When we start the business, definitely we not dream big, right, because we just make a living.

But when we passed a certain stage or we reached that make a living phase. Dream big is also important because if you have a big dream, big goal, you will be more inspired and you can inspire others to join the team. And there are a lot of opportunities for us to capture. This would be the key on the new entrepreneur that having a big goal but start very small. Do it small steps at a time. But have your eye on the big goal would be very encouraging in the journey. For me, success is she can do the business.

Today, we're diving into a story that's close to our home for everyone that's laundry. It's one of those universal tasks we can't escape. Joining me are Nimit and Air, the dynamic duo behind Trendy Wash, a Thailand-based company revolutionizing the way people experience this everyday routine. Get ready to hear their inspiring journey of entrepreneurship, the challenges they faced, and the innovative solution they've implemented. Let's welcome Nimit and Air.

Hi Debbie.

 So let's start at the beginning. Take us back to the moment you realized Thailand's laundry industry needed a change. Was there a specific experience or frustration that sparked the idea for Trendy Wash?

We have to start with the concept that I love and I like. It's called passive income. And laundry business, the coin-vending machine, is one of passive income business. And we started in 2009 with a coin laundry with the top load. At that time, there was still no industry, commercial front-load machine. So we have only the top-load machine in Thailand. And from 2016, we have the technology, and we started to make the application called Trendy Wash. The Trendy Wash started to go live in 2017, and this application, Trendy Wash, solved the pain point of me as a business owner and the end-point customer. For us, having to collect coins is very painful, you know, and not knowing how much money is the machine get is also another pain point. So having the application, we have the back end for us to see real-time income, and we could know that when should we go to collect the money, when is the machine broken down, you know, and should we put more machine because we have the data. Okay, for the customer, we solve the problem that they don't have to wait because the customer always come at the same time. So when they open our application, they will know that the machine is busy or available for them to use, so they can spend their time. And when they come to the machine, they can choose three ways of payment.

 First, the traditional coin. Second is from the application. Third is from the QR code. So without having coin, they can come to use the thing. And after finish using, there will be notification for them to know that the machine is already finished washing. They can come and collect the cloth. So these three things with the technology helps us a lot with this application Trendy Wash.

So from the consumer's point of view, there's a convenience of knowing which machine is available for them to use. And they don't have to lug around the coins, which is very convenient. And from your point of view as a business owner, you're able to see in a quick dashboard how much income is generated, what machines has broken. I think that's really smart.

So clearly there is a gap in the market that you're trying to solve. But why did you feel you were the right people or the right team to tackle it?

I want to have passive income. I want to have time. So I will use technology as much as I could to make it easier. That's the concept. We have been thinking this since day one. We're doing the business, but the technology doesn't came. So when the technology came in Thailand, the bank system, they use Thai QR. It just launched the zero fee for the bank transfer at that year. So people started to use a lot of mobile banking back then. So we see the trend and we know that this is the time. Because we adopted the technology earlier, it would be so difficult for people to adopt. When we see the trend, so we know that we should start inventing this. And it took us around, I think, six months for we have the first prototype. Then it's launched. But what we call launch for us, we just see the market fit. We not wait for everything to perfect. For example, the feature that he mentioned, that would take us a year. But back then, we just want the machine to be able to start properly. And we know the data. And he add on the feature later. We just launched the first feature and we go live and we adapt after that.

 Back then, did you have a tech background to integrate all these systems into a seamless experience for consumers?

 I started a business called Wi-Fi is a hotspot Wi-Fi in condominium. When you can buy the hotspot and you take that and then you scratch them and you have the password to use Wi-Fi. That is only my knowledge of technology. I didn't finished college with the technology thing at all. I just want to do the business and learn by doing, doing by learning and see how they do and just adjust it. That is how I do the business. Luckily that we have a good partner. Yeah. The one who been with us, the one who invented the Trendy Wash, that team is still with us for more than eight years already. We have a good partner. We have a tech team doing the hardware and software development. And together with us, right now, we're just expanding the team to have more the tech team in his side.

In those early years, what was the toughest make-or-break decision you faced and how did you weigh the risk against the potential rewards?

There is a say that you don't know what you don't know. At the beginning, what I don't know that I don't know is two things. Money and industry business. Industry knowledge. This is a two big problems that we don't know that we don't know the problem. But as we are doing and we have never give up, it's driving us to improving things.

