The Future of Laundry Tech: Key Insights from Clean Show 2025

Speaker 1 00:19
Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Clean Show. Woo! We're so thrilled that you're here with us today. Thank you so much for coming.

We have some incredible innovations going on here. We have some incredible innovative speakers here. And today, we're just going to dive into everything about emerging trends in this industry. So I'm joined by some very special guests today. Today, I have Jordan Berry from the Laundromat Resource. Welcome, Jordan.

Speaker 2 00:49
Thank you, thank you. I'm excited to be here, super excited.

Speaker 1 00:54
Yeah, super excited. We have Alex Jekowsky, CEO & Co-founder of Cents, and Gilli Cherrin, CPO & Co-founder at Cents. So we are just going to break it all down for you.

We're going to go through some questions, and of course, hopefully at the end, we might have some time for audience questions, but I'm going to start with you, Jordan. Jordan, you've been covering the laundromat industry for years through the Laundromat Resource. What are some of the biggest technological challenges you've seen in the operator space today, and how has the landscape evolved coming into Clean Show 2025?

Speaker 2 01:27
Yeah. So, listen, I have talked a lot about this—this has been a very non-techy industry for a really long time. And it really hasn't been—you know, if you've been in the industry a while, it really hasn't been until the last couple of years that this industry has really been ramping up the tech. I don't want to give these guys too much credit, but they are bringing a lot of that tech to our industry.

And, you know, some of the challenges I think we're having as an industry—and I mean, I'd love to hear after this what you guys are thinking too—but some of the challenges are, I think a lot of our main KPI, right, is turns per day. And it's just such a crude KPI. And one of the big challenges is getting the right data and knowing what to do with that data in order to have more precise insight into our businesses and to be able to make better decisions for our businesses. So on the tech side, that data collection and the data processing is a huge step that we're taking, partly because of, you know, these guys and the data that's available with their software and their payment systems. I think that's helping a lot. And I want to move from this crude sort of turns per day, which is like a store-wide, very generic metric, to customer-centric data so that we know what customers are doing, when they're doing it, how they're doing it, why they're doing it, so that we can serve them better and profit more from it.

Speaker 1 03:04
Love that, and I think that actually goes perfectly into the next question. You talked a lot about not just looking at a singular turns per day, but really understanding how it drives everything.

Alex, what drove you to create a unified platform approach rather than just focusing on one piece of the puzzle?

Speaker 3 03:20
Yeah, I think piggybacking off what Jordan said—and first, it's just great to see so many people here. And whether you use Cents or not, I think the purpose of these conversations that we'll have throughout the Clean Show is just to talk a little bit more and more broadly about the industry and what's important.

So don't take this as a Cents sales effort necessarily. But I think the big question that we ask—and I think going off of this turns-per-day tracking—to me, turns-per-day means what happened in my store. It doesn't really answer the question "why." And when you can actually integrate all the systems together, you can start to understand why things happen. And I think because the industry has just been so stable, it's such a great business—if none of this technology existed, if Cents didn't exist, you'd all be fine. It's a great business. None of the vendors here are enabling you to succeed as a business, but it should unlock more data, more information. And once you can understand why things happened, you can actually be more predictable in how you scale and how you grow, or how theoretically you can spend less time in the business and more time doing something else that you want. So our thesis of building all-in-one—or whatever you want to call it—is just, we don't think we can be an effective partner to you in helping you answer that question "why" if we can't help you track your self-serve, your wash and fold, your full service, your commercial, your in-store operations in one system. Otherwise, there's a lot of guessing or a lot of assumptions, and I don't think it's effective in general. So that's our thesis. That's why we do it, and that's kind of our why, and that's, I think, hopefully been driving a lot of our success.

Speaker 1 04:59
So speaking of working a little bit smarter and having all that extra time, hopefully, I want to talk a little bit about AI, you know, we're talking about trends in this industry. Gilli, we recently launched Cents Assist, which has enhanced natural language, natural conversation flows.

Can you walk us through a real scenario where this makes a difference for both operators and for customers?

