.png?width=2196&height=2196&name=OS%20(1).png)
.svg)
-3.png?width=224&height=213&name=Accelerate%20(2)-3.png)
Doubling Down on our Commitment to Laundry By Alex Jekowsky, Co-founder & CEO
The dry cleaning software market tells an honest story about how industries get stuck. The platforms serving it took every feature request seriously for decades, and the result is software so layered and complex that meaningful modernization is nearly impossible. When consolidation reshaped the market, operators landed where they could: capable tools, sure, but nothing built to get ahead of what dry cleaning actually demands. I don't say that to knock anyone. It's just what happens when good software gets asked to carry thirty years on its back.
Cents already runs thousands of laundry businesses, dry cleaners among them. We got here by obsessing over one hard, hands-on industry until we understood it cold. Today, we're doubling down on dry cleaning with the acquisition of Insight Systems, the garment care industry's premier business intelligence and reporting platform. And I could not be more excited to tell you why.
Why we acquired Insight Systems
Insight Systems is the best data and reporting platform in the garment care industry. I don't say "best" loosely; operators use it every day to understand their business in ways they simply couldn't before. That's the whole reason it became the foundation for strengthening what we offer dry cleaners today: not a system we're inventing from scratch, but a proven platform operators already rely on, now backed by the scale to put it in the hands of every dry cleaner in the country.
Leading that work is Wash Respess, who joins Cents as General Manager of Dry Cleaning. Respess brings decades of experience as an operator, a product builder inside major industry software platforms, and a founder who set out to build what was missing, co-founding Insight Systems to do exactly that. When I met Wash, it was obvious within minutes: this is someone who has lived every version of the problem, and cares about fixing it the way our best operators care about their shops.
"I've seen dry cleaning from every angle: as an operator, as a product builder inside the software serving this industry, and as someone who set out to build what was missing. What we built at Insight Systems is the foundation, and now, as part of Cents, we get to take it further. The industry has been waiting for this."
- Wash Respess, GM of Dry Cleaning, Cents
What's coming next
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: dry cleaners don't need another point of sale system. What this industry has been missing isn't more software, it's a real partner. Not a vendor that sells you a tool and moves on, but a company genuinely invested in your success. That's what we're building: a platform that connects every part of how these businesses actually run, and hands owners the intelligence to see what's happening before the revenue tells them the hard way.
This acquisition builds on the largest single software investment the laundry and garment care industry has ever seen, and it's what lets us take a system dry cleaners already use and make it dramatically better. Bringing Insight Systems into Cents means operators immediately get a level of business intelligence built specifically for garment care. But the larger mission is what comes next: a dedicated operating system for dry cleaners, not a retrofit, and not something built from scratch, but a proven platform strengthened by the people who know this industry best, with the scale to take it further than it could go on its own.
What's coming from a technology standpoint
None of this changes our mission, it accelerates it. We're building the same way we always have, for the operators in front of us. Here's what's already underway:
We're enhancing the quick intake and detailing experience dry cleaning operators already rely on, keeping it fast and simple at the counter while supporting the added complexity dry cleaning requires.
We're adding a dedicated items mode built specifically for the detailing dry cleaning requires. This doesn't change anything about how our laundromat customers already use Cents. Every item will be described completely and accurately and tied to a physical tag or heat seal label, making it easy to identify once a customer brings it back to be cleaned again down the road.
Items mode lets Cents track garments through key steps in the plant, including assisted assembly, working alongside existing assembly automation systems and self-service kiosks, giving modern dry cleaning operators the tools to run their business the way it actually works.
If you're an existing Insight Systems customer
First: thank you. You saw the value in this before anyone else did. Nothing changes for you right now, your service continues, your access continues, and the people you've relied on are still right here.
What changes is what gets built next. This acquisition gives Insight Systems the scale to expand in ways that wouldn't have been possible independently. You backed the right thing, and now there's a lot more behind it. You'll hear from us as things develop, and I'll personally hold us to making this transition seamless: the experience should only get better from here.
If you're a dry cleaner not yet on Cents, or ready to be part of what comes next
This is being built for you, and I mean that literally. We want to hear from operators who are ready for something better. What breaks in your current software? What would your ideal platform actually do? Tell us. Your input will shape what we build, the same way our laundromat operators shaped Cents into what it is today.
Join the waitlist and be among the first to know what's coming. Because this industry has waited long enough, and this one, we build together.