Building the business together, you've each brought different backgrounds to the journey. Nimit, you're very entrepreneurial, and Air with your corporate experience. How do your individual strengths collide or collaborate, and what have you learned about each other through this journey?

 Oh, this is fun stuff, you know. Because in the beginning, we have a separate mindset, and those separate mindsets would fit along together, but then we have to work. So I have to find a way to work together by hiring experts, coaching consultants to help us. So when we have those consultants and those consultants explain that, we have two different backgrounds, two different thinking, but those two thinking complement each other. So we have to separate working roles. The learning that I have is actually quite difficult working as a couple. But what I learned is we have to separate our roles clearly. It's same as the corporate. What I apply to the corporate is normally corporate has the clear role and responsibility, right? But with the SME, normally it's mixed and it's just without any role. But for me to balancing that, we have a clear role and responsibility. For example, Khun Nimit leading order. He's visionary, he's leading order, new thing, NPD, new product launch. Everything new comes to him, comes from him. And I just properly plan and execute, control, budgeting. So we do separate roles. After that, it's fine.

 That sounds great. But I can imagine that running a business together 24-7 sounds very intensive. How do you balance your personal and professional lives? What are the biggest benefits or biggest challenges of growing a company together?

Oh, yes. He doesn't have the problem. He thinks I have the problem. Actually, for me, balancing. Normally, after work, we discussing a bit with the work, but maybe because our lifestyle after work is aligned. For example, we set the family as a priority. The kids, we spend time a lot with the kids, and we love traveling. We both love traveling. We normally have vacation, so with this vacation, we mix a bit with work, but not that much. Meaning for us is, I think, with the outside work and lifestyle, we seem to be aligned. So with workload very heavy and with the lifestyle, that balance, I think it complement.

 You guys have found the perfect balance between professional and personal lives and having that harmonious environment.

 Entrepreneurship is full of highs and lows. During moments when growth of the business was slow or results weren't immediate, what kept you motivated to push forward for your business?

Dream big. When you have a dream, obstacle comes. It's not called obstacle. It's like a path that you have to face. And when you think that it is a path that you have to face, then the problem is not a problem anymore.

I'll give you some example. When he started the business, actually, we didn't think anything big. We think that it's just a passive income with a few branches, right? But when the time passed and when he expanding the business, technology comes, we have more staff coming in. Recruiting able staff or the good team becomes challenging. So what we learned is if we dream big and we can inspire the people would join our team. And also that I always looking for new things and she always looking at the current thing and she will monitor it. That is good or is bad. So, when I have the current situation, I will know that should I move to other things or should I still be doing this thing? This is how I manage. Yeah, how we balance because we are opposite personality, that's why we can balance the up and down in the business. We are not too risky, but we are not too conservative. Just try to find our balance through the 15 years.

 I imagine the scale of the business has grown now that you're in your 15th year. Can you just walk us through the different milestones of how big the business is now, how many branches that you have?

Okay. Back then when we started that he mentioned in 2009. He do by his own, zero staff. Everything is outsourced. And he'd been doing that, I think, 2017, since the application come. Yeah. But the outsource team that's been with us since 2009 still works with us up until now, 15 years. So they are really loyal. They are really passionate. I think the turning point is when we start to grow business, we saw them and we want them to have a better life as we do. So that inspires us as well. And this is another tipping point that we are, as a couple, say that we should grow our business so we can take care of more people because they've been very loyal to us. This is another tipping point in 2017. And at that time, because we are the first one who developed the application for the washing machine, so the media come. Oh, so we have a lot of free media and people want to use our platform. Back then, we started the franchise business. This is another tipping point in 2020. 

With the franchise business, we have to do everything standardized, everything high standard, everything after sales service excellent, all operations driven. So we started to hire a lot of the team members with that period, and it's close to the COVID time. So it's very difficult to drive growth and have a good team. But as he mentioned, we hired a lot of coach consultants, what we call consultants with different backgrounds. When we're building the team, we used to hire consultants for the team coach. They will give us the mentor on how we grow the team, how we have the right mindset, what is the company culture. And when we grow, we have another challenge. For example, sales growth, we want to double the business. So we hire another consultant to guide us on the sales process. This is another example. Every milestone luckily that we have a very good consultant by our side. So they help us navigate on the growth. 