Speaker 2 05:22
Yeah, did everybody hear me? The idea of an AI call center where you can call in and get information about the store or pricing or whatever is great. It's something that we all are experiencing now when we're playing with ChatGPT. What we're trying to do is kind of centralize that data also for the operator so they can act when there's a problem, but also make it very, very seamless for the customer, especially that loyal customer.

And so somebody calls in and says, "Hey, what's the status of my order?" or "Can I place an order?" Not only do I want that conversation to happen and for the action to happen, but I want to inform the operator. I want to make sure that notes that happened on the call also inform and get saved on the actual order. So when the attendant goes to process that order, there's more information, more context, right? We live in a world where we're constantly raising prices, but as we have this data and there's more holistic data about our business—when I think about my business, it's not just about how to make more money because making more money is not a singular approach. I want to know, how is the experience in my store going? Do I know how many times my bathroom is being opened? Do I know how many times my machines are turning? Where's my money coming from? So I can look at my business from a holistic way.

So having an AI call center really allows a lot of that true customer-first information to flow into the system and go to where it needs to go. So you guys can make the strategic decisions to make your store experience better and more efficient. So you can open more stores, make more money and just become that space in your community that you want to be and serve your customers.

Speaker 1 06:49
So, Jordan, from your perspective, you're seeing maybe a lot of AI innovation in the space now. AI customer service for the modern laundromat. What should operators be looking for in these solutions?

Speaker 2 07:03
Well, first of all, I don't know if you've experienced this recently—it's amazing how fast this changes just in our mindset. So I had to make a customer service call to a company that I was the customer of, and it had one of those answering services where you had to navigate, push one, and then, "Oh, we can't answer your question, so we'll send you to an operator." And I was dying. I was like, "Please give me an AI or something so I can just solve this problem. I don't want to sit on the phone and wait for somebody to come and then have to explain to them what I just explained through the phone process."

And really when we talk about customer service, and I have this debate a lot actually online, like in the forums and the Facebook groups and stuff, where people are like, "Customer service? What about—most of the stores are self-serve, unattended laundromats, right? We don't need to worry about customer service really." And I really argue that point. And the reason for that is because customers go where the value is for them, and there are customers where the value is the cheapest laundromat. Let's just face it. There are those customers. We all have them, right? However, cheap is not the only lever you have to pull. And in fact, I would say that's the very last lever to pull if you have to pull it. That's like the ripcord if everything else is going wrong, right? One of the best levers you can pull is easy and fast. If you can make it easy and fast for customers, you reduce the friction, you improve the experience, and you make them want to do business with you.

And I'll tell you what, I will never call that customer service line again, unless I absolutely have to, because it was a horrible experience. But if I got on with an AI and it was—I don't know if you guys have heard these AI customer service systems, probably you have and you didn't even know it. If you think you haven't—but the experience is just so smooth. It's so easy. You get your questions answered in a respectful way. You're not dealing with a cranky employee. There's just a lot to be said about this. So integrating something like that into your laundromat, even if you just have a small self-serve laundromat, you're not going to deal with missed calls. You're not going to deal with unanswered questions. You're not going to deal with cranky employees that you have to manage. All of it is going to be trained on your stuff. If you're using a software or a payment system like Cents and LaundryWorks, all that stuff is integrated. They can—I don't know if they can take orders now or not. Yeah, they can. They can take orders over the phone for your pickup and delivery, for your drop-off. It's an incredible experience.

And again, if you haven't tried it, you should try it.

Speaker 3 09:47
And I would add to that—excuse me, I would add to that—look, you can use Cents AI tools, you can use a generic AI tool. I think the part of having a show like this is just as an effort of education, so you can see what works well for your business. And candidly, I'm not trying to not have you buy our products, but if you just wanted a basic answering system, you could go and find an AI tool that just does that. You don't have to buy a laundromat-specific one. It's all about what you want to get out of it.

I think our goal in terms of an all-in-one is so when you utilize our products and you want to place an order, it integrates with your point of sale, your online ordering system. You want to know what is the last machine I used, what's the balance on my card. You want it to feel like an integrated part of your store that it needs to be integrated within your system. But at a baseline, there are so many tools today that are open, there are so many companies building just for you as a small business owner that are available right now. And it doesn't need to always be industry-specific—it doesn't—just to get going and to get started and get educated on what's happening, I think is the most important thing. You've got to get educated in the right way and there isn't just one way to do it.

