IN THE NEWS

The Shoe Laundry Story

The Shoe Laundry® started well before the founder even realized it himself. Going to a boarding school at the age of 8 years in a red soiled hill station, Panchgani, with crazy monsoon and loving playing football / soccer in the muck, the everyday ritual of washing shoes & socks perfectly before being allowed to go for dinner was the actual beginning of The Shoe Laundry® story. Not wanting to be out done at having the cleanest shoes in the hostel meant scrubbing & cleaning them better than anyone else. A chore became a competition in his head. The public appreciation by the housemaster became the payoff. That didn't change through school, college, NCC & corporate life.

Even after 19 years in business, The Shoe Laundry®, is considered one of the most unique & innovative business ideas anywhere. In June 2003, with determination & conviction in his crazy idea & confidence in his self taught skills to clean & refurbish shoes , Mr. Sandeep Gajakas, single-handedly started The Shoe Laundry® - The World's First Profession Laundry Service Exclusively For Footwear. People had to be convinced that such a service was actually being offered & it wasn't a prank. People of all walks of life were esthetic to have this much needed service now available to them, at their doorstep.

The quality & unbelievable results of service & the transformation of their once filthy shoes created such a buzz that in a world without smartphones or social media back then, the popularity of the service grew like wild fire just through word of mouth. The Shoe Laundry® & its founder have been featured in hundreds of articles in all leading national & regional newspapers, magazines, news channels & radio. Its is also taught as a business case study in most business schools as a fantastic example of out of the box thinking, innovative business ideas & entrepreneurship.

Over the years, The Shoe Laundry® has become a legacy brand name, like the ones that define not just a service but also an industry. An industry that did not exist before our brand came into being & has since become synonymous with excellence in footwear laundry, refurbishing & excellent customer service.

Through 25 years of hard work and R & D, we have developed & perfected a 15 Stages & 120+ steps process to wash, clean & repair shoes like never before. Every single component & area of the shoes is cleaned thoroughly. Every surface, visible or out of sight is cleaned down to every single stitch & weave of the material. Also the laces, insoles, straps & fittings are cleaned perfectly.

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We have come a long way in the last 20 years & today The Shoe Laundry® serves thousands of customers, manages aftersales for hundreds of footwear stores & also does bulk refurbishment for some of the best brands in the world through its network of stores, franchisees, workshops, warehouses & logistics infrastructure. And we are just getting into our next phase of rapid national & international expansion with a new & unique franchise model.