Insight
Patel: Automated dry cleaning depots achieve 40% operating margins
“But what we realized is that if we could get some 24 seven access or depot, you can get rid of rent and labor on site. And that all of a sudden allows you to operate at 40% margins.”
Insight
PressBox Avoided Winner-Take-All Mentality, Targeting 3% High-Rise Market Share
“Our view was that if we just capture three percent market share, we're gonna be millionaires. And so we didn't view this as a winner-take-all market.”
Assertion Partly supported
P&G Pursued Laundry Services Because Tide Reached 52% Market Share Cap
“They're at 52% market share of Tide, and they can't push that much further. And so they've always organically had this journey where if they can't provide the goods for laundry, can they just do your laundry?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
All But One Property Partner Refused P&G's Bounties to Drop PressBox
“And ultimately, all of our partners except for one said no thanks.”
Disclosure
81 Collection Backed a Pet Cremation Business With 80% EBITDA Margins
“We just recently did an investment in pet cremation, and we were blown away. 80% EBITDA margins.”
Assertion Supported
Patel: Traditional dry cleaners operate at zero percent margins after owner salaries
“Because dry cleaners operate at 15% margin businesses. And by the way, when you take out the salary of the owner operator, it's like zero percent.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
PressBox Achieved 26 Locker Transactions Per Hour Versus On-Demand's 4 to 6
“And we did the math, and the max transactions you could do with a pickup and drop-off service, which had been the true Uber model, was four to six transactions per hour, and then we realized with our model, we could do 26.”
Insight
Consumers Anchor Dry Cleaning Prices Exclusively on Shirts, Not Sweaters
“I don't know if people know how much they pay to dry clean a sweater, but everyone knows how much it costs to dry clean a shirt.”
Insight
Patel: Locker customer conversion relies on physical proximity to wardrobes
“Proximity to someone's wardrobe. In terms of not even in the buildings of apartment buildings, but also in terms of where we'd go in the apartment building. If we can be, you know, close to someone's wardrobe, we had a higher ability for them to become custome…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Patel: PressBox revenue dipped only 2% after Washio Chicago launch
“And we looked at our revenue and it had only gone down by two percent.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
In-Sourcing Operations Increased PressBox Margins by 10 Percentage Points
“And so again, you know, our margin was typically around 25% of the bottom line, 50% at the top, at the gross margin level. Both of those went up by 10 percentage points.”
Assertion Supported
P&G's Tide Spin Copied PressBox's Locker Model After Courier Failure
“And so they ended up realizing that pick up and drop off was not the path. And then they went down the locker path. And for about three to six months, they competed with us head to head.”
Disclosure
Patel: PressBox should have raised outside capital in 2017
“We talked about we have a few regrets, but one of them is that we should have raised, because at that point, like, my homepage for our computer was my bank account, and I only now realize how unhealthy that was, because we were so focused in our business that …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Patel: 90% of 3,400 Early-Stage Venture Firms Focus Solely on Software
“We did some math on this recently, Guy, and there's about 3400 early stage, or early investing firms. And about 90% focus on software. Leaving only 10 to 20% to fund things that are quite critical to our society. And even in that group, half are not even activ…”
What-if
Patel: Passed PE Consumer Deals Are Worth Over $5 Billion Today
“I think sometimes about all those companies we could have backed in that basket, And it's probably north of worth more than five billion today.”
Disclosure
Patel: Pressbox Launched with $240K Founders' Savings and $100K Parental Debt
“We put all of our life savings into it. I had about a 120,000 dollars saved from McKinsey and private equity, and my co-founder did as well, and we're fortunate we raised like a 100,000 dollars of debt from our parents.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Patel: PressBox Spent $5,000 to Set Up Each Locker Location
“To the unit economics, it cost us 5000 dollars to set up a location.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
PressBox Reached Break-Even on High-Rise Locker Deployments in Six Weeks
“It was that 12, 25 all-time moment where we broke even guy. In six weeks.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Patel: PressBox Hit an $80K Monthly Revenue Run Rate Within 15 Months
“I'll never forget when we hit the 80,000 dollar mark per month, because 80 times 12 is roughly a million dollars, and we got there at around, around like the 15 month mark after starting.”
Assertion Supported
PressBox grew to 250 Chicago locations over three years
“Once we were in 12, 25 Old Town, the snowball started to form, and we ended up adding eight new locations a month. And then ultimately, Guy, we grew to 250 locations in Chicago over the course of, call it, three years.”
Disclosure
Patel: PressBox operated at 20% to 25% EBITDA margins
“20 to 25%, roughly, was our EBITDA margin, if you want to call it that.”
Disclosure
PressBox Founders Took $40,000 Annual Salaries for Five Years
“I was making almost 300,000 dollars, and I was, what, 27? And threw it all away to make 40,000 dollars for five years, and Drew's the same.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Patel: PressBox driver costs in DC were 60% higher than Chicago
“Our cost for a driver was 60% higher than Chicago.”
Insight
Compounding 98% vs 96% Retention Yields 78% vs 55% Over Two Years
“We realized that the difference between 98% retention and 96% retention, even though it sounds small, when you compound that every month, it's astronomical. The difference, I think, is between having 55% of your customers at the end of two years versus 78.”
