Cents, the largest leading all-in-one business management platform powering the way garment care SMBs grow, manage, and understand their businesses, announced the closing of its $40 million Series B funding round.
Camber Creek led the funding round, which included participation from previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Tiger Global. Additional strategic investors in this round include Tech Pioneer Fund, RXR (RADV), Derive Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and executives at best-in-class SaaS companies like Toast, Jobber, Squarespace, and Stripe.
This funding round brings the company’s total funding to over $77 million. Along with the financing, Cents has acquired Laundroworks, a hardware-based payments system powering how consumers pay for laundry at laundromats and shared laundry rooms within multi-family buildings, hotels, universities, and more, to reinforce its existing hardware product line.
Cents offers POS, online ordering, payment hardware, marketing tools, and business management software for all garment care and vended laundry businesses, including laundromats, dry cleaners, alterations, and shared laundry rooms. And the platform currently powers over 2,700 retail laundries, about 1 in 14 laundromats in the US, and over 3,500 shared laundry rooms. The company also continues to invest in new product development to serve all garment care businesses with the funding. As the only all-in-one solution for the unique nuances of the laundry industry, the Cents platform makes an impact on every type of business, whether it’s a mom-and-pop shop, a multi-unit operation, or anything in between.
Upon launching, the platform’s main focus was to centralize the many different revenue streams and operations of a garment care business, including self-serve, wash and fold, dry cleaning, alterations, pickup and delivery, commercial laundry, and more. And Cents started with CentsOS, the POS and nucleus of laundry operations and quickly expanded to launching Cents Dispatch, which is a modern and accessible online ordering and logistics management platform that included the first-ever facilitation of on-demand delivery via outsourced couriers. As the SaaS products grew, Cents also launched Connect, the most integrated hardware device for self-serve payments, installed directly on laundry equipment. For the first time, this suite of products has given laundry operators one platform to power their entire business.
KEY QUOTES:
“Laundry is a critical human need. Local laundry businesses provide an essential service, and these SMBs deserve best-in-class technology and support to provide that service while generating strong ROIs. We have dedicated ourselves to this industry and the unique needs of our customers. It’s a privilege to have the trust and support of our customers as we’ve continued to grow, and our entire team feels the weight of our responsibility to build innovative solutions that support their business goals. We’re experiencing a true renaissance in the laundry industry. I’m so proud of our team for their tireless dedication and drive to elevate the experience for our operators and their customers.”
- Alex Jekowsky, CEO and Co-founder of Cents
“Cents is the clear category leader in serving independent garment care businesses. Their drive for innovation, while staying focused on the needs of SMB’s is second to none. We see huge opportunities for Cents to continue to provide their game-changing technology for the real estate space. From technology that supports route operators and shared laundry rooms to powering the amenity of laundry for tenants through their network of local laundry businesses, we’re thrilled to be partnering with Cents.”
- Alexandra Nicoletti at Camber Creek, the leading real estate technology venture capital firm
