Tell us a bit about your business.
I am Devonn Vidal, Founder and CEO of Sneakky Klean since September 2019 in Miami, Florida. My main aim with Sneakky Klean is to meet the gap in the market and provide customers with a top quality sneaker laundry and repair service. This way, their footwear can be renewed instead of being replaced with new pairs - a much more sustainable approach.
Initially Sneakky Klean started as a small business with friends and family to test the market. Since then, we have expanded to cover three locations: our main store in Florida, a second outlet in Zurich, Switzerland, and a franchise in Saskatoon, Canada. It’s a business which I fully own and operate with a great team of three skilled cleaners, two of which have been with me now for over two years.
What inspired you to start Sneakky Klean?
My motivation for starting Sneakky Klean mainly came from my time in the food business, where I worked as a co-founder for two small restaurants. In this line of work, it's really hard to keep your shoes clean, and as a sneaker lover, I would wear my sneakers to work. Needless to say, they got absolutely trashed at the restaurant, and I found myself having to buy a new pair for work every other month, only to have them completely destroyed in a few weeks.
I just wanted to keep my sneakers in good condition and was on the lookout for a service that would launder and restore them. When I realized there wasn’t a service like that out there, I decided to leave the food industry after five years and start my own business, Sneakky Klean.
When I first entered the industry, there were no big competitors—just one place in North Carolina and another in New York. Towards the end of 2019 and into 2020, the sneaker market really took off and accelerated even more during the pandemic as people had more disposable income to spend on high-end, big-brand sneakers. They're like statement pieces for people and this is where I really found my place in the market.
Tell us a bit about your sneaker cleaning service.
Customers can visit our store in person, use one of our drop-off points around the city, or schedule a pickup—whichever method is most convenient for them. We use a combination of DoorDash and our in-house team for pickups and deliveries. Sometimes I handle the deliveries myself, as it provides a great opportunity to chat with my customers, receive feedback and promote the business.
Once we receive the customer's sneakers, they are cleaned, dried, and then go through a quality control process. The sneakers are then either picked up or delivered back to the customer.
We offer a three-day turnaround time (excluding weekends) with an option for rush service for a small fee. Our pricing model varies based on the brand of the sneaker. High-end designer sneakers, which tend to be more delicate, require extra care so the charge is slightly higher compared to standard sneakers. Recently, we have also started offering small shoe repair services, such as paint touch-ups and oxidation removal, providing a wider range of restoration options for our customers.
Our cleaning service accounts for roughly 95% of our business, while there is slightly less demand for our repair service. This is mainly because most customers are more inclined to buy new shoes. However, repairs are essential for those with expensive or rare shoes they don’t want to lose or shoes that hold sentimental value.
Before using CleanCloud, how were you running your business?
Oh it was a messy process! And involved a lot of manual work. I used a system called Route4me to manage the pickup and delivery service. Customers had to submit a pickup request on a single intake form, but there was no route navigation available.
For sales, I used Square as my point-of-sale system and PayPal for processing payments. When a customer booked an order, I had to manually import their information into Square to create an invoice, which was time-consuming and added a lot of extra work.
To send marketing emails to customers, I had to manually import their details. And if a customer hadn’t placed an order, I couldn’t collect their details, making it challenging to build a potential customer list.
What specific challenges led you to switch to CleanCloud, and how has CleanCloud helped with this?
Route4me was quite expensive for the features available. I switched to CleanCloud because the system offers an integrated driver app and route optimization within the system, adding much more value at an affordable price. Having the ability to consolidate our pickup and delivery system with our POS was a no brainer for us, and it's a gift that keeps on giving!
CleanCloud has brought numerous improvements. The design is much better and easier to use and we even launched our own branded mobile app called SNKY with CleanCloud back in 2022 which has been an amazing feature for our brand.
The system also introduced its own marketing options which allowed us to step away from Mailchimp and market to our customers via email, text and push notifications. This saved us some money too, removing the need to pay for an additional subscription.
I particularly love the way customers can be automatically updated on the status of their orders. Before, customers would call the store to ask about their orders, but now they receive real-time updates throughout the process, saving us a lot of time.
What marketing strategies do you use? And do you utilize CleanCloud to assist with this?
Instagram is our bread and butter and is the place where we focus 90% of our marketing efforts as it’s a platform we know works best for Sneakky Klean. This platform is just the top of the funnel for us though - we use Instagram to mainly drive awareness and discovery for potential customers. We combine weekly organic Instagram posts with paid ads, taking an expert approach by showing tips and tricks and before-and-after transformations. This promotes our expertise and creates engagement where we encourage potential customers to sign up or download the SNKY app.
Once a customer signs up, we can use their details to send them marketing content. We use automated marketing to send weekly updates to our customer base, making the most of CleanCloud’s email template tool to design unique emails. These emails include tips and tricks, links to blogs, our website, and more. We also send smaller, targeted emails based on specific triggers. For example, if we notice a customer has signed up but hasn't placed an order, we’ll offer a free consultation. I also plan to set up targeted emails after the first and second months of them being active customers, offering further discounts.
We recently released our new website builder tool, could you share which features you like the most?
Building a website can be time-consuming, but then CleanCloud released their new website builder tool, and it was a game-changer! The developers had already done the heavy lifting by providing pre-built templates for different pages. We even set up another website for our franchise store in Canada using this tool. All I had to do was customize the pages by editing the text, choosing the color scheme, adding images with the AI generator, and adding the Sneakky Klean logo.
Since the site is hosted on CleanCloud's server, the loading speed is excellent. Plus, we don’t have to manually update anything—whenever we update the pricing list in CleanCloud, it automatically syncs with our website.
What are your plans for Sneakky Klean in the next few years?
World domination—Mars might be next! But really, we're focused on building the company and opening new stores in other US cities. We're currently working on expanding to two new locations to increase our reach.
We've developed a process that we know can be successfully replicated and we're excited to continue building this business alongside CleanCloud as a key software partner. We’re also considering locker integration. We've noticed that a large portion of our customers are into their fitness, so placing lockers in gyms and university campuses makes perfect sense.
Would you recommend CleanCloud to others and why?
I’m a big advocate for CleanCloud and I recommend the system to every laundromat owner I meet! We've been using CleanCloud for three years now, and it has everything we need, all integrated into one system.
One thing I love is that CleanCloud is constantly releasing new features which has ultimately led to an amazing product and platform. It has taken a lot of the headaches out of customer management, from branded apps to the website. The features, CRM, and processing are all incredibly convenient and easy to use.
I love the team—you can always get someone on the phone, and they are very responsive. I'm also one of the CleanCloud Pro’s in the Facebook community and It's great to see people share suggestions and then watch those ideas come to life.
CleanCloud truly listens to the people who use their software.