This Day, That Year

Item from Nov 2, 1996, in China Daily: A woman puts clothes into a coin-operated washing machine in a selfservice laundry on Sichuan Road in Shanghai. China’s first coin-operated laundry received a warm welcome from residents.

As living standards improve in China, people are increasingly turning to professional laundry services. As a result, the country’s laundry and dry-cleaning market is developing rapidly.

In 1997, Fornet Laundry Co, opened the first outlet in Xidan, a business area in Beijing, bringing the French laundry system of “front store and back factory” to China. Now it has more than 1,400 stores nationwide.

The stable profits and promising business prospects have triggered a sudden rush for investment in the country’s laundry service industry. The number of companies in the sector reached about 108,000 last year, up from 18,000 in 2004, statistics from the National Association of Laundry Products and Services Enterprises showed.

With the popularity of online services, Chinese Internet giant Tencent and laundromat chain Rongchang launched the country’s first Uber-style laundry pickup app — Edaixi in 2014.

Customers can submit their orders online and the laundry will be picked up and returned clean within 72 hours.

The China Laundry Association is drawing up standards for online laundry providers to regulate the emerging market.

The output of the laundry sector reached 1 trillion yuan ($151 billion) last year, and by 2025 it is expected to hit 6 trillion yuan, according to a guideline released by the Ministry of Commerce.