Laundrapp acquires rival Washbox as it looks to put laundry industry in a spin
The company, whose app shares the same name, has developed an on-demand laundry and dry cleaning service that vows to take the woe out of washing by delivering a fresh service to consumers' doors.
Launched just five months ago, Laundrapp is currently available in London, Edinburgh and Birmingham but the acquisition could help Laundrapp launch into several new cities.
In February, Laundrapp announced that it was expanding to Cardiff, Bristol and Liverpool as well but this doesn't seem to have happened.
Ed Relf, CEO and cofounder of Laundrapp, said: "In just five months we've cleaned over quarter of million items and today Laundrapp cleans an item every 10 seconds. This is unprecedented growth for this on-demand laundry and dry cleaning industry and the acquisition of Washbox fuels our desire to disrupt the entire laundry and dry cleaning industry and pioneer the wider digital on-demand economy.
Dominic Perks, chairman of Laundrapp, added: "We're re-inventing an industry untouched by digital and now leading the inevitable consolidation in the on-demand sector. Comparisons with Uber and talk of another British unicorn are of course exciting but our team are firmly focused on delighting customers."
However, "delighting customers" is something that Laundrapp has failed to do on several occasions, possibly because it is trying to scale too quickly.
The venture-capital backed company receives just 2.7 stars out of 5 on Google, based on 19 reviews.
The last two reviews don't exactly paint Laundrapp in glory.
In the last week, reviewer Matthew Jewell wrote: "Laundrapp should wait until they have their service sorted before promoting it so hard, it seems like they can not deal with the demand.
"My first problem with them is that they never turned up in the allotted slot to pick up my laundry, not only did they not turn up but they didn't think to tell me. In fact I didn't hear anything about it until the next day tweeting Laundrapp asking why they didn't show."
Laundrapp also failed to deliver Jewell's laundry to the right address, he said.
Another reviewer, Stephen Hall, wrote: "Awful awful awful. They sent me an email 9-minutes before my laundry was due to be dropped off saying the couldn't deliver it and that they had removed my delivery time so I would need to go back into the app and reschedule. Problem is, I cannot reschedule today (Sunday) and need the laundry back before work tomorrow."