shadowboxingtv The VLS team continued the experiment for a week, parking the
truck on different street corners, digging deeper to discover all they
could about their potential customers. They wanted to know how
they could encourage people to come to the truck. Did cleaning
speed matter? Was cleanliness a concern? What were people asking
for when they left their laundry with them? They discovered that
customers were happy to give them their laundry to clean.
However, those customers were suspicious of the washing machine
mounted on the back of the truck, concerned that VLS would take
their laundry and run. To address that concern, VLS created a
slightly more substantial mobile cart that looked more like a kiosk.
VLS also experimented with parking the carts in front of a local
minimarket chain. Further iterations helped VLS figure out which
services people were most interested in and what price they were
willing to pay. They discovered that customers often wanted their
clothes ironed and were willing to pay double the price to get their
laundry back in four hours rather than twenty-four hours.
As a result of those early experiments, VLS created an end
product that was a three-foot by four-foot mobile kiosk that
included an energy-efficient, consumer-grade washing machine, a
dryer, and an extra-long extension cord. The kiosk used Western
detergents and was supplied daily with fresh clean water delivered
by VLS.
Since then, the Village Laundry Service has grown substantially,
with fourteen locations operational in Bangalore, Mysore, and
Mumbai. As CEO Akshay Mehra shared with me, “We have serviced
116,000 kgs. in 2010 (vs. 30,600 kg. in 2009). And almost 60
percent of the business is coming from repeat customers. We have
serviced more than 10,000 customers in the past year alone across
all the outlets.” p74
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