Speaker 2 10:56
Can I—I just want to piggyback on when you're piggybacking on me. I'm not going to let you have the last word.

Well, it's because it's interesting, right? Because it sort of proves the point. Like he's talking about this all-in-one system and I appreciate—and I've always appreciated these guys are like, "Hey, we want to help whether you use Cents or not." And I think that's great, but he's talking about this all-in-one system. Right. It's almost like they're trying to make it easier and faster for you to get your business up to par, which is exactly what we're talking about, right? We're talking about these tools help you do your stuff easier and faster for your customers. That's what they're trying to do in this industry. You know, I think you probably should keep going and make it even easier, faster for us, but that's kind of case in point, right?

Speaker 1 11:38
Any piggybacks left?

Speaker 3 11:40
At the risk of him piggybacking again, I think we can...

Speaker 1 11:43
Awesome, and if you're interested in more about AI, we have a session on Monday here. I don't know what time it's at, but it will be at some point on Monday. You want to piggyback?

Speaker 2 11:54
No, you can come check us out. Check these out when you're here at the show. Go try out the different AI systems. It's pretty cool and see what they can do.

Speaker 1 12:02
Yeah. So, you know, AI is just one of the innovations that have recently come about.

But recently, Cents actually introduced its first industry-first insurance coverage. Alex, why did we decide to enter the insurance space? How does that fit into the one system for everything vision?

Speaker 3 12:26
That's a great question. That is a great question. Why did you do that? Why did we do that again?

I think, look, the purpose of Cents as it exists in the world is to be a business partner for your business. And we're going to start with point of sale and start with hardware on machines. But I think the whole purpose of why we have a giant booth here and 40 people is to show you that we are much more than just a point of sale and a hardware business. We are really trying to be your partner when you buy your store and buy your equipment. We should be able to deliver everything operationally that you need. And insurance is an example of these additional business services that every operator needs to have. I think a phone system, a website, you need to have them within your business. It's just a matter of fact. And so if we can leverage the purchasing power of over 4,000 locations that use our products and we can help KYC to an insurance carrier, to a bank, et cetera, we can just drive prices lower. And that is the point where every new customer we get benefits every other customer within our existing community. That's why we invest so much in customer success in our Cents community, et cetera, because it is a rising tide that lifts all boats. And we know we can go to insurance carriers and say, you can work with one or a couple laundromats and not really know the business. Or we can tell you what the business is like out of 4,000 operators and you have an average. I mean, the average, I think, savings around 10% in insurance. And the other thing about insurance is it's not tech and there's no heavy onboarding. There's a regulatory requirement where insurance carriers need to help move you off to another carrier. So our sole purpose of insurance is to make it cheaper. If it's not cheaper, you shouldn't use it. You shouldn't get it. And we just have a very unique market position and market opportunity to start to do those things. Because insurance is one example. But then when you think about lending and financing, when you think about products, there's a whole list of things that our team of over now, 100, is working every single day on to try to find ways to save you money. Because if you save money, you'll be able to grow better. If you can attribute part of your success to us as a partner, then you want to use more of our products and stay with us longer. And our business model is a very transparent one. We hope that everything that we do for you is the most affordable and best value of all the individual things. We might be the biggest check you write every month as a service provider, but if you strip out all the things that we want to help support and power for you, hopefully it's the most affordable and the best value. So insurance is just one example of what we're trying to do by leveraging our community and fight on behalf of our operators to democratize accessibility and pricing. And the way that I think a lot of other industries have had the benefit of.

Speaker 2 15:10
Are people writing you checks? Writing me checks? You said it's the biggest check. We do get a big check.

Speaker 3 15:16
Oh yeah, I wish it went to me. But no, I think we have so many products here and we want to be the most affordable, but our business model, and I think most software companies like us, our business model is we want to do more for the operator. We're not "buy, pay for one thing that's very expensive one time and we never hear from you again." We are a subscription.

