Brand-First Laundry: How Lotta's Laundry Turned Dirty Clothes into a Design Statement

About Lotta's Laundry

On Bainbridge Island, Washington, a creative husband-and-wife duo is revolutionizing how locals think about laundry. With their distinctive rose-hued visual identity and community-focused approach, Beau and Liz Perra have built Lotta's Laundry into a thriving business that operates exclusively as a pickup and delivery service—no self-serve laundromat required.

The Creative Force Behind the Brand

As graphic designers, Beau and Liz ensured that their laundry business led with branding and intention, just like every business they've built in the past. Self-described as the "king and queen of pivoting," the couple brings their extensive background in graphic and web design, social media management, and online business coaching to an industry typically dominated by traditional coin laundries.

"At the heart of everything we do, we're creatives," explains Beau.

Since launching in July 2024, Lotta's Laundry has quickly grown to over 125 accounts in just eight months—proving that a physical storefront with washing machines isn't necessary to build a successful laundry business.

Choosing Pure Pickup and Delivery Over Traditional Laundromat

While many entrepreneurs enter the industry by purchasing a laundromat first, Beau and Liz deliberately chose a different path. They initially considered opening a traditional laundromat on the island, where one hadn't existed for four years, but their market research led them in another direction.

"We ditched the laundromat idea," Beau explains. "I just didn’t think it was going to work here after really nailing down our customer avatars."

Instead, they focused solely on pickup and delivery—a perfect fit for their island’s demographics: over 10,000 households with an average income of $150,000, plus one of the nation’s wealthiest retirement communities. This created an ideal market for a premium, time-saving laundry service.

Their business model eliminates the need for storefront operations, coin machines, and the overhead associated with maintaining a physical laundromat, allowing them to concentrate entirely on providing exceptional service directly to customers' homes. To power their operations, Lotta's utilizes Cents' pickup and delivery platform, which handles their routing, customer management, and delivery logistics—enabling them to focus on quality and growth.

A Brand Built on Nostalgia and Trust

The Lotta's Laundry brand captures a delicate balance between nostalgic charm and modern convenience. Even the name was carefully considered, combining a play on "a lot of laundry" with a vintage feel.

Their branding evokes the fifties and sixties era—that feel-good nostalgia of longtime service providers like the family plumber or milkman, people customers truly trust. This trust factor is especially important in a pickup and delivery model, where customers are entrusting their personal items to someone else's care without seeing a physical storefront.

The couple struck a balance between that old-school, trustworthy aesthetic and modern efficiency, creating a brand that feels both familiar and fresh.

Guerrilla Marketing That Gets Results

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Lotta's Laundry success story is their low-budget, high-impact marketing approach. Rather than immediately investing in expensive digital ads, they started with creative community-focused strategies on a budget of just $500.

Their most successful campaign was chalk art hopscotch games in local parks. They created interactive games at key parks on Bainbridge Island, with hopscotch patterns featuring laundry baskets, washers, and dryers. Families would play while learning about Lotta's services.

With their own children helping out, they created a fun, engaging way for families to interact with their brand. Parents would snap photos and share them on social media, giving Lotta's instant visibility in the community for the cost of chalk.

Learn more about their sidewalk chalk marketing -> here

More Creative Marketing Tactics

The couple implemented several other effective grassroots marketing strategies:

• Fourth of July Stain Remover Packets: They distributed 1,000 stain removal packets during Fourth of July celebrations, targeting parents whose kids were enjoying popsicles and inevitably creating stains on their clothing.

• Mailbox Cards: Their signature-colored business cards tucked near mailboxes (never inside) yielded significant account creation rates.

• Community Event Sponsorships: They donated services like a free month of laundry as prizes for school fundraisers and silent auctions, generating both goodwill and new customers.

Not every approach was successful—door tags distributed in 95-degree weather yielded just one customer despite significant effort, but documenting both successes and failures helped them refine their marketing strategy.

Building in Public Through Social Media

With substantial experience in social media management, Beau and Liz take a refreshingly transparent approach to their business content.

They regularly share behind-the-scenes glimpses of their operation, including monthly reels that reveal their numbers, order volume, and pounds processed. Rather than simply showcasing clean clothes, they show how the clothes get clean, turning their business journey into a narrative that customers can follow and feel invested in. This approach creates genuine connections with their audience, who eagerly anticipate updates on the company's progress.

Lessons for Aspiring Laundry Entrepreneurs

For others looking to enter the pickup and delivery laundry space, Beau offers valuable advice about starting small and growing strategically—all without the need for a traditional laundromat.

"I think a lot of people think you have to have a laundromat to even start pickup and delivery. And we’re a testament that narrative is false," Beau emphasizes.

He describes business growth as "a staircase to the sky," where each step illuminates as you reach it. This approach helped them avoid overextending while still planning thoughtfully for the future.

When they discovered that residential washing machines wouldn't handle their volume after just two weeks of operation, they quickly pivoted to commercial equipment without investing in a full laundromat. This ability to anticipate problems before they become critical has been key to their success.

Looking Ahead

From operating out of their current location with personal vehicles for deliveries to approaching the acquisition of a dedicated processing facility, Lotta's Laundry continues to grow strategically.

"We're going less towards originally thinking about a laundromat, now we're going more toward just needing a commercial space," explains Liz. "So less about that front-facing customer laundromat, more about just needing machines to handle the load that's coming in."

The couple is careful not to "bite off more than they can chew," recognizing that quality can suffer when a business grows too quickly. They're selective about the commercial clients they pursue, focusing on those requiring less labor-intensive services like towels and sheets to optimize their operations. As they scale, Cents' platform continues to support their growth by adapting to their evolving delivery needs and helping them manage an increasing volume of orders efficiently.

About Lotta's Laundry

Lotta's Laundry offers a premium pickup and delivery laundry service—without a self-serve component—for residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington. The company provides custom laundry solutions for busy families, retirees, and professionals who value their time.

Their service model is simple yet effective: customers schedule a pickup, and Lotta's professional team collects, processes, and returns their laundry clean, folded, and ready to be put away. They use high-quality, eco-friendly products and state-of-the-art equipment to ensure exceptional results.

With their distinctively branded delivery bags becoming a recognized symbol on the island, Lotta's has established itself as more than just a service provider – they're a community-focused brand committed to giving people back their time while maintaining the highest standards of quality and care.

What started as a $500 investment has grown into a thriving business with over 125 accounts in just eight months, proving that with creativity, strategic thinking, and authentic branding, it's possible to build a successful laundry business entirely on pickup and delivery, without the traditional coin-operated laundromat that most associate with the industry.

Connect With Lotta's Laundry

Follow Beau and Liz's entrepreneurial journey and see their unique approach to laundry service:

• Laundromat Instagram: @lottaslaundry - Follow Lotta's Laundry's business growth and behind-the-scenes content

• Creative Instagram: @beauandliz - Connect with the creative husband-and-wife duo behind the brand

• Pretty Okay Creative - A tiny but mighty creative studio specializing in branding and social for service-based businesses—especially the kind people don't usually get excited about. Run by Beau and Liz, they transform businesses like laundry services from forgettable to remarkable with clear, creative ideas that actually work.