Laundry Startup Loses First Responders' Clothing

For many people, one of the side effects of navigating temporarily shuttered businesses and social distancing regulations is a very basic one: where do I do my laundry? Some independently-run laundromats in cities have closed down due to the crisis and concerns over infection. Many people without washers and dryers in their homes have opted to hand-wash their clothing — an understandable alternative, but also a time-consuming one.

At Vice, Alex Norcia has the story of one startup that offered a welcome alternative to all of this — and then infuriated many customers when things went very wrong. Making matters worse, a number of its clients were first responders dealing with matters far more critical than having to sort out where exactly their underwear had ended up. Sadly, lost underwear does play a significant part in this narrative.

As Norcia explains, the startup in question is called Cleanly, and they advertised a contact-free laundry pickup and dropoff service. The appeal of such a service isn’t hard to understand. The company also targeted some of its advertising to doctors and nurses — people for whom time is already at a premium right now.

Things went very wrong from there. Vice‘s investigation included a dozen customers and some former employees of the service; what they turned up was especially worrying:

The customers each told near-identical tales, backed up by the workers: Attracted by the company’s desire to assist frontline health care workers during a crisis, well-meaning customers are signing up for the service, only to endure weeks of stress while searching the city for lost laundry.

The narrative is not unique to Cleanly: many companies have struggled with a massive increase in demand due to the dramatic and rapid increase in people working from home and businesses temporarily closing. But a late grocery delivery is one thing; having a large number of your clothes go missing is something else entirely — particularly if you’re working long hours at a hospital in the middle of a pandemic.

Norcia’s article details a perfect storm of things going wrong at precisely the wrong time — an unnerving cautionary tale for the present moment.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…