How Nachshon Fertel spun his mother's laundry woes into a bubbling business
Laundry is as inevitable as death and taxes, especially for large families. And that’s why about five years ago, Mrs. Ari Fertel, a mother of five from Baltimore, looked at her children in exasperation and said, “I don’t get it. There’s an app to get a taxi. There’s an app to buy a plane ticket to go across the world. Why are we still doing laundry like we did when washing machines came on the scene in the 1950s? Can’t someone make an app for that too?”
Her son Nachshon, then a 16-year-old computer whiz, did what few teenagers his age would have done: He actually paid attention. He said, “Ma, I think I can solve that.”
”We thought he was kidding,” says his father, Mort Fertel, a serial entrepreneur and relationship guru who years back created his internationally-acclaimed Marriage Fitness “boot camp.” But Nachshon saw the potential to build an app for laundry like Uber did for the ride service business. There were two things propelling Nachshon’s interest: First, he’d always been a bit of a techie. And second, he had started attending yeshivah out of town, and he didn’t like doing laundry either.
True to his Biblical namesake, Nachshon Fertel rose to the challenge and plunged into the churning, soapy waters of America’s laundry woes, prepared to lead people out of their servitude to spin cycles and dryer sheets, and on to the Promised Land of cheaply outsourced laundry service. And none too soon, with the collaboration of his father, the SudShare app launched. Just tap the app, and somebody will appear at your house, collect your dirty clothing, and return it within 24 hours washed and folded.
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