‘Uber for laundry' arrives in NZ

NZ Herald

4 days ago

When Susan Toft was a new mum, she'd walk past piles of laundry every day and feel that familiar sinking feeling – too much to do, not enough time.
Laundry was one of her least favourite tasks, and when she became a working mother of a toddler, it became even more of a chore. While she struggled with work/life balance, the spare room was a dumping ground for mounds of clean washing, while dirty clothes piled up elsewhere.
So, backed by a successful career in marketing, Toft founded The Laundry Lady on Australia's Gold Coast in 2012 to take care of both ends of the problem – finding a job that allowed her to work around her family while also getting the laundry done.
Toft became the original Laundry Lady and the company has since thrived in Australia. It's now entered New Zealand and is expanding nationwide, with mobile laundry services available in Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton, Wellington, Palmerston North, Taranaki, Tauranga, and Hawke's Bay. More locations are on the way.
'It's like Uber for laundry,' Toft says. The concept is simple. As a client, you book a laundry-washing slot via thelaundrylady.co.nz, and a Laundry Lady – or Lad – comes to pick up your bundle. They wash, dry, iron, fold, and return it. It doesn't just suit domestic users – families, couples, individuals, or people with disabilities or mobility challenges – but in Australia, small to medium businesses such as hairdressers, gyms, physios, sports clubs, bars and cafes, property managers and aged care facilities have found it a boon, too.
What is it about laundry that makes it so discouraging a household chore? It's the visual clutter; it's the many different stages it gets stuck in; it's the fact that it is literally never-ending.
'It just takes up so much time,' Toft says. 'And I think if you can outsource that and make life easier for yourself then you should. It's putting a value on what your time is worth. In this day and age we don't have to be wasting our time doing the never-ending laundry.'
And, she adds, you have a lot more clothes to wear when you start outsourcing their cleaning.
Indeed, doing so is on the rise. The New Zealand laundry care market is anticipated to grow by US$37.2 million with a compound annual growth rate of around 4.7% throughout the 2025 to 2030 forecast period. That's part of a growing post-pandemic trend of outsourcing services, all made easier by contactless technology; automated and app-based laundromat services are growing too. But in the case of laundry, Toft says the usual solution – the local DIY or managed laundromat – is limited.
'You can certainly go to the laundromat and do it yourself, but then you've got to stand there and wait,' she says. 'And it costs almost as much as getting it picked up. Large commercial providers tend to only do pick-ups on certain days of the week, it's not as fast a turnaround, and you get your stuff washed with other people's.'
With The Laundry Lady, you type in your suburb, see who's available, book them in straight away, and pay online. You can also customise the service with options like line-drying a special garment.
Laundry Lady now has around 1000 residential and small business customers across New Zealand, supported by a growing team of 25 local Laundry Ladies and Lads. In Australia, that team has grown to more than 300.
'If someone's looking for that work-from-home model it works very well for them,' she says. 'They can be earning anywhere between $300 to $3,000 a week consistently, depending on how much they want to work. For customers it's great as well, because they like to know they're supporting locals.'
Potential Laundry Ladies and Lads don't need special commercial equipment to get started. A car, a washing machine, dryer, and steam iron station are all they need, though Toft says people often add extra machines in their garages to increase their business as word spreads.
'It keeps startup costs very low. People can join and get started earning money very quickly,' she says. 'It does take time to grow; it's not overnight that you have a full customer base, but that can work well if people are transitioning out of full-time work.'
New Zealand is The Laundry Lady's first overseas expansion, with Canada and the UK next on the horizon. Toft ultimately wants to take the business 'as global as possible'. When she thinks back to her pile of home laundry that started it all, she says it's been an exciting ride seeing how her idea has grown.
'Especially how much it's changed people's lives,' she says. 'For our customers it saves them time in their day, and for our contractors they have this amazing flexible business. It's been wonderful seeing how life-changing that can be for them.'