- Mama Wosh is a door-to-door garment care service in Malaysia that will pick up, clean and deliver your laundry for you.
Setting up a washing machine in your house can be a bit of a headache.
First it requires space, and second it will set you back around RM1,000 on average. That’s without including the electricity cost and water cost.
Furthermore, you will need detergent to clean your clothes and that will add in to the costs. With all of that taken into consideration, you are estimated to spend a couple of hundred yearly, and that doesn’t count the time you take to actually do it.
If you do your laundry about twice a week, it probably takes up about an hour in total to fill up the machine, take the clothes out, hang them, collect them after they’re dry, and fold and iron them (if necessary) weekly. That’s over 100 hours a year spent just on laundry.
If the numbers above do make you feel overwhelmed, that’s where services like Mama Wosh come in. They’re a door-to-door garment care service in Malaysia that will pick up, clean and deliver your laundry for you.
Mama Wosh was established three years ago in October 2015 by Anh Tu Sam and Holm Schimanski, both in their late 30s.
“During a skiing trip in early 2015 we picked up on the on-demand trend within certain markets. We love convenience, we love professional services and we love to get what we want with a click on our phone,” said Holm.
Being consultants themselves, they were always busy and had a constant need for clean suits and shirts on a regular basis and found that there was a gap in the market. He added, “We looked at the laundry industry and saw great potential to bring fresh air in what we considered to be an old, fragmented and low tech industry.”
Which is particularly true as most of our laundromats or so-called dobi are traditional mom and pop shops.
As someone who owns a washing machine at home, I didn’t really see the need for laundry services unless it’s for emergencies or dry washing a suit. However Holm doesn’t entirely agree with it; he believes that more and more people are placing a price tag on the time that they are spending.
“If you have the chance to spend your time with your family, friends and even at work for that matter, instead of doing laundry, this becomes a very simple decision of economics and lifestyle. We believe we offer high quality cleaning with the maximum of convenience,” explained Holm.
Although laundry services aren’t entirely new to the scene (we have covered plenty before), Mama Wosh believes that they differ from other laundry services as they offer a flat-rate subscription service. Mama Wosh also boasts of a large coverage area and technology that allows customers to track the progress of their laundry orders.
How Mama Woshes
In Holm’s words the platform is very simple to use. The Mama Wosh website is accessible on both desktop and smartphones.
You enter the address from where you want them to pick up your laundry, insert what kind of laundry service you need and then a real-time time slot picker lets you choose the earliest available time slot for the pickup. You can then let them know when to deliver it back.
Once the order has been placed, you will receive a confirmation and a notification before their “laundry angels” (their employees) are on their way. Upon arrival, the laundry angel will provide you with a laundry bag and will take notes on the type of laundry and any other special request you have.
After that, the items are brought to their central cleaning facility where they itemise and weigh it. If there are any irregularities such as stains or damages on the clothes, the Mama Wosh team will notify the customer.
Customers can pay for the service using their credit card, PayPal, online banking or cash on delivery and will then receive a reminder three hours before the delivery happens.
“Of course they can reschedule the delivery in our app at any point of time before the delivery, should the customer be busy with other errands. Our delivery angel will deliver the cleaned clothes back, either nicely folded or ironed on a hanger in a plastic,” said Holm.
Big Plans To Change The Way We Wash
Although they are experienced in the logistics industry, they still found it difficult as they still faced operational challenges.
“We are glad to have built up a second management level that can individually take care of training, hiring and other operational processes leaving us more time to focus on strategy, technology and customer service,” added Holm.
The team takes pride in their laundry angels and strongly emphasise on the importance of training for all employees. Holm added, “Our customer care is trained on a regular basis, and available 7 days a week via chat, phone and WhatsApp.”
“We are very proud to grow from serving a few customers to literally thousand of customers now. We have also convinced other parties to join forces with us and provide the greatest laundry experience out there,” added Holm.
He hopes that these partnerships will strengthen in 2019 to allow Mama Wosh to tackle new market segments with a more advanced delivery network. They plan to bring the idea out of KL and Malaysia to markets within Southeast Asia in 5 years time.
Holm noted that other competitors in the industry are heavily influenced by Mama Wosh but they don’t mind it as “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
“We take this as a compliment showing that there is something that we are doing right. We love competition and being the standard for the laundry delivery market in Malaysia really means a lot to us,” explained Holm.
With an ambitious plan of changing the way we do our laundry, Holm and the team wants your washing machine out of the house so that you can focus on the more important things in life. Within a couple of years they believe that Mama Wosh will be the de facto replacement for washing machines.
“Getting your laundry done should be as simple as calling a taxi, ordering a pizza.”
- If you would like to know more about Mama Wosh, you can check out their social media here and website here.