You can fire us any day of the week. So we have to work with you and our number one metric in our business is churn. We don't want any customer to leave us. It's better to never have signed a customer that might end up leaving. It's the worst mark on a software business, I think, in any business. If you have a high churn rate, it's going to lower the value of your business and who wants to be part of a company culturally or invest in a business that can't retain its customers. And so that is a critical point for us every day is we need to make sure that we're delivering and we can't have a giant booth that says an all-in-one system. We can't say we're your business partner and we're here to support you if we don't act like it. If we don't invest in the things that are actually going to deliver that kind of partnership. So that's the model. You can back into exactly what drives us every single day from our incentives because they're directly in line with an operator's success.

Speaker 1 16:29
Great. So thinking a little bit more about tools and trends, one of the things that we've recently launched is marketing automation tools.

Gilli, can you talk a little bit about some results or success stories, examples from operators who have implemented marketing automation tools recently?

Speaker 2 16:48
Great. So marketing automation and insurance seem like very, very different things, but they came about with the same thought where we basically sit around together and say, "Wouldn't it be cool if?" And we tried to say, okay, what if we have all this data about your day-to-day operations? What else can we leverage that for to get you and your customers a better experience? And insurance? Well, it's not a cool one.

It's definitely something that we can provide by leveraging that data. On the marketing side, you know, you can go sign up for a marketing tool like a MailChimp or a Klaviyo or whatever the marketing tools are, but it doesn't have robust real-time data about your business. And if it does, you can be really, really thoughtful about how you go after it. And just like turns per day is not a good metric, because it doesn't speak to the different personas in our business—who's a walk-in customer, a self-serve customer, delivery customer—if we start to know who's a VIP customer, who's coming in once a day, once a week, once a year, right? If we have more and more information, which is all there in Cents, because you manage your day-to-day, then we can go ahead and say, "Okay, great. Now we can go ahead and create really, really, really specific and targeted campaigns for those different personas." And when we're seeing that—one great example is, hey, people came to my website, they were curious, they put in their number, their phone number, and then they went away. Okay, great. We have that phone. What do we do with it? Why don't I message them in an hour or two hours or the day later, or you guys decide whatever cadence you want to communicate with your customers. But that's one example of how to do it. A customer reaches a threshold of more than $1,000, you want to send them a coupon. You notice there are customers that are coming to you at a cadence of one, two, three times a week—why don't we get them on a membership, right? So there are so many ways to think about how to communicate with our customers, leverage your data for your own purposes to go ahead and grow that business.

Speaker 1 18:30
Wow, so speaking of memberships. We have a session on memberships in about an hour, but we actually just launched membership subscription-based services.

And this is a huge shift towards recurring revenue in this space, which is something that, you know, is growing. Gilli, what inspired the direction, and how do you see it changing the laundromat business model?

Speaker 2 18:53
Yeah, so I think that we're seeing this a lot of places, right? And so when we sit around and say, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do things like the car wash industry or do things like other industries that we're seeing leveraging memberships," not just from a business perspective, where it's great to have that recurring revenue, but also from a customer experience perspective, where it's something that they actually need and want.

And so memberships for laundry is a little bit more complicated than maybe a car. With a car, you can say unlimited memberships, you read a license plate, you're good to go. Be careful before you say unlimited laundry, because then everybody's laundry comes, but we can start thinking about ways, say, "Hey, I'm noticing that I've got a customer base that wants to do two bags, 100 pounds a month, a family, 300 pounds a month," and be able to track that and say, "Hey, if you pay me this much money a month, you're going to get 150 pounds a month, and every pound after that is going to be a little bit cheaper, and I'm going to do one bedding set" until we can be really, really sophisticated. And one thing that we did, which I generally don't like to do, which is build a very, very, very big product before I release it. Memberships took us about a year, year and a half to actually build. And the reason was, because it's so new to this space, that we wanted to work with you all to understand, what are those membership models that work for laundry? What is the thinking? And I think it goes beyond just the retail customer. There are membership models for your commercial business. There's lots of ways, and we can spend time with them on the other session. I hope you guys all come back. But there are lots of really, really cool ways that we're seeing already. A lot of our customers initiate some of these membership programs that give not just the recurring revenue, but a great experience back to your customer.

