STARTUP STAGE: Rumby has a tech solution for hotel guest laundry

Rumby

Rumby is an e-commerce platform that moves laundry online, offering pickup and delivery services through partners including DoorDash and Uber.

Founded in 2020, Rumby’s B2B platform connects hotels with its nationwide network of cleaners.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Rumby is an e‐commerce platform that takes dry cleaners and laundromats online with pickup and delivery powered by our partners DoorDash and Uber. With the launch of our B2B platform “Rumby Exchange” we’re connecting order generation channels like hotels, residential buildings and office buildings with our nationwide network of cleaners. Our next big move is into mobile app APIs.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Our strength is our network of quality cleaners. This is a group that is notoriously difficult to sell to and we now have the largest connected and trained network of cleaners in the country.

Weakness is hiring right now. Talent acquisition is slow and it’s difficult to get enough resumes in the door to find quality candidates. We pay well above average and have many perks and benefits that outpace the top Fortune 100 companies. Our ability to scale in 2022 will only be hamstrung by slow talent acquisition. Luckily, we have a brilliant new HR director coming on board to help us on this front.

Opportunities: The most difficult job for early stage founders is identifying what are opportunities and what are distractions. With the Rumby Exchange we have access to $50 billion in opportunities, and it’s up to us to make the right plays in the right markets at the right time.

Threats: An economic downturn is a threat, as is consumer behaviors changing. Rumby launched at the lowest point of the laundry industry’s downturn so we forecast solid growth in front of us now.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

With our hotel channel partners, Rumby offers a technology solution to replace a very outdated process. Local hotel managers have to either source a local cleaner or manage cleaning in house, then facilitate the exchange of guest clothing, insure nothing is lost and the appropriate cleaning is completed, then return the items in a timely fashion.

With Rumby the guest is in control of the entire process and has complete transparency into their order status. For the hotel they never have to worry about managing cleaner relationships or guest orders all while earning a percentage of revenue share on every order. Meanwhile, the cleaner no longer manages pickup and delivery logistics or hotel contracts. They simply receive orders, clean them and hand them off over the counter like any walk‐in customer.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Rumby is strictly a B2B company. The core Rumby product is a white-labeled e‐commerce page that enables customers to place orders online with their local cleaner. Rumby Exchange sells cleaning products to hotels, residential and commercial buildings. Our next plays revolve around mobile apps.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

We didn’t need to establish the market, but we recognized the unique combination of an outdated industry and consumers ready for drastic change. COVID shutdowns ramped up consumer acceptance of on‐demand delivery services. Now even older generations are embracing Instacart, and we can see that last mile logistics have firmly arrived. Timing is everything and we consider timing to be the biggest factor to our success so far.

How and when will you make money?

We’re making money and could flip to profitability if not for our need to keep growth and R&D at breakneck speed to carve out the market and become an industry leader. We’re planning a significant Series A raise this year which will enable a couple acquisitions, the launch of new channels, and tripling the team.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Serial entrepreneurs with diverse technology experiences.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

There’s heavy focus on gender or race when it comes to diversity, but ageism is a real issue as well, especially in tech. The worst thing a founder can do is to replicate themselves in every hire. I believe in building balanced teams who can use the diversity of their backgrounds and experiences to strengthen and challenge each other's world views as they relate to our business, industry and customers. This will ensure that we can build a company capable of reaching and retaining a vast, colorful and diverse customer, client, investor and user group.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Finding quality engineering talent.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact ‐ so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?

Luckily travel is a secondary channel for us that accounts for 15% of our revenue. We anticipate that growing to 25%+ by end of year, but we’re also launching products for residential and office buildings. We estimate these channels surpassing hospitality by end of year to nearly 35% of our revenue.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

Our plan is to acquire one to three industry startups in our industries this year, triple the team and complete R&D in six different growth channels. That would put us in position for a sizable Series B or a SPAC in 2023. Who knows!

What is your end‐game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

I want Rumby to be the first unicorn born out of the Cincinnati startup scene. We’re going to take this public but will wait for the timing to be perfect. Considering our industry, I want our mom‐and‐pop-owned cleaners, our hospitality and channel partners, our investors and our franchise partners to be able to buy stock for the long haul, and as we become the wind of change in the industry, they thrive along with us.