With those milestones, you have risk-taking, right? So how do you approach risk-taking at Trendy Wash. Can you share a time when taking a big risk either paid off or taught you a very valuable lesson?

I think risk for us because as mentioned he is a very entrepreneur. Normally, he take hundred percent risk, he take all the risk because he loves new things, right? So what we learned from one of the consultants to what we balance, for example, when he wants to develop new projects, I have to set the budget and also the timeline for him to explore. So I do my part on the controlling. For example, this budget is 1 million for him developing this machine. And he has six months with his team. So I'm monitoring. If it fly, it fly. If it's not... Actually, the bigger risk is not doing, you know, not doing is a bigger risk. And for me, by having new idea, having new things that I want to do, and if I didn't do it, it will be impossible. So I have to do it to make sure that it is fly or it is not fly. If it's not fly, that is okay. I have to try. But then, as I mentioned, we have budgeting for the risk that we want to take. Yeah, budget and timeline. Yeah, what we work is budget and timeline. So let him try on the innovation because many projects for him also fly, but a lot also fail. I align with his idea that without any new thing, it will be even more challenging for growing the business.

Test and learn. I agree. That's very important for any businesses. Thailand's market is fast paced. What's one habit or system you adopted early on that became critical as you scaled?

Systematically and technology is very important for scaling up. If you haven't had the system, if you haven't trained people enough, you wouldn't be able to grow or scale up your business. And with our small to medium to bigger, we have faced the problem with human beings. Some couldn't catch up with the technology, some could catch up. So this is the problem of scaling up. I agree with him on the system. And different size of the company have different setup. Because when we are very small, a lot of systems make us slow. But once we started to signal some of the problems when we expand, I think last two years, when we reach to expand more than 15 shops per month, all the operation seem to crack because it's not systematically scaled. Again, we have a good consultant and they come to the plan for the operation excellence and suddenly we don't have the issue of the more than 15 shops. Right now, we can hit 30 shops a month without any crack. So, system is the key and people in the system are also important. We have to train them why the system is important. I think they have to know why first. The system will help them. It's not punishing them. So I think this is the biggest learning that I have last year. 

What I hear is people that's running the system help you build that foundation to scale up your business.

Now, another part of the business is also collaboration, which is a key part of growth. Can you share a time when feedback from either your customers, your consultants, or even your internal team forced you to rethink a core part of your business? How did you balance your own conviction with adaptability to such feedback? 

Internally, we have the monthly meeting, quarterly town hall with all our staff where they can have all the feedback. And we have the open communication culture. All the engagement survey that we have, our staff know clearly what the company direction and they want to support for the feedback to help us grow. This is internally. I think we do it better last year when we grow the team. We saw the signal that we have to communicate properly because there's more staff. For the external stakeholders, for the customer, luckily that we are on the application and we know the feedback from them. They can feedback us via any kind of social media, like Facebook or everything. So we see all the data and we analyze if the problem comes so often, we have to fix it and improve it. For the partner, we always listen to the feedback from our partner. The biggest question would be how we balance our conviction, personal gut. I have personal gut and I try and I try and I try. So try and fail, try and success and good. If you fail, then please try again. That is how we do it.

Because if you don't try, you won't really know that it's good or not good. We listen and we test. Yeah. And if it's the right way, we go forward. If it's not, we just come back to what we think personally. 

There are a lot of laundry business in Thailand. What makes Trendy Wash different? How does it stand out in the market? And who do you think is your target consumers? 

Trendy Wash is technology because we have the first technology that uses the application. So our customers always know that we use technology. And there are two kinds of customer for us. First is the investor who opens the shop and the second is the end user. For the end user, it's very clear because we started in the condominium. So mostly our end user is in the condominium, in the urban city.

When we started the business, luckily we have gained trust from the key real estate developer. We've been with Sansiri for more than 15 years. With our service excellence, we've been able to serve their user in the condominium. This is our key strength. So we know the behavior, what we could help them to make life more convenient and easier. And this is our core strength in terms of the end consumer. We always find the way to use technology to help our customer. For the investor, clearly our investor profile, the young entrepreneur who want to have the same philosophy, the passive life, and really love to adopt the technology to help them to have more convenient life to run the business. No need to caught watching the store all the time and be able to have the other part enjoying life as well. 