Speaker 3 20:23
And I'd say something that Gilli touched on is that, I think in laundry, generally customers are looked at the same, right? And they say that's just my laundry business and my laundry business, maybe my wash and fold customers are a little bit different.

My pickup and delivery customers are a little different. But what becomes really cool with memberships, and we've seen this with one of our customers from Tampa Bay Laundry, she's actually started to set up memberships around schools and around universities. So she has a semester program and a quarter program. And you can start to actually segment your customers and launch subscriptions and memberships, by something a little bit deeper than who's my wash and fold and who's my pickup delivery. And you can get to a lot more flexibility with that. And find ways, again, if you have a recurring revenue business versus a one-time, the multiples when you sell are different, right? And that's the value of subscription. Look in the public markets, any company, if you can have recurring revenue, it makes your business more valuable in general. And so being able to segment that through a membership base can be really unique. But then look at Uber One, you're spending $9.99 a month, and then you're just getting discounts. Why doesn't that exist here? You have plenty of services that you offer, products, et cetera. There are so many different ways to build memberships, and we won't be talking about it too much now, but self-serve memberships and other things that this industry has never seen, has largely never seen because there just isn't a way to facilitate it from a technology perspective. So a lot of the responsibility we feel like we have, if we have the technology, is to start to introduce these things. Doesn't mean you ever have to use it. Doesn't mean you ever want to use it. But we feel like we have a responsibility to provide the optionality that could create something different that maybe the industry's never seen before, but could make a world of a difference for your business and your end users.

Speaker 2 22:01
Real quick, one other sort of perk on our business owner end, too, is one of the beauties of self-serve laundry is that people pay you, and then they do their laundry, right? And on this same thing on the subscription, what that's introducing to us is we get paid on the front end, depending on how you set it up, right? You have the opportunity on a pickup and delivery order or a drop-off order to get paid on the front end. It's essentially like a free loan for a month until you actually process that laundry.

And then you start to think about, "Okay, well, if I get this capital coming in on the front end of every month and I don't have to actually process that laundry until the second week, the third week, the fourth week, what could I do with that capital to help me grow my business to expand my portfolio?" Great point. I'm just going to—I love that. This is such a good point. Thank you.

Speaker 1 22:48
Float for your business.

Speaker 2 22:50
That's right. Wash and fold float. Who would have thought?

Speaker 1 22:53
Do you foresee any kind of additional challenges with recurring revenue through memberships, Jordan, and is that a demand that you're seeing in this industry right now?

Speaker 2 23:06
Yeah, I mean, I think there's challenges to overcome for sure. I think that's why Gilli was saying it's taken him a year, year and a half to kind of roll this thing out. There's challenges for sure. You can't just say, "Hey, your whole house could have laundry for a month" because your whole house turns into all your friends' houses. Right? Like, see, you got to figure out ways to kind of regulate that. You've got to figure out ways to do it in a way that again, makes it easier, faster, more convenient for your customers. But also it works for you as a business owner and the model that works. Right. So I think there's that challenge.

And then also timing-wise too, right? If you do a subscription of some sort, and you don't have a way to regulate when that laundry comes in, you could get blitzed with a whole bunch of laundry all at once without really even knowing. And so the logistics of planning your, you know, your employment and all that stuff, right, capacity, all that, could be a challenge. However, I mean, again, if you look, and this was kind of touched on already, but if you look around like every—like love it or hate it for better or for worse, we're moving to the "you own nothing and you'll love it" society here. Right. And everything's moving subscription model. Everybody's got thousands of subscriptions that they don't even remember. They don't even know about. There's companies now that will go in and find what those subscriptions are and unsubscribe you from them. Because we have so many, right? Love it or hate it. That's where we're going as a country, as an economy. And I think having the ability to offer that and to go in that direction, not only can be more convenient for our customers, it does benefit us as owners as well.

