The Spin on Innovation

Innovation is one of the most overused words in business. Strip away the noise, and it’s something more practical — and more accessible — than most people assume.

16 Jul, 2026 12 min read

The Spin on Innovation

Innovation is one of the most overused words in business. Strip away the noise, and it’s something more practical — and more accessible — than most people assume.

By Matt DeWolf

In August 2020, Steven Nunez opened a laundromat in Orlando, Florida. The timing was, by any reasonable measure, terrible. The pandemic was at its peak. Retail foot traffic had collapsed. Customers were avoiding shared spaces. And yet Nunez not only opened — he launched with three service lines on day one: self-service, wash-dry-fold, and pickup and delivery.

“I opened in COVID, literally at the peak,” Nunez said. “I was like, this might be bad. I don’t know if this is going to work.”

It worked. And the reason it worked has everything to do with how Nunez had framed the business from the start. “My vision from the beginning was always pickup and delivery first,” he explained. “The laundromats supported that, not the other way around.”

That inversion — treating the physical location as infrastructure for a service model rather than the other way around — was not an obvious move in an industry where the standard playbook had been essentially unchanged for decades. It was, by any useful definition, an act of innovation. And it happened not in a tech company or a well-funded startup, but in a laundromat.

Nunez has since grown The Laundry Room to nearly four locations across Florida. But the more instructive part of his story isn’t the growth — it’s the thinking that preceded it. He looked at a traditional business, questioned its core assumptions, and built something different. That process is available to any operator willing to engage in it.

As the laundromat industry works through a period of genuine change — shaped by new technology, shifting consumer expectations, and a new generation of entrepreneurial owners — it’s worth examining a question that tends to get buried under the buzzwords: What is innovation, actually? And if operators understood it more clearly, would they recognize it in their own work?

REDEFINING THE WORD

Innovation is overloaded. It gets applied to everything from breakthrough products to minor process tweaks, which makes it easy to dismiss and hard to define. For many small business owners, the word carries an implicit bar — one set by Silicon Valley — that feels irrelevant to the day-to-day work of running a laundromat.It worked. And the reason it worked has everything to do with how Nunez had framed the business from the start. “My vision from the beginning was always pickup and delivery first,” he explained. “The laundromats supported that, not the other way around.”

That association is worth challenging.

Peter Drucker, whose work on entrepreneurship remains widely referenced, defined innovation not as invention but as purposeful change: “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship — the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” That definition makes no mention of technology, scale, or investment size.

Tom Freston, the former Viacom chief executive, offered a simpler version: “Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.” By that measure, an operator who combines their existing machines, floor space, and staff to launch a wash-and-fold service is innovating. The context is different. The logic is the same.

“The laundromat industry has always been built on meeting a fundamental human need. What we’re seeing now is operators asking what else that need looks like — and building toward the answer.”

The CLA has tracked this shift closely. “Innovation in this industry isn’t about chasing what’s new for its own sake,” said Brian Wallace, CEO at CLA. “It’s about solving real problems for real people. When an owner switches to a card-based payment system because a customer asked whether they accept cards, that’s innovation. When they launch pickup and delivery because a working parent told them they don’t have time to come in, that’s innovation. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

A MINDSET, NOT A MOMENT

Another common misconception is that innovation arrives as a flash of inspiration — a single idea that changes everything. The research doesn’t support that picture. Innovation is more often the product of sustained observation and incremental improvement than of any single insight.

Pickup nearly any business book and you’ll read something similar to the phrase “Most innovation involves doing the things we do every day a little bit better rather than creating something completely new and different.” The practical implication is that innovation isn’t a destination operators are working toward. It’s a practice they’re already engaged in.

Dillan Smith learned this the hard way. In 2020, Smith and his brother-in-law Jon Schemmel acquired a car wash and laundromat combination in Iowa, expecting what he describes as a “semi-passive” business. What they found instead was a company held together by paper timecards, a carabiner full of keys, and a suggestion box nailed to the wall. Sunday afternoon calls about empty change machines. Employees who didn’t show. Maintenance issues that didn’t observe business hours.

“If we were going to grow, we needed technology to make it possible,” Smith said.

So they got to work. Not with a sweeping overhaul, but by naming the specific problems that were keeping them up at night: cash collections, auditing, maintenance, parts ordering, payroll. One by one, they built systems around each. Five years later, Smith operates 22 locations and has developed his own AI tool built on OpenClaw trained to handle customer inquiries and automate task routing across his stores.Innovation is overloaded. It gets applied to everything from breakthrough products to minor process tweaks, which makes it easy to dismiss and hard to define. For many small business owners, the word carries an implicit bar — one set by Silicon Valley — that feels irrelevant to the day-to-day work of running a laundromat.It worked. And the reason it worked has everything to do with how Nunez had framed the business from the start. “My vision from the beginning was always pickup and delivery first,” he explained. “The laundromats supported that, not the other way around.”

The through line from that first acquisition to a 22-location operation running a custom AI system is not a story about technology. It’s a story about problem-solving as a practice. “Before any new technology earns a place in our operation, we ask one question,” Smith said. “Does it help us deliver a better experience for our customers and our team? If the answer is yes, we’re in.”

That standard — grounded in the customer, not the technology — is what separates innovation that compounds from innovation that stalls. Smith didn’t set out to build a tech-forward laundromat company. He set out to solve problems. The technology followed.

