Amy Martinez-Monfort's Tampa Laundry Company disrupts an archaic industry
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 26, 2024

Amy Martinez-Monfort has spent nine years disrupting what many considered an archaic industry and successfully brought it into the 21st century.

Born and raised in Brooksville, Tampa was always in Martinez-Monfort’s backyard. She worked as a lawyer at Carlton Fields for roughly four years and then moved on to a sales and marketing position — and later a management role — for a pharmaceutical company, where she stayed for 14 years.

While on a sabbatical, she began to follow her entrepreneurial spirit. In 2015, Tampa Laundry Co. was born.

As a resident of South Tampa since 1999, she knew she wanted the business to be near her home so she could quickly address any needs that arose. She opened a roughly 3,000-square-foot facility on Gandy Boulevard. and, in the short span of nine years, established contracts with major local operators, including MacDill Air Force Base, The Ritz-Carlton Residences Tampa, CAMP Tampa, Stovall House and Tampa Yacht and Country Club.

She recently chaired the CEO Council of Tampa Bay and has worked with several philanthropic causes, including the STAR Foundation, which helps operators retiring from MacDill Air Force to transition into the workforce, and Tennis on the Green, which benefits the Children's Cancer Center.

Martinez-Monfort spoke with the Tampa Bay Business Journal about the growth of her company and Tampa Bay. Her responses have been edited for brevity.

What made you want to open a laundry company? The laundry industry seemed archaic and ripe for disruption. It’s a service many people need and use, but it hasn’t evolved to meet modern demands.

I feel so privileged to be a part of this industry. We serve people who have $5 in their pockets and come in to do their weekly load of laundry and people who have $50,000 in the bank and want to use our wash, dry and fold services or who own a business and want us to provide those services. We serve the entire community of Tampa and that’s something we don’t take for granted.

You talk about disrupting the laundry industry; what did you do to make TLC stand out? When I was getting started, the distributors we worked with said we didn’t need to worry about branding; all we needed to do was buy new equipment, and people would come. I told them they must not know South Tampa.

We worked with ACME Brand Studio in Winter Park and developed something people would be proud of. Our building had bulletholes in the windows when we bought it and we just knew the community deserved better than that.

Our brand has really allowed us to plant our flag in Tampa. We made sure that we were able to handle as many different elements of the business as possible instead of just operating in a silo and only doing one thing.

You beat out some much larger companies for the MacDill Air Force contract. How did you prepare for taking that step? I’d never submitted a bid for a government contract, so I had to teach myself how to do that. I fully expected that we wouldn’t get it, and I planned to go in after and ask what I could have done differently so we could learn from the experience. I have the motto, "No, today doesn’t mean no tomorrow.” That’s something I learned in sales, and I apply it often.

But we weren't turned down. They came for a site visit, and then — after asking several questions — they let us know we were awarded the contract. It was really a proof of concept for us, and to this day, we still work with MacDill. That gave us the confidence to pursue so many other things; it confirmed that we could do this.

What do you see on the horizon for your company in the next five to 10 years? So far, our growth has been really organic. I definitely see expansion in our future. As part of our rebrand, we’ll remain the Tampa Laundry Co. in Tampa but will be The Laundry Co. as we expand outside of Tampa to other counties and across the state. I also see growth in our wash, dry and fold services and commercial services throughout the state. I get three to five requests a day for those services. Considering we've never had a salesperson, it’s incredible to think about how much we’ve grown.

How has the city — and your business — evolved over the past few years? We’ve seen a lot of people from the northeast move to Tampa since the pandemic. With the pandemic, many people got used to having things delivered to their door, so the demand for our delivery services has really grown. As Tampa continues to grow, so many people are working from home, but they either don’t have the time or don’t want to spend the time doing their own laundry.

As the area has changed, so have our customers. Our self-service has decreased, but our wash, dry and fold and commercial services have increased. I tell clients that we’re big enough to handle all of their needs and small enough to care. Many times, as companies get larger, they don’t have the bandwidth to care, and little things go by the wayside. We refuse to let that happen.

What advice do you have for someone wanting to start their own business? In many industries, there is often a high barrier to entry, but in most cases, that means that there are going to be fewer players within that industry. It’s very important to vet everything about your business. Look at it from every angle and find a “no-man or no-woman” to poke holes in your ideas. Then, at some point, you have to bet on yourself and you have to take that leap.

Up close

Name/title: Amy Martinez-Monfort, CEO and founder, Tampa Laundry Co.

Education: Bachelor's in communication and media studies, Florida State University; JD law, University of Florida

Favorite place to spend an evening in Tampa: She loves going to the Columbia and ordering half a Cuban sandwich, the 1905 salad and the bread pudding.

Motto for life: Different doesn’t mean wrong, it just means different.

Currently reading: "Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara

People would be surprised to know: She’s never had a cup of coffee, and while she is now 5’11”, she was only 5’2” until her senior year of high school.