How Fairmeadow CEO Miriam Quintana grew Fairmeadow to $99.2K revenue and 300 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is miriam quintana she's building a company called fair meadow home which is a doorstep laundry service they do not price by the pound they price per the bin which is a big deal we're going to jump into it miriam are you ready to take us to the top yes of course okay so first off when did you launch this business when did you get it going so we started in uh june june of 2018 and we we just started working on the idea for a couple weeks kind of like uh nitpicking all the details um there were three co-founders at the time javier means harmony for myself and this was an idea that they had actually been thinking about before not something that they were truly like getting into at all because calgary has a software background um so they didn't really have the time for this and we were just sitting in our living room one time thinking about the kind of business that we could start because we were actually doing something more software-wise and they just started telling you about the idea and we just started calling people and making the arrangements and it just started going from there so what do you charge per bin and how many like pounds can a bin hold well in a bin you can fit up to like 25 30 pounds of laundry depending on what the type of garments are in there um you can fit uh it costs 15 to have a basic service which includes just having the um uh free included deterioration at we also have a payment service which will cost 18 and with that you can add software you can add a cent and that also includes in-home delivery for people who have um just any doubts of losing their and in june so last month well july i guess uh how many bins did you guys process um we process an average of 90 bins per day we work on monday through thursday so we do pick up some mondays mondays through thursday and deliveries tuesday through friday because we deliver the next day so if you do 90 per day four days a week and there's about four weeks in a month you did about 1400 bins of laundry in july that's incredible and at the minimum price point 15 bucks a pop you did about 20 000 in revenue something like that yeah it i mean it ranges months a month but yes it's it also depends on the customers uh we have a very flexible service where you know if you need to skip because we go out of or out of town or if you need to take a break because we don't have that much laundry we don't require that those customers keep paying their subscription we will only charge for the bins that are processed just to be fair especially with what's going on you know with the commitment not everybody is doing great or at work and we'd like to be fair in that well and i guess no one's traveling so everyone needs laundry done right yes of course interesting where are you are you based all around the world or geographically where are you based we're actually only here in denver and we have been expanding our service just kind of as demand comes and right now we're mostly on the metro area and uh parts of um i mean in the north we're only in i believe it's commerce city and it's called stapleton and mostly other than that it's like downtown denver and a little bit south of that and in july again so last month how many customers paid you to do at least one bin um we've had probably about 300 customers that that will focus on in july interesting okay so about 300 customers got it so they're doing what is that anywhere between like thir three to four bins each per month something like that yes even if one customer has one only one bin and let's got it how i mean this is a fascinating story right so you launched this you get this going in 2018 how many of you how many founders three did you guys just split it down the middle 33 30 33 33 yes we ended up doing that because one of us so javier was the technical founder who was doing all the software carl taking care of all the customer onboarding and customer acquisition and i was doing all of the um operation part of it so are you like who's washing the clothes is that you or someone else no so we have a team we have a facility manager a facility lead and we have holders and drivers interesting how expensive is that so like if like what were your total expenses last month on all this um we are on for example on payroll we're probably doing like two thousand five hundred dollars a week okay we're talking about ten thousand dollars um give or take so like it just it all varies depending on how many bins we have because all of all of our folders are being saved by the bin i see now does that ten thousand dollars a month in payroll that's just for your facility manager the washers the drivers does that include your you got you three paying yourself or no no not right now when do you start paying yourself i i have no idea but i i have really just mainly focused on growing the business because i feel it's the most important like taking off and making sure that it's supplying itself because um i we haven't had any investments other than the initial investment um that we that javier and kara put in and at this point are actually they moved out to puerto rico and they they started a new venture out there so it's uh right now we're separating um and like all of the you know legally separating them from the company why have them separate companies why not build a massive global brand that does a million bins of laundry per week that is that is actually that was our very first insight right now um we're not separating uh the company like in in half or anything they just left the company they're doing something else at this time oh i see i see okay so if you're not making if you guys aren't paying yourself from this how are you how are you making money how are you paying your rent as a founder and putting you know and having you know having food um well well i actually before starting this i i have been working with my mom she has a laundry i'm sorry she has a home cleaning service so i have been helping her with that i that's actually how i met cara and javier um back in you know back in like 2015 2016 my mom's company was cleaning their house and kara and javier actually introduced me to coding and they um they helped me kind of get started and i ended up going to a coding bootcamp um after that they uh however let me um go on with him on to the company he's working on is called crown pete and i did a an internship there which after that that's when when he left the clown poop i left with him and we started this company together how cool that's a great story so so you guys have not raised any capital outside outside of what the founders put in at the beginning correct right and are you guys profitable today or are you break even no we we have some profit i mean we've been able to purchase um like the vans that we that we do our deliveries with um we've been able to uh how many of those are there we have four of them wow okay so i mean that we we've just been able to make sure that all the money that that is spent back into the company that it's not an extra investment like it's been able to supply itself so far and you know have a little extra sometimes um [Music] we have a great environment to work in it just all goes back in yeah now while i ask this next question uh okay here we go yeah your video just froze but it's fixed how many people are on the team today we have um six folders the episode uh facility manager and three drivers so that's um about 12 people with me sometimes that you know i i jump i like to kind of be there and on the ground with everybody and try to make sure that everything's running smoothly six folders one facility manager than you then three drivers and then one or two other co-founders as well so 12 13 total okay interesting and and is this a sticky product so i mean do customers ever cancel what's your churn rate yes they so that most of our customers that have canceled is because they're moving out of the service area we do have um [Music] i mean it's really it's hard to tell you a clear a clear number right now because because of the pandemic when when it first started we had a lot of customers pause the account and it doesn't mean that they're cancelling this just like some are taking longer than others to come back um the need for the laundry definitely pushed a lot of people back and and um started you know they started pretty early on and like they tried to stop february back in march uh april but there are some people that are still being so cautious that you know they haven't canceled but they still haven't used their services it's a great story what how much so if you're doing 20 dollars a month right now in revenue what were you doing a year ago do you remember um honestly i it's hard i can't remember what what number that was but um just that just as soon as we kicked off it seemed all right fair enough let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um i think the toyota the toyota way was that yep that's one yeah number two uh is there a ceo you're following or studying not at the moment but that's a good good idea...