Pants Man takes to the Fourth Plinth

…..well actually Laundry Man, a heavily disguised business man David Lambert who has recently set up an interesting niche business, Laundry Republic, and hit on the idea of publicising it on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. He and his business partner Ian Walker were both working long hours as consultants a year ago, and were frustrated by the Saturday morning dash to the laundrette, when they would far rather be doing something else, and came up with the idea of a simple service - customers dump their laundry in a locker at work or in their block of flats, any time of the day or night, text a number to arrange collection and choose between a next-day and a three-day service, and someone collects the dirty clothes and brings them back clean.

They set up the business at the start of the recession, and although they were actually offered a bank loan to start up with, decided that the interest rate of 18% was too high - but the recession actually helped to save start-up costs. “We got some fantastic deals from suppliers, so we saved lots of money on everything from rent and machinery to furniture and stationery” – so they used their own capital. They focus on keeping prices competitive, particularly in the current environment; a suit costs £10 to dry clean and a shirt costs £2 to launder. The formula seems to work, as the company already serves about 2,500 flats across 25 large blocks in London, with the number growing by 250 a week, and they plan to expand outside London within the next two years. Cashflow, the major concern of most small businesses at present, seems not to be too much of a problem as they get paid quickly, and outsource most of the cleaning so they are not employing a laundry full of staff.

So why the stunt on the plinth? In order to spread the word about the business – it was a simple inexpensive marketing ploy. They only applied for a slot on the plinth on a Tuesday at the start of August, and got a call from the organisers on the same day offering them 6am on Thursday, less than 48 hours later. They took the offer, then had to come up with a novel idea of how to use their hour. “On Wednesday morning, we came up with the Superman plan. We wanted to combine something fun and comic book with something really unglamorous, like washing.” This BBC report takes up the story of how they rushed out to buy 25 pairs of bright red Y-fronts but found such a product unaccountably difficult to buy, so ended up buying white pairs and dyeing them. The plinth is supposed to be a showcase for art, rather than commercial advertising, so they couldn’t hold up banners or hand out leaflets – though they did give away the red pants afterwards, and have received plenty of comments via the webcam broadcast from the plinth – watch Laundry Republic at work here!