Delivery.com Enters Dry Cleaning Business After Purchasing Brinkmat

Delivery.com, a merchant delivery company, has acquired Brinkmat, a startup that's built an online scheduling and ordering platform for local laundry and dry cleaning businesses, Venture Beats notes.

New York-base start-up Brinkmat is a service that lets people order laundry and dry cleaning services from local dry cleaners. Brinkmat fits well into Delivery.com's expansion beyond just food delivery. Since its launch in 2004, the company has also started delivering groceries, alcohol, and even flowers. Dry cleaning services, then, are just a natural extension of that.

"Based just on our name, there's no reason we can't be doing other things [besides food]," said Delivery.com CEO Jed Kleckner. "The question we ask ourselves is this: What is a category of merchants that is still low-tech, but can be made frictionless by going online?"

This led to Delivery.com's interest in the dry cleaning industry.  There are roughly 22,000 dry cleaning businesses in the US, and the industry represents roughly $8 billion in annual revenue, according to Pell Research. While tiny on a neighborhood scale, dry cleaning is still a pretty significant industry.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Delivery.com did note that Brinkmat founders Tim O'Malley and Jay Winters will be joining the company's tech team.

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