54. Carving Out a Laundry Niche and Creating a Successful Business with Nikila Gibson

I am a serial entrepreneur, wife and homeschooling mother of 4. I currently own Lave Wash Laundry Delivery and Autumn Teaco Jewelry. I am also 3rd generation entrepreneur which is rare in the African-American community. I was born into entrepreneurship. When I was born my father was a manager for my grandfather’s business and my mother was a saleswoman. My grandfather at that time on the door to door multi use cleaner company. My father has owned multiple businesses since managing my grandfather’s. He now founded and manages a non profit. My mother went on to own her own child care business during my younger years.

I started my first business at the age of 24 as a single mother of two toddlers a few years after the start of the last economic crash. My first business was a preschool, that turned into a full time daycare, at that same time I used my early childhood education experience in studies to form a subscription service for early childhood education curriculum. I would sell these at events with my two young girls with me. After that I started to learn about wholesaling and I begin drop shipping and wholesaling jewelry to other small businesses. From that business, grew Autumn Teaco, the luxury charm and locket company, now instead of wholesaling we have our own charms designed that is strictly sold through our website only. I also tinkered in eBay and eventually I wanted to be able to focus more on my daughters, now having four, and their homeschooling so I started a employment service called novation staffing that turned into my first logistics business by the same name (I already owned the domain and built under it so I kept the name) logistics business we would run routes for small businesses. So we would set up a schedule where we will pick up their customer orders and deliver them to their customers. I would partner with other companies from time to time to learn more about the business. This is how I learned about Laundry Delivery. One of those companies went under and we continued to deliver for the laundry service in certain San Francisco neighborhoods. I never liked working in food, so we dropped the food companies after that company went under. Did that for a few months and then began Lave in the East Bay. As we were starting Lave, I say a laundromat advertising for wash n fold. The deal was we keep up the care of the laundromat, and we can run out business from it. The main goal of a laundromat owner is to get money into their machines. By partnering with us it stabilizes their income. We did that for less than a year but there were too many blurred lines with the two businesses under one roof so we branched out on our own. From there we partnered with many Laundromats from Solano county to Oakland but under different terms. We have our own separate employees and they have theirs.

Lave wash was started in 2017. There have been many services like ours that have started and failed, I study those so I can see how we can improve on those prior models. For one, we are100% self-funded. We don’t have to worry about pleasing investors. Our only goal is to provide the best experience to our clients. Also some of those are considered tech only companies. Although our main product is laundry, lave is actually a tech and logistics business. We implement technology into our day-to-day operations to make enhance the laundry delivery experience. We have a tracking app that alerts our clients when laundry is on the way and when laundry is delivered. Everything is automated and online for ease of use for the client. From scheduling to billing to notices when laundry is delivered everything is automated. We use technology in the running of logistics for our business and even with the intake and outtake. The goal is to continuously improve on customer experience through the implementation of technology while still providing a personalized service. On the logistics side, we are continuously seeking ways to streamline the process and make getting our product from point a to point b and back again.