SA laundry startup launches equity crowdfunding campaign

©bacho12345 via 123RF

Just Laundry picks-up, washes, irons, folds and returns laundry to customers within 48 hours. The business has primarily operated in Gauteng and is now looking to expand to the rest of the country by setting up a franchise in each province. The total cost of the expansion is R7,2million and it's expected to create 32 new jobs across the 8 new franchises.

Through the campaign hosted on crowdfunding platform The People’s Fund, people are able to buy a coupon to use the Just Laundry service from as little as R100, with Just Laundry giving away one share in the business for each R100 coupon sold. In total, 72,000 shares are available to the crowd.

According to the company, "the beauty of this model is that the crowd are guaranteed a service, no matter how the company performs. The share incentive scheme is primarily to entice customers to commit to long term usage of the service."

Last year, the company raised R240,000 on The People’s Fund and has started paying back the crowd at 107% of the predicted performance. This funding was used to buy additional machinery to increase capacity. Through the help from the crowd, the laundry service managed to almost double its revenue to R1,3million.