Rechelle Balanzat runs a laundry company in New York City. She also heads up a logistics company. But although she has her toes dipped in two very different waters, Balanzat has plenty of time to focus on both businesses. That’s because they’re the same company.
“We were always tech first,” Balanzat, who founded laundry delivery service Juliette Cleaners in 2014, told Modern Shipper. “We always relied on our technology, and we wanted to solve the customer’s problem of picking up and delivering their clothes, which is logistics and technology at the heart of it.”
Since launching Juliette, Balanzat has built a logistics network from the ground up. Over the years, she’s added features like GPS tracking, predictive ETAs and real-time text updates, creating a sort of DoorDash for laundry. And she did it all without a dollar of institutional funding.
On her own
Starting a business is all about being resourceful. Balanzat knows that all too well.
“I was an immigrant and raised by a single mom,” she recounted. “So I learned how to be resourceful from a very young age.”
After moving to the U.S. from the Philippines, Balanzat graduated from Fordham University and began working at a private equity fund. It was a stable job, but when the 2008 financial crisis hit, she had to jump ship. That was her last full-time job.
In the following years, Balanzat founded a few companies of her own, including a social media marketing agency called Johnny Social. But in 2012, she got an idea that sent her in an entirely new direction.
“I was calling the cleaner asking, ‘Hey, can you pick up my clothes? Can you deliver my clothes?’ And they just kept on missing, because they didn’t have a system for pickup and delivery of clothes,” Balanzat remembered. “And around that same time, I was using Seamless a lot for food delivery. So it dawned on me: Why isn’t there an app where I could just pick up and deliver my clothes?”
From there, Balanzat got hooked on logistics. She went down the rabbit hole, researching companies like FedEx and DHL to learn how they were able to guarantee the exact time and place an order would be picked up or delivered. Soon after, she founded Juliette and began marrying logistics with laundry.
Watch: The future of logistics platforms and software
“I have been obsessed with logistics since the beginning,” Balanzat said. “I’ve always believed that logistics is what powers our brand because we’re picking up and delivering clothes day in and day out, all day long.”
In the years leading up to the pandemic, Balanzat put her money where her mouth was and invested in building a logistics platform for laundry. It was mostly her money — Juliette had a few individual investors but it hadn’t raised any institutional funding.
She also did it while operating in a space where women of color are typically at a disadvantage. Of the $428 million venture capital firms invested in startups daily in 2020, just 2.3% went to women. Only 0.2% went to women of color. Still, Balanzat soldiered on.
Before long, she was able to automate nearly the entire process. When a client requests a pickup, the order is automatically sent to a dispatch board, which assigns a driver based on availability. From there, the driver collects the laundry, washes and dries it at a central facility and returns it, with Juliette’s software guiding them along the quickest route.
The drivers themselves are a combination of Juliette employees and third-party contractors. The firm primarily relies on its own supply of drivers, but when additional capacity is needed, it can tap into its third-party network.
“It’s a very difficult road, but there is no right or wrong way to go about it. Sure you can move a lot faster with cash … but sometimes it’s not always the best way,” Balanzat said. “Sometimes, I think people underestimate how much they can do with their own two hands and with their own creative thinking.”
Crisis averted
Balanzat faced her first crisis in 2020, when COVID-19 kept people home and out of their work clothes. Balanzat said Juliette lost about 90% of its revenue early on in the pandemic, and she was forced to lay off 70% of her workforce.
Yet COVID also served as a catalyst. Route optimization was always a part of Juliette’s software. But the company integrated its logistics network with its communication network during the pandemic, adding features like predictive ETAs and real-time GPS tracking of drivers. Those additions launched fully during Q4 last year.
Juliette also acquired three new properties in New York City in February, but none of them will wash, dry or fold any clothes. Rather, Balanzat plans to use the new facilities like microfulfillment centers.
“Think of it as like a drop spot — you have one central facility that does all the cleaning but then you have drop spots,” she explained.
Adding more facilities allows Juliette to collect and store orders closer to its customers. A similar model is used in the instant grocery space. Firms like Instacart and Gopuff have set up nationwide networks of microfulfillment centers, with the goal being to shorten the final mile between the warehouse and the customer.
Washing, drying and growing
Balanzat sees Juliette expanding nationwide using the same strategy. Right now, the company only operates in Manhattan. But she envisions Juliette popping up in cities like Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago or Houston, using a network of small warehouses to fulfill orders from a central cleaning facility.
“Our growth strategy is to centralize operations into a single warehouse — or multiple warehouses — and in urban areas, where we can control clothing intake and also what gets picked up and what gets delivered,” she explained.
Contrast that with Sudshare, another laundry delivery service that uses the homes of its independent contractor drivers as hubs for washing, drying and folding.
Related:
Read: Sudshare wants to be the Uber for laundry
Read: This drone wants your dirty laundry
Aiding Juliette’s expansion plans is a major software update that’s slated to launch in February 2023. The update will introduce a new dashboard, which contains a point of sale system, a real-time view of the logistics network and a trove of data-driven insights. Importantly, those insights will be used to forecast demand.
Balanzat gave an example: “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, which means I have 10 years of raw data. I can predict how often a customer will use me and I can predict what they will send in. If a person is always sending in 13 pounds of wash-and-fold every seven days, our software and our AI now captures that.”
Having that data in hand will help Juliette get ahead of surges in demand. Because the company relies on a mix of employed drivers and third-party contractors, knowing when demand will spike gives it the chance to add capacity beforehand. Balanzat believes the feature will be crucial for Juliette’s expansion.
“Forecasting allows us to predict when we start hitting capacity, and it will help us to scale into new markets and territories,” she said.
Balanzat hinted that she could even see Juliette turning to driverless vehicles — like the ones Domino’s is using to deliver in Houston — in the future.
But she also believes that Juliette won’t be alone. In her view, logistics is no longer an afterthought for businesses. Rather, it’s the key to success, a way for companies to differentiate themselves with superior service.
“In the future, everyone will also be their own logistics company,” she predicted. “Whether they’re using a SaaS platform or outsourcing or whatever that is, we’re all moving toward a singularity.”
You may also like:
Veho expands again, adding new Midwest cities to last-mile delivery network
Proof is in the packaging: Transportation issues begin in warehouse