver it back, right? So that’s kind of my model was that initially, like build that model under basket, like with the goal of customers never having to worry about keeping a space for washer and dryer at their home, right? So then I even started thinking about making models and creating that IoT, like some embedded pieces onto the baskets. But then later I thought, okay, let’s basically build something where I can learn more about this. like garments and training of the models and things like that.

Suresh Alluru [01:02:04]:
So maybe I wanted to focus on building the same logic, but more in the controlled environment, meaning in the laundromats, right? So that’s where I kind of pivoted this to first make this garment tracking software, right? So anyway, so basically now we build this garment tracking software. So what happens is today, whenever any laundry that comes into our facility, Right? Automatically, we have the one camera, like we have 2 models. One is with the overhead camera, one with the mobile phone, right? So if somebody wants to go lightweight, they can just use their mobile phone. And as soon as we come in, like we basically, this overhead camera kind of taking the pictures or taking the video of whatever, then we kind of like count and also classify. So for example, like a customer sent us 10 pounds of clothes that consists of like 10 shirts and 10 pants and few comforters, 10 comforters. Then we basically, as soon as we got into the facility and we do this counting classification automatically, employee do not have to do anything, that everything happens behind the scenes. And the customer gets the text message saying that, hey, your laundry reached, your clothes reached the laundry. And here is the count, right? If there is any discrepancy and you can just tell us, right? Then the same thing, when the drying is complete, when they’re folding it, we’re going to match it, matching with the receipt.

Suresh Alluru [01:03:36]:
If there is any discrepancy, right away it’s going to alert the employee, hey, we got the 10 shirts, but you only folded 9 shirts, right? And even with the color too, right? So then they will check, oh, if there is anything missing in the washer, are they missing anything in the dryer? They immediately go and checked, right? And then make sure that they’re kind of matching it, right? And once their fold is complete and the customer gets the message saying that, hey, employee has folded this, and things like that. So I think that’s kind of the primary thing that what we built, and it really helped us to address this garment missing issues because we have evidence at each step, like right from pickup, right from received, right at the folding step, right at the delivery, right? So then I thought about when we have this garment tracking software, why can’t we build online ordering system where customers can place an order and where employees or laundry operators can manage their software? They’re kind of built around it. Now it’s the end-to-end software where customers can place an order and your laundry employees or laundromat operators can manage their software, sorry, manage their orders. And also they show up in the driver and the driver just delivers it, right? And then we also built a few other things on top of it. I think I was mentioning there are 2 things very important in the wash and fold industry, right? One is getting a new customer, And then building a trust and making that customer stick to us, right? So we made this SEO free. I know like in a lot of companies and a lot of people say that, hey, pay us something that we just do the SEO for us, right? We really don’t have to. I think the software that what we built, like the moment that anyone onboard to this product, right? They automatically create like so much of the content relevant to that area. For example, let’s say you are in Ohio.

Suresh Alluru [01:05:44]:
I don’t know where you are actually. You’re in Ohio, for example. If you want to start your wash and fold business in the Ohio area, then we automatically create so much content on that Ohio area, right? So that means somebody search for wash and fold in Ohio, then actually it’ll show up. That’s the first thing that comes for free, right? You know, there is nothing new that you need to do and there is no more money that you need to spend. Then, after that, like making that customer stick, right? So, we do that using like 2 ways. One is like with the garment tracking software, like, you know, we are showing so much transparency that customers know that like their, you know, their plots are handled like, you know, Perfect, right? Meaning they can see what is received, they can see what’s folded. They can also see the pictures, like when it is handled, like how it is handled, everything. And other thing is that engagement, because we have the— it’s again, the free of cost, right? So we basically track each customer, right? So let’s say you order today, and if you didn’t order, if you are not going to order like another 30 days, then we automatically send a reminder, hey, sorry we miss you.

Suresh Alluru [01:07:03]:
We are sending you this promo code, you can just order it, whatever, just kind of keeping that customer engaged. So we kind of put that so much focus on trust and also making customer come back with our free engagement models that what we built, right? So yeah, I think coming back to what is that unique thing that I don’t think so we have the existing softwares do. One is the garment tracking, which provides the transparency, and that’s the trust that I was talking about. It’s very important that we as industry have to work on increasing the trust with the customer. And the second thing is that we are providing that engagement with the free of cost that we see a significant comeback. I see it whenever customers see that message, Hey, you know, and they just like come back and I see that because I track that using the code that they’re using it, right? So yeah, so start with the garment tracking and we built the end-to-end system like where any wash and fold business, either people who has the laundromats or people who want to start the wash and fold business individually, they can use this software, right? And lastly, I will say this, You know, like I think we talked about and you mentioned it, that, you know, building is easy, right? And we don’t have to charge for it. That’s why we made this software as like open source, right? So that means that this software is free, 100% free, that anybody can, you know, it’s a, you know, there is a GitHub link already on my website. You simply go there and you can just download it, like start using it, right? You can host it, Wherever you want it, you already have your own resources.

