By Kate Augusto
Husky Express “will liberate you from the inconvenience and wasted time that laundry and dry cleaning entail,” according to its website. Now students can use this service at most residence halls for free every Sunday from 3 to 4 p.m with Husky Express’ Free Laundry Days.
“We’re doing this to generate the buzz,” said Alex Tamargo, vice president of business development at Husky Express and a senior international business and marketing major. “We’ll do a different dorm every Sunday till we hit them all.”
Husky Express held its first free laundry day at West Village C yesterday. Seven students came by but Dominic Coryell, a middler entrepreneurship major and the CEO of the company, said he expects the number to be higher in the upcoming weeks.
About 10 percent of students living on-campus already use the service, Coryell said. Coryell said he hopes to increase this figure to 40 percent.
“There are always people who don’t realize the benefits,” Coryell said. “We’re offering to do laundry to show off the system. It’s a time saving amenity.”
The service is entirely student-run, except for the actual laundry and dry cleaning part, Coryell said.
“One thing is students always think that other students are doing their laundry,” Coryell said. “We always try and push the anonymity of the service.”
Husky Express also operates solely on the money made from customers and they are always looking to employ students in co-op positions, Coryell said.
Raju Naik, a junior biology major, was one of the few students who received Facebook messages, advertising the promotion. Naik was also Husky Express’ first Free Laundry Days customer.
“This is kind of a test. We’ll see how it goes. Whether I buy [a plan] depends on the prices,” Naik said.
Students can either pay $1 per pound of laundry (non-students pay a quarter more per pound) or they can buy into a plan. The cheapest is $349 per a semester, Coryell said, which covers up to three loads a week. Three loads is approximately 20 pounds of laundry separated into whites, lights and colors, Coryell said. The price is more for customers who add dry-cleaning, but Coryell that getting a suit dry cleaned is about $8, while it costs about $16 to get it washed at a cleaners.
Some students said it’s still too expensive.
“I wouldn’t sign up for it because it costs twice as much as it would if I did it with quarters,” said Andrew Miller, a junior physical therapy major who took advantage of the free laundry promotion.
The idea for Husky Express was originated in 1999 by Andrew Jacknow while he was living in White Hall. During this time, he paid a couple of female students to do his laundry out of “sheer laziness,” Coryell said. Other kids started using Jacknow as a middle man to get laundry done, by giving him their money and laundry to give to the women. The company took off from there.
Since its inception, Husky Express has made improvements. Students living on campus previously picked up their laundry from the front desk at the residence halls. Lockers have recently been approved and installed in several residence halls for students to retrieve their laundry from. Although no laundry has been stolen, the lockers were implemented to ensure safe retrieval, Coryell said.
The free laundry promotion is happening in every residence hall that has these lockers. The only halls without lockers are Rubenstein, Burstein, 780 Columbus and 10 Coventry Street.
About 1,700 off-campus students and non-students use the service off-campus, Coryell said, covering everywhere from Avery Street near Boylston Street to West Village C. Students who use the service off-campus can get their clothes back through many different ways, including delivery at a planned time.
However, the next few months, most students living on-campus will have the chance to try this service for free.
“We might send three people [from Husky Express] out to three different dorms [for the promotion] so kids don’t get discouraged and there’s still a mystery behind it,” Coryell said. “You’ll never know when we’ll pop up.”
