Years later, James and I met each other during undergrad at Dartmouth College.
After graduating from business school and working for a couple of years, we reconnected and played around with a couple of business ideas. Ultimately we decided that we wanted to help people get back the time and energy they spend taking care of their clothes. Hence, Rinse was born during a meeting at Caffe Union in San Francisco (it was actually called RinseNow at that time).
We did it - we got our first customer! James and I decided to go for a run before getting ready to collect our first order. While we on our run, we got a message from our first customer letting us know they actually needed us to stop by now. We stopped mid-run and went straight to their apartment to collect their clothes.
Speaking of our first customer, here is she is: Ilana Stern. She’s still with us today!
As our customer list grew and my apartment began to overflow with bags of laundry and dry cleaning, we realized we needed to get an office, and decided on 2525 Van Ness. Not too long after, we outgrew this place. It was good problem to have.
As our customers list grew, our team had to keep up. We started off with just a couple of people on the team. This is our team today.
With the early success we saw in our first locale, San Francisco, we knew we wanted to take Rinse to cities across the nation. We’re now live in 5 cities, with more on the horizon.
(picture of US map)
There’s so much more to come and we can’t wait to share with you. Stay tuned for the rest of Rinse’s story!