Suresh Alluru [01:08:50]:
You can just host it for free. And anytime that we make an update, you’ll get the updates, and you can always ask for some customizations that we are happy to do it. It’s not a problem, and we can do it for free because that helps our product, like, you know, be better and better. It’s not a problem. And the second thing is that, and let’s say if you think that, you know, hey, you know, I don’t want to, you know, host it and manage it, like, we can manage it for you. and we’re only charging $49 a month, right? That’s kind of the basic fee and you really don’t have to pay anything. All the payments directly goes to your bank account and we are not even involved in between. We only manage your software somewhere.

Suresh Alluru [01:09:34]:
And then also you don’t have to pay that $49 also the day one, only you will pay Once you kind of like hit the $1,000 a month, right? Because we don’t want— we really want you to try this for free, right? You know, you should not feel that, hey, I don’t have any business, right? And why should I pay? Yeah, don’t pay. Like you only pay once you hit the $1,000. Because the reason I think I introduced this one, I know this pain, like you mentioned, like, you know, I paid $400 a month almost for 2 years when I didn’t have like a single penny, like, you know, I’m making it, right? That’s why I just want to make it easy for anybody who wants to try, like, go try it and, you know, and just only pay when you, you know, reach that $1,000.

Jordan Berry [01:10:24]:
Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that’s the real revolution here in your product. I mean, I think the garment tracking is huge. Like all All the stuff that you talked about is huge. Those features are massive. I think the real revolution here though is that, um, I, I just, while we were talking, I was on your website, which is smartlaundrybasket.ai, by the way. We’ll have that link posted everywhere, uh, in the show notes. If you’re on YouTube, it’ll be down below, smartlaundrybasket.ai.

Jordan Berry [01:10:55]:
Um, but I was on there and you can literally, there’s a button right on the On the hero image right at the top of the page, it says, go view the source code on GitHub. And so I’m on GitHub right now looking at the source code. And what’s interesting about it too is he was saying, they’ll host it for you. And if, I suspect there’s a lot of people out there right now that are like, I have no idea what that even means. How do you, what do I do with this GitHub repository or any of that stuff? Which is fine. That’s where the $49 a month comes in, right? Where you guys will host it and you’ll set it up. No big deal. And that cost is negligible, especially, I mean, you mentioned, you know, hey, you’re making $25K a month right now.

Jordan Berry [01:11:43]:
If you gotta pay $49 a month to make $25K, I will do that every day of the week.

Suresh Alluru [01:11:48]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [01:11:48]:
Yep. How can I give you more money to make more money? You know what I mean? But What’s interesting about this is that you could go and take that source code and fork it off into your own. And now if you’re like, hey, you know, I need my cameras to, I don’t know, read the tags of the shirts and give plain English or Spanish instructions to my attendants, like you could, You know, you could code that yourself and add it into the thing.

Suresh Alluru [01:12:21]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [01:12:23]:
Right? So this is revolutionary. We don’t have any, as far as I know, nobody else is doing that, is offering that. And this puts a lot of power into the owner’s hands, which is why I really wanted to have you on. I mean, that Singularity, I mean, obviously, like, I wanted to hear your story and lessons you’ve learned and all that, but That singular aspect of the, this product that you’re building is, it’s revolutionary in the industry. And there’s a lot of things right now, especially in our industry, that are removing leverage, removing power from the hands of the independent owner-operator. There’s a lot going on. I’ve talked a lot about a lot of those things, more coming. But this is something, a model that’s given us some power back, given us some control back, which is huge.

Suresh Alluru [01:13:24]:
Yep. Yep.

Jordan Berry [01:13:25]:
Huge.

Suresh Alluru [01:13:26]:
I completely agree. Yep. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:13:27]:
And I really appreciate it too. And you know what’s interesting too is that, I mean, there’s, we didn’t even really talk about this and I don’t even know if you’ve really thought through this or not, but there’s a huge uptick in People who are trying to offer like pickup and delivery before they own a laundromat. Uh, right. And so this is an option for somebody to get in, you know, without having to pay the, you know, the hundreds of dollars a month while they’re trying to start up a business and probably looking for a laundromat as well. Um, so massive use case there too.

