By Abbey Cannan
Two Noosa residents have developed a new app that connects people who need their everyday laundry washed and ironed with neighbours who want to earn a bit of extra cash.
Before officially launching, Craig Miles and Matt Lawton are seeking to recruit a dozen locals to put Airlaundr through its final paces.
Co-founder Matt Lawton said they spent the best part of 18 months in development.
“We think we’ve created something that is quick and easy to use but now we’d like to pay some trial users to help us prove it,” he said.
Mr Lawton said they first developed an app for school lunches but abandoned the idea when government legislation made it “too hard”.
“The idea for Airlaundr was then suggested by a friend and we thought it made a lot of sense,” he said.
With the co-founders both working full time jobs and already having experience in digital production, they said nothing surprised them about the process of developing an app.
“But juggling full time careers and family with this side hustle has taken a lot longer than we hoped,” he said.
Mr Miles and Mr Lawton said they saw Noosa as a great place to launch the app later this year because a key target audience was families on holiday.
They believe there are plenty of under-employed residents who can operate a washing machine and service those families when they start visiting the region again.
”It works like a rideshare app so relies on us building a bank of washers before we go live in a suburb,” Mr Lawton said.
“We’ve recruited lots of people in 4567 and 4573 to a waitlist of washers who are wanting to provide the service and I think the lockdown has helped us do that because people have been looking for new ways to earn money.”
The app also has a social good element in that 20 cents from every order will go to a local good cause that the washer nominates.
Airlaundr has already signed up a national cancer charity and a local Noosa sports club, Sunshine Beach Surf Lifesaving, but Lawton wants more good causes on board to help their fundraising efforts.
“I think local schools and associations who sign up can also help us drive app installs because they’ll promote it to their databases as an easy way to help them fundraise,” he said.
“We’re hoping to really help strengthen communities.”
Anyone interested in being paid to help test the app, should email their name and phone number to admin@airlaundr.com.
