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A campus laundry service turned a $100 class project into six-figure school-year sales with 80% margins.
80% margins · $5,000 in the initial two-week project period
“We did $5,000 in revenue in a two-week period.”
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Alex Smereczniak and two partners started Wakewash as a freshman-year business project at Wake Forest. The class gave each group $100 and asked them to take an idea to market. Wakewash reported $5,000 in revenue during a two-week period, then grew into a campus laundry business doing a couple hundred thousand dollars per school year with 80% margins. The founders sold it after graduation for a mid-six-figure price. The business stayed student-run: Alex describes seven or eight generations of students buying, operating, and selling it. The university licensed use of its name, and the founders learned hiring, vendor contracts, marketing, and partnerships through the operation. These are founder-reported figures from an interview, not audited statements. The durable asset was a campus service plus a succession path that let new students take over.
Wakewash found a ready-made audience on campus: students who needed clean clothes and parents who wanted a practical service for the school year. The founders opened a booth for two weeks, and parents bought packages covering a semester or the full academic year.
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Data credibility: Alex Smereczniak reports the $5,000 project-period revenue, couple-hundred-thousand-dollar school-year revenue, 80% margins, and mid-six-figure sale. These are founder-reported interview claims; no independent financial records are cited. The interview provides no package pricing or cost breakdown.
For Wakewash, a campus laundry service can collect its first dollar by selling a defined package before the first pickup: a semester or school-year plan gives a family a clear outcome and gives the operator working cash for supplies and labor. Keep the first offer narrow.
Wakewash’s flywheel came from combining a recurring campus need with a new group of student operators every few years. A parent who bought a semester or annual package had a reason to recommend the service to another family.
For Wakewash, the difficult stretch is likely to arrive between a successful campus launch and proving another institution will approve the same model. Alex describes expansion conversations where students wanted to participate but university stakeholders hesitated over risk and liability.
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