Radical transparency
You see the quote before we charge a thing. Every item, every line. If we have to estimate, we say so out loud.
It's not just the washing. It's the planning, the folding, the running to the dry cleaner before they close. We thought there should be a better way.
Policote was built out of a simple frustration: nobody we knew had time for laundry, and nobody we knew was happy with the alternatives.
Drop-off services treat your clothes like a number. Subscription boxes lock you in. App-based “uber for laundry” services felt impersonal — and we were never sure who was actually washing our shirts.
So we started Policote in Winnipeg with a small team, a few hand-picked cleaning partners, and a single rule: the customer approves the quote before we charge a thing. Everything else — the live tracking, the 30-minute heads-up, the 48-hour turnaround — followed from that one principle.
Today we’re picking up thousands of orders a month. We’re still small enough that the team reads every support email and answers every form. We want to keep it that way for as long as we can.
Six things we keep coming back to when we're deciding what to build, what to charge, and who to hire.
You see the quote before we charge a thing. Every item, every line. If we have to estimate, we say so out loud.
2-hour windows, 30-minute heads-ups, 48-hour turnarounds. We treat your calendar like it's our own.
We vet every cleaning partner ourselves. Every item is photographed at intake. Every order earns the right to your trust.
We work with cleaners who live here, drivers who know the streets, and partners who care about the city as much as we do.
The app does what an app should: book, track, approve, repeat. No dark patterns. No upsell bombs. No "are you sure?" pop-ups.
No lock-in contracts. No bait-and-switch pricing. The only way to keep customers is to be worth keeping.