Speaker 3 24:51
And I think, we don't want to make a laundromat the most unique retail experience that the customer has in their life. Well, I'm not anti-coin, but when they leave your laundromat, where else do they pay with coin? I don't know. I'm not saying that they don't like it. I talk to operators all the time and say, "My customers love coin." I'm like, "I bet they do. Where else do they spend them?" And so again, I'm not anti, I just don't know where. So there's a bunch of—if you can sign up for subscriptions on delivery or home cleaning or food, why not laundry? Again, I think we use, from a vendor perspective, we use the excuse of it's not in our best interest or we simply don't have the ability, therefore operators shouldn't. And I don't think that's right. And so you don't have to use any of the things that we make. You don't have to use anything in general. But we don't want to make laundry feel so different because that customer is also going to Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks or a shop anywhere, and they have a very modern retail experience. Your lowest end customer to your most high end customer are all having experiences from a payments and retail perspective that are far more advanced than their laundromat. But the laundromat is arguably the most important retail experience they have and potentially the one they hate the most.

So how much more could you do in your business and all of our businesses if we actually could introduce something that felt more regular to that consumer? And then I think the other point I want to touch on that and I think Gilli mentioned is so much of how you build your memberships program, your marketing, et cetera, is about your data. And there's a bunch of folks in the Facebook forums and tinfoil hats that think of, because you have a big booth and you're a tech company, everybody owns your data and all of that, and there's a lot of fear over data. We put out something called "Into the Fold." If you haven't seen it, it's a big industry report. And for us, we take very seriously the data control that our customers have. We don't own any data. I can show you any of our terms of service, anything you ever want to see in terms of everybody owning their data. There is so much fear, I think, on the concept of data and what I think a tech company's responsibility is as your partner is to help you harness it on your own. For you to figure out how that data can be valuable and how you operate your business, how you think of new initiatives like maybe you're self-serving, you want to try wash and fold. What is the data around you telling you? Maybe you want to try memberships, but you're nervous. What is the data telling you? And that will start to inform your decision making. So when we talk about data, it's all yours. It's none of the machine manufacturers, none of us, control or manage your data in any way other than trying to help you understand what you own and what you have. And I think that's such an important thing and I'd encourage you with all your vendors, whoever you use, ask them questions about how they can help you understand your data.

If it's not something you're super sophisticated about, because that's when you can start to make decisions that aren't guesses and they tend to yield better results.

Speaker 1 27:40
Awesome. We have one last question and only one of you can answer this. So I'm going to ask it for the three of you and whoever feels most confident in speaking to it. Looking ahead to the next two to three years, what's one trend or innovation that you think will be game changing for the industry?

Jordan Berry. You've been nominated.

Speaker 2 28:03
What's one tech? Trend or innovation? Trend or innovation.

Speaker 1 28:08
We've talked about AI.

Speaker 2 28:10
We talked about AI, we talked about recurring revenue, we talked about data. I mean, honestly, if the biggest tech innovation in our machines is we have touchscreens, welcome to 2008 or so, when did the iPhone come out?

Like, right, like I think our machines need some love. We need some smart integrations. I don't want to mention the AI work because we already talked about that, but we need some smart integrations into our machines. We need some, like a tech company to go out and buy a manufacturer. And Jordan, thanks.

Speaker 3 28:45
Thank you so much for being here, really great to see you, glad you had that question answered.

Speaker 2 28:49
Hey, if you're going to go into insurance, why not bring all the headaches on board? You know what I mean?

No, but I do think our machines kind of need some love here, and I think there's a lot of things that we can do with our washing machines and dryers to improve the experience for the customers, but also help us. I'm sure you guys have lots of ideas. Actually, I'd love to hear, if you see me around, I'd love to hear your ideas on how we can improve these machines, because I think we're seeing more innovation in tech in our industry in the last three years than we did in the last 30 years.

Speaker 3 29:25
And while we said we were only going to have one person answer, I know we have to go—the one thing I will say is the biggest change I would say is everybody here. The caliber, the sophistication, the passion, the interest of doing things I think the right way or a different way historically will be the greatest revolution that the industry continues to see.

So thank you everybody for coming here and being engaged and listening and learning. And I hope we get to spend more time with you here and you get to ask these questions of other vendors. Keep asking questions and I think that is the thing that's going to drive the most technology because we can sit here with a bunch of ideas but you're the ones that actually fuel our ideas. And so just thank you everybody for coming out.

Speaker 1 30:05
Thank you and we'll see you soon. Thanks for tuning in.