WS Chronicle

Starting a new business can be a scary endeavor. For Beverly Davis, starting Triad Mobile Laundry (TML) wasn’t scary, it was just the next step in her quest to build her own personal empire for herself and her children.

Davis, a Winston-Salem native, launched TML on June, 1 of 2021. She researched and planned for over six months to put all of her ducks in a row to start the business. She also owns a boutique, so being a business owner is not new to her.  

“I wanted to be able to service my community in a way that would benefit them and not just benefit myself and my family,” said Davis about why she chose to start TML. That’s when I thought of laundry, because that’s a small task, but it takes so much time to complete and it’s something that rotates on a day-to-day basis.  

“You are never really done with it, so it just consumes so much of your time. I was like, laundry is a good idea and maybe I could give time back to my community.”

It was the goal for Davis to start a service-oriented business. The only problem is she has an introverted personality, so getting out and meeting new people is not something she is totally comfortable doing. 

“I am completely an introvert and I am still struggling in that area,” she said. “I have yet to really be able to go out and physically introduce my business. So far, it has been through paper advertisements, Facebook, newsletter and things like that. I haven’t worked up the nerve yet to really go out and introduce myself and my baby and put it all out there. That’s a big hold-up for me.”

Davis’ business is a full-service mobile laundry. She picks up the laundry, then she sorts, washes, dries and folds laundry before delivering it back to the customer neatly packaged. Her business also cleans rugs and will soon offer upholstery cleaning.  

With any new business, there are good and bad days and it is no different for Triad Mobile Laundry, Davis says. “The good part is that a lot of my customers came on board before I launched,” she said. “As soon as I launched, I had a few more customers come on board, so that part I was really fortunate with. Growing is the part I am struggling with right now.”

One of the major goals Davis has on her list is to own a building where she can do all of the work for her business in-house.

“Hopefully, I can have my own place soon, so I can do everything in one place,” she says. “I call it my own so I can do the things that I know I want to do. It kind of limits you when you have to use other people’s property. You’re not able to do everything the way that you want to.”

Davis is based out of Winston-Salem, but she covers all areas of the Triad. She has customers as far as McLeansville, along with Greensboro, High Point, Walkertown and other areas.  

A lot of her customers have highlighted the convenience factor as a big draw to TML. Davis says that was one of the reasons she wanted to have a service-oriented business.

“I did want to be viewed as a good convenience for households in my community,” she went on to say.  

Being an entrepreneur was not on Davis’ radar initially. She has always had a passion for helping others through healthcare, but as she got older, the independence of being your own boss was very attractive to her.

“It wasn’t in my plans and I never thought of it,” she says about being a business owner earlier in life. “I was truly and deeply into healthcare. I wanted to be a physical therapy assistant, so that was my main goal.  

“But I did want to be able to have more freedom as I got older. Working for someone else, they control so much of your life and you don’t even realize it. I just wanted more freedom for my kids. I always tell people that you should have a supplemental income and it doesn’t have to be a business, but it could be a hobby.”

It was intentional for Davis to have a business that was not already saturated with a lot of competing businesses. She says that was a part of the process when she was in the planning phase of starting her business.

“I began to preach to my kids that I did want to become wealthy enough to be able to have something set up for my kids and my grandkids, so what I was thinking is that I wanted to have something in every aspect of income,” she stated. “I wanted to have a service business, I wanted to offer a product, I also wanted to have a storefront one day, a rental company, and the list goes on and on.

“I don’t know if I will reach every goal, but God willing, he will give me the will to do so. We have such an overload of people opening cleaning services, so I didn’t want to do what everybody else is doing. I know people say you shouldn’t see it that way, but I did want to have something unique, because I didn’t want to have so much competition in the area. I knew that was going to be something that set me apart.”

As a Black woman, Davis takes pride in being a business owner and someone for younger Black females to look up to. She says she has a great team that supports her at every turn and doesn’t want anyone to think she does this all on her own.  

Davis would like to continue to grow her business so that she is able to employ people from the community and create employment opportunities for those in need. She also wants to expand the business to Virginia and Texas as well.  

“I do want to be a part of the class of people that’s actually supplying jobs for the community,” she says about her future goals.

To contact Triad Mobile Laundry, please call 336-422-6347 or visit www.triadmobilelaundry.com.