Today we’d like to introduce you to Safir Ali.
Hi Safir, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My story began in San Antonio, TX, where I was born to 1992. My parents, who came to the US in 1986, moved to Houston a few months after I was born. I credit a lot of my success thus far to my parents. They immigrated to the US in 1986, and I was born in San Antonio in 1994. Growing up, I saw my parents work extremely hard to provide my brother and I with everything they didn’t have. They always stressed the importance of education to me and my brother, but the other thing that we naturally picked up on was their work ethic. My dad worked two jobs to eventually save up enough money to buy his own business, which was a dry cleaners. My brother and I grew up in our family’s dry cleaners. We would spend summers and weekends going to the cleaners with my parents, and that is where the passion for entrepreneurship was naturally instilled in me. We never thought of getting into the family business, but it kind of naturally happened.
During my junior year at Texas A&M University in 2013, my roommate and I started a food delivery service in College Station, TX. Because we didn’t have many options for food delivery, we decided to start offering delivery for restaurants that didn’t deliver. While attending business school, we really wanted to start a business as opposed to just learning about it. We launched and operated our business for a year and a half and sold the business just after graduation. In 2014, I graduated from Texas A&M University and moved back to Houston with a job in wealth management. It was during this time that I also got involved in the family business to see how I could help expand my parents’ business. This is when I started looking into the business and realized how broken the entire business model was. For our customer’s, who were primarily busy professional’s, it was constantly an inconvenience for them to fit in a trip to the cleaners around their work schedule. We found them having to find time around their 9-5 to stop at the cleaners to drop off, just to find time again in a couple days to stop by again to pick up. Not to mention having to do so while fighting rush hour traffic and trying to make it back home in time for dinner.
After hearing so many customers express the same pain point, we realized that there had to be a better way. That is when we had the idea for Hamper – to remove the need for storefronts and instead be able to use a kiosk at work to drop off and pick up their laundry. We knew that the idea was a passionate one and that we would need to figure out how to build this out so we decided to launch Hamper in 2016 as an on-demand pickup and delivery service while we built our kiosk prototype in the background. Today, we operate our laundry pickup and delivery service throughout the inner loop all the way out to Sugar Land and Katy. We launched the initial three pilots of our Hamper kiosk’s in 2017, and are now in 14 buildings throughout downtown and in the Galleria area!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our journey thus far has definitely been an uphill road, however it has been an extremely rewarding one. When we started Hamper, we had the vision of removing the need for a brick-and-mortar storefront and automating the pickup and drop-off process via a standalone kiosk. Right off the bat, we realized that we had some figuring out to do with the mechanical and electrical engineering component, so we decided to build an app and start our pick up and delivery service while we built our Hamper kiosk prototype in the background. Around the same time, my parent’s business started experiencing some financial hardships with a decline in sales due to added competition.
My parents had the same dry cleaners for 28 years, and between people moving out of the area and additional dry cleaners opening up in the area, business had slowly declined. Being the oldest son in the family, I had to become the head of the household and step in for my family while working on my startup. Being put in a position of “do-or-die” turned out to be a blessing in disguise because there was a lot more on the line. We were able to push hard and grow our business in the course of three years, to where it helped provide the supplementary business needed to keep our family business going and much more. I believe that the struggles entrepreneurs face can be looked at as a “success tax” – we all need to pay it in order to get the success we are striving for. Recognizing this helps make the struggle worth it, and can help you overcome it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Hamper Dry Cleaning & Laundry?
Hamper is laundry day reinvented. Whether it’s for dry cleaning or laundry, we aim to take the hassle and inconvenience out of it while providing customers with an exceptional experience. You can use Hamper in 1 of 2 ways: 1) using our on-demand home pickup and delivery service via our website or mobile app, or 2) by using our Hamper kiosk located in your building to drop off and pick up laundry at your convenience. We offer wash and fold laundry, dry cleaning and specialty cleaning, household items, and alterations & repairs! The value propositions that set us apart lie in our core values, which can be summed up with: Innovation, Convenience, Affordability, and an Exceptional Customer Experience. We aim to go above and beyond for our customers, whether it’s through our software or the customer experience they have with their personal Hamper runner! We are grateful and extremely proud of the digital reputation our company/brand has built, which can be highlighted through our Google and Yelp reviews. We strive to make each customer’s day better – not just by the service we provide but in the way we provide it. Each customer gets a personal handwritten note with their first order, which is hand-delivered by a smiling Hamper runner. I am grateful for my amazing team and proud of all of our Hamper runners that go above and beyond for all of our customers!
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
The number one book that I recommend to everyone (and have bought for everyone on my team) is How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I always try to be listening to an audiobook and/or a podcast when I’m driving. One of the audiobooks I am currently re-listening to is The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Some of my favorite podcasts include How I Built This, The Ed Mylett Show, The Gary Vee Audio Experience, Impact Theory, and The School of Greatness. One resource outside of books and podcasts that I recommend is EOS, which is the Entrepreneurial Operating System. When running a business, it is crucial to have systems in place in order to scale and this (along with the book “Traction) have helped tremendously in putting this is place.
Pricing:
- Wash & Fold Laundry – $1.99/lb
- Dress Shirts (Laundered & Pressed) – $1.99/pc.
- Dry Cleaning (Regular Garments) – $3.99+
- Comforters – $19.99+
Contact Info:
- Email: Support@UseHamper.com
- Website: www.UseHamper.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/usehamper/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/usehamper
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ31OXK4zizJyLAmLIVDX0A
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hamper-dry-cleaning-and-laundry-delivery-houston-7