Organizational theorist Margaret J. Wheatley described innovation in similar terms: it emerges from new relationships, from information gathered across disciplines and communities, from conversations that generate ideas neither party would have reached alone. For laundromat owners, that might look like a conversation at the CLA Show, a question put to a vendor rep, or an employee pointing out a pattern that management hadn’t noticed.

Harvard Business Review has made a related argument: the businesses most capable of sustained innovation are those that build it into their operations — through regular customer feedback, room to experiment, and a habit of asking how things could be improved. The approach is structural, not spontaneous.

Many laundromat operators are already working this way. They just don’t always call it innovation.

“Innovation doesn’t require a permit or a pitch deck. It requires curiosity and a willingness to act on what you find.”

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE INDUSTRY

The numbers are worth stating plainly. The U.S. laundromat market is valued at $6.8 billion in 2025. Globally, the laundry market is projected to reach $39.34 billion by 2030, up from $19.77 billion in 2023 — a compound annual growth rate above 10%. Independently owned laundromats saw revenue grow an average of 8% year over year, according to CLA data.

Behind that growth is a practical shift in how laundromats operate. About 55% of locations now accept mobile or card-based payments, nearly double the share from 2022. IoT sensors in machines flag maintenance needs before breakdowns occur. Predictive maintenance tools, once the province of industrial manufacturing, are now available through major laundry equipment vendors. More than 60% of urban laundromats offer wash-and-fold services, compared with 40% in 2019. Pickup and delivery, which gained traction during the pandemic, has become a standard offering in competitive markets.

Some operators are rethinking the physical space itself. New laundromats are being built with lounge areas, coffee service, Wi-Fi, and retail. The idea is to reframe the visit — not as an errand to get through, but as time that can be used productively or comfortably.

“What we’re watching is operators redefining what a laundromat is,” said Wallace. “For decades, the model was essentially unchanged. Now the industry is asking new questions about customer experience, revenue diversification, and what role the laundromat can play in a community. That’s a meaningful shift.”

INNOVATION IN AN UNLIKELY SETTING

The laundromat is not where most people would look for a business innovation story. It’s not a technology company. It doesn’t operate in a high-growth sector. It has no particular cultural cachet. It provides a service people have needed for generations, in buildings that often go unnoticed.

That context, however, may be part of what makes it interesting. Industries without a lot of hype tend to attract operators who are focused on fundamentals; on whether customers are satisfied, whether the margins work, whether the business is sustainable. Innovation that comes out of that environment tends to be practical and durable rather than theoretical.

Dalton Bidula, who acquired his first laundromat at 22, framed his approach in straightforward terms: “People may not need to buy new clothes, but they will always need to clean the ones they have.” Working from that premise, he renovated outdated equipment, modernized his stores, and added a pickup and delivery service as a way to grow revenue without adding locations. None of those decisions were flashy. All of them were deliberate.

“The laundromat industry has remained consistent for generations. Disruption happens slowly here, which gives operators time to adapt, innovate, and stay ahead. It’s a rare combination of essential service, predictable demand, and long-term durability.” — Dalton Bidula, Laundromat Owner

HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

For operators who want to approach innovation more intentionally, a few practical frameworks hold up well.

Start with friction. Harvard Business School research points to unexpected occurrences, process breakdowns, and unmet customer needs as the most reliable sources of innovation opportunity. In a laundromat, that means asking: What do customers complain about? What breaks down most often? What part of the visit is the most frustrating? The answers tend to point directly toward where the work is.

Start small. Drucker’s guidance on entrepreneurship is consistent on this point: smaller-scale innovations are more likely to succeed because they allow for adjustment. A single service addition, a payment system change, a layout modification — these are manageable tests. The goal is to learn quickly and build from there, not to overhaul everything at once.

Look across industries. Many of the most useful innovations in the laundromat business were borrowed from elsewhere. Subscription pricing models came from software. Community-oriented store design came from coffee shops and coworking spaces. App-based reservations came from hospitality. Operators who pay attention to what’s working in adjacent businesses and adapt it to their context have a practical advantage.

Name what you’re already doing. Innovation often goes unrecognized because it doesn’t get labeled as such. If you changed your staffing schedule based on usage data, that’s innovation. If you added a loyalty program, that’s innovation. If you’ve reconfigured your floor layout, that’s innovation. Identifying these practices matters because it creates a foundation to build on.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The laundromat industry will keep changing. AI tools are beginning to appear in customer service, marketing, and maintenance management. Subscription pricing is gaining traction as a way to build predictable revenue in other similar industries. Energy-efficient equipment is making sustainability a business case, not just a value statement. Owners who stay current with these developments — and who maintain the habit of asking what could work better — are well-positioned for the years ahead.

Ted Levitt, the economist and Harvard Business School professor, wrote that innovation is “the vital spark of all human change, improvement, and progress.” The observation applies as much to a laundromat in a strip mall as to any other business. The spark doesn’t require a particular setting or a particular scale. It requires attention and follow-through.

A card reader installed because a customer couldn’t find coins. A pickup route added because a parent didn’t have time to come in. A waiting area rearranged because the old setup didn’t work. These are not small things dressed up in big language. They are, straightforwardly, what innovation looks like in practice.

For the operators building businesses in this industry, that’s worth recognizing.

The Spin on Innovation

The Spin on Innovation

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