Suresh Alluru [01:14:05]:
Yeah. Yeah, we have that. Some of the existing customers, like, you know, after we started this one, I think we have at least like 10 customers there exactly like fall in that bucket. Like they don’t have the laundromat and they really wanted to do it. And I have seen like, you know, how their business is growing, right? And I think I’m super happy that we are actually helping the people who really do not have any background, right? Say with the industry, but still like wanted to start something on their own and they’re able to do it, right? And then like I was telling, like SEO is a big part too. Like, you know, I know how much I spent like before, you know, to get the SEO thing working, right? You know, I paid the designer, I mean, whoever like, hey, you know, put this and all that. But now we like making it easy. Like, you know, I think, you know, like you mentioned, like, you know, technology is evolving, right? It is just about, you know, how we use it.

Suresh Alluru [01:15:04]:
like help our community, right? You know, get benefit out of it. Like, you know, and not everyone like me is maybe close to, you know, maybe IR or UR, right? So, but I think thank you for having me also, like, you know, also like enabling me to kind of like share like what I know, like with the other long-term IT owners. I think it’s very powerful. Like, thank you for having me on this show.

Jordan Berry [01:15:30]:
Yeah, no, man, it’s an honor to have you on. And I do want to say on your behalf as well, just for anybody listening out there later in the future, everything in our industry and really in our world is changing really quickly right now. So, I mean, we mentioned some business models, we mentioned some pricing, all that is subject to change. Obviously, I don’t know Suresh’s roadmap or anything, and he may not either, but just know things are changing. So if If you head over to smartlaundrybasket.ai and things are a little bit different than what we’re talking about, just know like things are changing fast right now. And, you know, so pricing models, all that stuff subject to change. But as of right now, this is a revolutionary model, I think, in our industry specifically that’s happening and how it evolves, you know, we’ll have to see.

Suresh Alluru [01:16:22]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [01:16:22]:
Yeah. Part of the fun. Well, Suresh, man, thank you so much, uh, for coming on, sharing your story about getting into the industry. And, uh, I think it started with a dream similar to mine and a lot of other people’s and has evolved into something you probably never would’ve even imagined, uh, that you’d be, you know, on this world-renowned podcast talking about, uh, I’m just kidding about that part. But talking about software that you built for the laundromat industry, that probably was never something you dreamed about as a kid, but here you are, man. Pretty cool.

Suresh Alluru [01:16:58]:
All right. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Jordan Berry [01:17:00]:
All right, man. We’ll stay in touch.

Suresh Alluru [01:17:03]:
All right. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jordan, for having me. And I maybe repeat one more time. And one day I really want like, you know, homes do not have to think about like having a space for like a washer and dryer. And we are going to solve that.

Jordan Berry [01:17:18]:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think as an industry, you know, obviously it would behoove us to get behind that vision, uh, because, you know, if we’re doing more people’s laundry, we’re doing better business for sure.

Suresh Alluru [01:17:31]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [01:17:32]:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, let’s do this again here pretty soon because I’m sure there’ll be updates and evolutions and, uh, hopefully you get a flood of people checking out smartlaundrybasket.ai. Again, the links will be everywhere. Uh, and, uh, Yeah, let’s do this again sometime soon and do a catch-up episode.

Suresh Alluru [01:17:50]:
Okay. Thank you. All right.

Jordan Berry [01:17:52]:
I hope you love that episode with Suresh. Very cool to hear his story, but even more intriguing in my estimation, this trend of, you know, AI giving us tools to be able to code our own programs, our own software, customize them specifically to our specific business and specific business needs and to be able to create our own roadmaps for what we can do with our, our software. And for Suresh to build that for his business is great, but for him to make it open source and now you can take it and either have him host it, which is the easy button, is it seems like a no-brainer to me, or you can take it yourself and customize it yourself. Uh, pretty revolutionary. I’m seeing this all over the place. I’ve sort of inadvertently been doing this with my businesses, uh, and specifically with Laundromat Resource, where we created a proprietary software to help us manage our relationships with our clients, where we go out and source deals for them in whatever market they’re looking for. And we’ve created a platform to help us do exactly that. We’ve customized it specifically for that.

Jordan Berry [01:19:04]:
And, uh, now whenever I need some sort of software for some kind of, you know, problem to be solved, my first instinct now is, can I just build it? And more often than not, the answer is yes. And I can do it quickly, very cheaply, and I can customize it specifically for my business. So is that coming? No, it is not coming to our industry. It’s already here. You can already do that. So go check out Smart Laundry Basket over there. And I would love to know what you think about it. So drop me an email or a comment if you’re on YouTube, [email protected].

Jordan Berry [01:19:41]:
Comment if you’re on YouTube. I’d love to actually hear your thoughts on this because we’ve got some heavy hitters in this industry who are selling software to help us manage our businesses. And I’ll be interested to see how this model goes. All right. Peace.