How do you choose your laundry services provider? If this were the olden days, you would probably settle for whichever neighborhood laundry shop was the nearest. You might even go on Google to search for “laundry near me” so you can find your most convenient option.
Today, however, laundry has breached geographical boundaries, and a significant part has moved online. How should you choose your laundry services provider now that you’re no longer limited to your neighborhood laundry shop or the one closest to your home or residence?
You can use the following criteria as a general guideline.
1. Range of Services
Does the shop you’re considering offer the services you require?
For instance, if your clothes are meant for dry cleaning only, you need to find a place that offers dry cleaning. If you wash your clothes at home and only require occasional pressing, you must look for a laundry shop that provides press-only services. Likewise, if you don’t like washing your linen at home, you should go for a shop with home-care laundry services.
Ideally, choose a provider that offers all the laundry services you might want and need. For instance, if you need regular shoe cleaning, too, and one of your options provides that service, that provider should naturally go to the top of your list.
2. Facilities, Technologies, Expertise, and Systems
Different fabrics require different levels and modes of care. Your blue and white silk chiffon dress should only be dry cleaned, but your nylon chiffon ensemble can probably withstand cold-water handwashing. Meanwhile, your go-to polyester shirts should be okay thrown in a warm-water wash and tumble-dried.
How can you be sure your laundry services provider will give your clothes the specific level of care they need? You certainly don’t want your designer evening wear treated the same way as your gym clothes, do you? However, you can’t very well provide individual instructions with your laundry.
Thus, you should check your prospects’ facilities, technology, expertise, and systems. All laundry service providers will tell you they’ll care for your clothes as they care for their own. However, you can only be certain of it if a provider has the facilities, technology, expertise, and system to ensure it.
For instance, if a laundry service provider says it can provide cleaning comparable to handwashing for your delicate clothing, ask what type of machine and washing program they will use to accomplish this.
Find out, too, what facilities and technology they use for drying (air drying is the best) and pressing (steam pressing provides the best care).
Of course, you also have a role to play. You must sort your laundry. Those that can be washed in warm water, tumble dried then folded (e.g., your for-home clothes, work-out clothes, and other ordinary pieces of clothing) can go into your regular wash heap.
However, your chiffon dress, cashmere coat, silk button-down shirt, wool suit jacket, and linen pants must go to the delicate-handling pile.
A laundry services provider must have a system to ensure it won’t mishandle delicate-care clothing. For instance, it can have a color code system. This ensures that any laundry that comes in a particular color of laundry bag will be treated with the maximum level of care.
Its expert personnel will then assess the clothes using the company’s established standard operating procedures and assign each piece to the most suitable cleaning method and technology.
They will dry clean those that must only be dry cleaned and “handwash” the rest (that’s washing in cold water using a professional machine with a program that mimics handwashing). After that, they will air dry and steam press (instead of tumble drying and hot plate pressing) them to minimize wear.
3. Convenience
On-demand means laundry service is available as and when you need it. Convenience should, therefore, be one of your selection metrics.
You want a provider that has an easy-to-use mobile application with intuitive functions. Laundry pickup and delivery are a given, but you want a provider that picks up and delivers quickly, efficiently, and within the promised timeframe.
4. Quality Control
All laundry services providers will promise you a high quality of care. However, you want a provider with a built-in system to enforce this promise.
Thus, look for an online laundry service provider with a vertically integrated supply chain. In other words, you want a laundry service provider with a centralized laundry facility and that owns the entire cleaning process from start to finish. This enables it to maintain, ensure, and be accountable for quality at every stage.
Put another way, you don’t want a laundry service provider that outsources any part of its operations — e.g., it takes care only of orders but relegates the actual cleaning to partner laundry shops. Quality can be compromised in this case because a third-party contractor may not hold itself to the standards of quality initially promised.
Choose the Right Laundry Service Provider
There are many laundry service providers online, and anyone of them can probably pick up your laundry wherever you may be. Thus, in a sea of options, choose your dry cleaning and laundry press service provider based on convenience and their range of services. You should also pick the provider with the facilities, technologies, expertise, and systems to ensure and maintain quality laundry services.
