Students at Hamilton College typically have a vast selection of possible courses and majors. One may wonder, however, how Hamilton students succeed in the business world without obtaining a degree in business. Matt Nudell '11 proves that Hamilton prepared him well to launch a business with fellow entrepreneurs.
HillFresh laundry, which was established in August 2011, is a laundry and dry-cleaning service that exists for Hamilton students and faculty. Jeremy Young ’12 developed a plan for the company during his time at Hamilton’s Entrepreneur Club in 2010, and was joined a year later by Geoff Ayers ’11, Faton Begolli ’13, Jack Dunn ’12 and Nudell. This creative and successful team has managed to collaborate their ideas and foster the growth of their own student-run company.
HillFresh, a program similar to those at other colleges, such as Colgate’s “Bizzy Bodies,” has a number of different options for students looking to find some help doing their laundry. The packages range from Silver to Platinum, each with different prices and services. HillFresh also tackles dry cleaning, which is less accessible on campus than the regular laundry services. Unlike some other college laundry services, HillFresh will deliver customers' clean laundry straight to their residence hall room, which cuts out the added step of coming to a drop-off point to pick it up. The founders are also attempting to cut down the time of the service, which would expedite the whole process and make it quick as well as efficient.
Nudell, the vice president and chief marketing officer, explains that HillFresh has already proven to be successful and popular with the Hamilton community. “Just two weeks into our first semester of operations, HillFresh is running smoothly,” Nudell stated. “We have more than 20 customers and a consistent signup rate since we launched our advertising campaign in August.”
Nudell explains that the company’s goal for the end of the year is to “capture and retain roughly 30 customers,” which they believe is an extremely achievable goal by May of 2012. Their expected revenue at the end of the year is approximately $20,000.
It is particularly important that other Hamilton students retain the message that Nudell and his team are sending to the community as the “first student-run for-profit business in Hamilton College’s history.”
“While the founders of HillFresh have borrowed from other business models, our mission is unique: to facilitate future student entrepreneurship at Hamilton College,” Nudell stressed. This company was started and is run by Hamilton students and graduates and funded by their investors, all of whom are Hamilton alumni.
The Entrepreneur Club at Hamilton College, currently led by Jon Piskor ’13, focuses on starting and maintaining one’s own company or invention. HillFresh is not the only major success of the club in the past year and a half; getmytextbooks.com, a non-profit company, was started by the club back in 2010 to give students a range of options in regard to purchasing and selling their books.
Nudell hopes that once the company reaches its financial goals, they will be able to give money back to the Entrepreneur Cub to make more innovations possible. Nudell expressed his hopes that HillFresh will only serve as the beginning of a chain of companies founded by Hamilton students. H eremarked that HillFresh will hopefully inspire other Hamilton entrepreneurs to pursue their goals, no matter how unreachable they may seem.
More about the company can be found at www.hillfreshlaundry.com.