You've innovated laundry. What's next? Are you eyeing adjacent industries or doubling down on the Trendy Wash 2.0? What exciting new developments can we expect to see from you in the future? 

We have new products coming in this year. I think we still stick with the core industry first. We''re still in the laundry business. But we are bigger than laundry, maybe taking care of the clothes. There are so many ways to take care of the clothes because we always see the trend. The trend of taking care of the clothes, the market is still huge. Yeah, and ESG, we try to next thing go along with ESG. Yeah, sustainability, eco-friendly, that our new products that are coming in will be in the byline of taking care of the clothes. We are in the phase of expanding our footprint. Right now, we're covering 60 provinces in Thailand, almost every city. And we're still expanding a lot in this year. We're also exploring the Southeast Asia to have some footprint. And also adding on the new product for helping our customers taking care of their cloth so they have to be more convenient, easier lifestyle with our platform. 

Exciting times. I hope you can have Trendy Wash here in Singapore as well. 

For budding entrepreneur with the passive income mindset like Nimit, what advice would you give to them, especially as they navigate uncertainty and trying to find their footing in terms of establishing their own business?

First, it has to be their mindset or what kind of mindset they have before they doing the business because it really has a different concept in the way of life. For me, having passive income is very important. So the passive income has to be like systematically business. So if I'm not around, the money is still coming. And the problem is that when you start the business, you will not know much. But then, the one thing that you have to bear in mind is never give up. If you don't give up, you try and try. Definitely, it will be success. Nobody knows how long or how fast that you can be successful, depending on you yourself to manage it. I think that's the key.

Having a runway to try new things. Success for you guys means different things, I imagine, at different stages. 

How do you find success now versus day one when you started a business? And if you could go back and give advice to your past self, what would it be? 

Oh let Araya answer this. For me, I agree that every stage of the business has every way we call success. For example, when we started business, having one branch, we already feel happy, right? But when we started to have a team, clearly my success is the team success. Because I cannot do it alone with around 500 branches right now, I definitely cannot manage. 

Success defines me right now if I have a successful team. Everyone grows in their career. the company grow that they can grow and they can take care of their family because we want them to have the happy life as we have too. This is what I'm passionate in this journey, how I plan to grow my business for my team. If we want to give to the people who want to start the business, another key note would be when we start the business, definitely we not dream big, right? Because we just make a living. But when we pass a certain stage or we reach that, make a living phase, thinking big is also important because if you have a big dream, big goal, you will be more inspired and you can inspire others to join the team. And there are a lot of opportunities for us to capture.

I think this would be the key on the new entrepreneur that having the big goal but start very small. Do it a small step at a time. But have your eye on the big goal would be very encouraging in the journey. For me, success is she can do the business. It's one of my little success, you know. My goal is not that yet, so I didn't call myself success right now for me. Because I have a corporate life, right? He wants me to be on the same mindset. He think he will not succeed. If I become the true entrepreneur, he can call success. 

I love the husband and wife tag team that you have here. Clearly, the entrepreneurship runs deep in your DNA. Any last words, Air and Nimit, that you'd like to impart to our listeners?

This is the exciting time for us because we are scaling the business. Yeah, excited to see the team help us launch all the innovation and grow double the business year on year. And hopefully we can reach our target as we plan. And everyone in the journey will be happy and have a successful life with us. I think this is a very exciting time for us. For me, the word say, just do it, is the best subscribe and the best thing to say because I am not thinking that much. Many people, they have the dream and they are thinking a lot and it became that they will be fear of doing. For me, if I have a dream, And I am not having a lot of thought. I just do it and fixing it and do it. And that is really important for people to be able to success or to do anything. Because thinking is not happening. Happening and thinking is not the same thing. So by doing, you will be learning and successing bit by bit, bit by bit. Yeah, that is what I can share. 

Those are inspiring words. do it, and having an iterative process as you go along. Nimit and Air, thank you so much. Your journey from building a brand that's reshaping how Thailand thinks about laundry is a masterclass in grit and partnership. I loved hearing how you turn friction into fuel, whether it's balancing your roles as co-founders and life partners or betting big on tech when others played it safe. To our listeners, if you're in Thailand and looking for a convenient and modern laundry experience, check out Trendy Wash. 

Thank you so much for having us.

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