A 23-Year-Old Dropped Out in Her Fourth Year to Buy a 'Boring' Laundromat With Her Savings: Letters Delivered by E-Vespa, Under C$100,000, Paid Back in 18 Months

Process

When most people in their twenties think about starting a business, they think of an app, a brand, or a company that looks cool.

Vancouver's Maureen Ngo went the other way. She left the University of British Columbia in her fourth year and bought a neighbourhood laundromat. As The Globe and Mail put it, she's well aware it's not a very sexy business; in fact, she bought it because it's boring.

Asked what she would do differently, she had one answer: "I would have bought the laundromat way faster."

Stage 1: An Extremely Frugal Family

Maureen grew up in East Vancouver. She calls her mother "the most frugal person I know": the first question about anything was always "How much is it?" The family almost never ate out; her mother would say a restaurant wasn't very good, then go home and cook the same thing for a whole family, a feast for $20 that "feeds like a family of six for two days." Her father went to school in Germany because of the Vietnam War and later immigrated to Canada. With three kids and basically a single income, money was tight.

Seeing how the household was controlled by whoever earned the money, she decided at 12 or 13: don't depend on a partner; make your own money.

But she was too young to work legally. So she went through her closet, posted her old clothes on a separate Instagram account at $5 each, and took the SkyTrain to Metrotown to sell them in person. When the clothes ran out, she bought tubes of henna at little Indian shops near her house and sat in front of Yogen Früz doing designs, $5 for small, $10 for big.

Once she could get a job, she worked through high school and university. By the time she finished high school, she had saved roughly C$30,000 to C$50,000; at 18 she traveled for four months and spent $12,000.

Stage 2: A Swim School That Traded Time for Money

At UBC she studied dietetics, aiming to become a sports dietitian because she competed in Olympic weightlifting. It was a six-year program.

Then the pandemic closed the pools. As a junior lifeguard, she wasn't called back to work for a while. Rather than sit idle, she started teaching kids to swim in condo pools in downtown Vancouver. Word of mouth grew it, "literally no ad spend for like three years," into a swim school that now has 8 to 10 instructors.

But the swim school had a catch: if she didn't teach, there was no income. "I didn't take vacation for seven years," she said, "because I just didn't want to have no income." She wanted a second business, one that could run without her being there.

By her fourth year, she had also lost her passion for dietetics. She tried pivoting to business and sat in on an intro economics class, next to a 40-year-old classmate. About three weeks in, she asked herself: what am I doing here? "There's only three months left of me getting this degree," but "I'm just really wasting my time for a piece of paper." She dropped out.

Stage 3: Delivering Letters by E-Vespa

On YouTube she found Codie Sanchez, an influencer who promotes "boring businesses" such as laundromats, car washes, self-storage and vending machines as a path to financial freedom. Maureen decided to try it and see "if the internet is true."

She found a podcast entirely about laundromats and listened to three episodes a day. According to The Globe and Mail, she spent about eight months researching the industry. Then she made a spreadsheet of every laundromat in Vancouver, wrote a very generic letter, printed it, put it in envelopes and rode around on her electric Vespa, handing it to whoever was working or sticking it in the door if they were closed. She delivered more than 20.

One store was closed, so she slipped the letter in the door. A week or two later, while she was walking her dog, her phone rang: "Yeah, so I'm the owner. You want to buy my laundry?"

The deal was done completely privately, with no lawyer and no broker. She said she learned that from Codie and the podcast: cut out the middlemen and you save a lot. The only person she consulted was a laundry equipment technician with about 20 years in the industry. She asked him: the machines are from the 1990s, this is the location, is this a good deal? He said: "Yeah, that's a good deal."

In 2023, at 23, she bought the store. According to The Globe and Mail, the price was under C$100,000, and she used her savings. "People on the internet, they're like, 'How did you get the loan? How did you qualify?'" she said. "I didn't qualify. I just paid for it."

Stage 4: $2 an Hour

The store had an unusual history. The previous owner's father opened it in the 1990s, seven days a week. When it was passed down to the son, the hours kept shrinking until it was open only Friday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to noon, sometimes closing at 11, sometimes not opening at all, with no sign. The family owned the unit, so there was no rent to cover and little drive to run it well. The regulars had been driven away.

The good news was that the machines were well maintained. As she told Fabricare Canada, the Dexter equipment was 25 years old, but because the last years were slow, it had seen less use.

In the first months, she almost went home crying every day. "It was 100% doubt." She would sit at the front desk watching people walk past, thinking, "Come in. I'm not scary." Sometimes someone came in to dry for 30 minutes and paid $2: "I'd make like $2 on the hour." She called her boyfriend, now her fiancé: "This is a flop. I shouldn't have done this. The internet's lying to me."

She tried to make the store look busy. For a few months, she brought her own laundry, washed and folded it at the counter, and pretended it was a drop-off order, telling customers who walked in: "I just got this drop-off order. You should try it."

To save money, she hired just one staff member, and soon cut her from full-time to once a week because full-time was too expensive. She herself worked 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday to Friday, taught swimming from 4 to 8, and her parents covered the evening shifts and some weekends for free.

Stage 5: The First Commercial Client

Her first move was letting the neighbourhood know the store was open again: seven days a week, closing later than the competitor down the street, with a big banner announcing it.

The turning point was a phone call. A month or two after opening, a commercial client called on their own and asked if she could do their laundry. She said yes, didn't haggle, did a good job, and they still work together today.

From then on, she focused on commercial clients: physio clinics, massage clinics and spas, which go through piles of linens, plus hair salons, restaurants, and sauna and cold-plunge studios. According to Fabricare Canada, commercial laundry is now about 45% of revenue, self-serve about 35%, wash-and-fold about 15% and dry-cleaning drop-off about 5%. She says laundromat profit margins usually run 20% to 30%, and hers is near the top because of all the commercial work.

She changed plenty of details too. The biggest machine used to take 38 quarters, "your fingers actually hurt," and staff wasted time feeding coins. Now one quarter starts the machine, customers pay the rest at the counter by card or cash, and they even get their quarter back. The store's style is playful: "Let's get ready to tumble" on the wall, "Drop your pants here" at the drop-off booth, and a bowl of water for dogs at the door called the "Doggy Cafe." A sign notes it was voted one of Vancouver's top five laundromats.

In September 2024, East Van Laundry became the only Vancouver partner of the Free Laundry Access Program, offering free laundry to low-income families on the first Thursday of every month.

Stage 6: Paid Back in 18 Months, Eyeing a Second Store

According to The Globe and Mail in May 2025, she had made back her investment in 18 months.

By July 2026, the store was nearing three years. "We're so busy now," she said; people line up for the big machines, and the space is too small. The laundromat has four laundry attendants and two drivers, and her now-retired father does the maintenance: "he walks around as though he's the owner as well." She also has a virtual assistant. Lint is cleaned daily and the machines get a deep clean monthly; something breaks about every three weeks, and they fix it themselves 90% of the time. She'll replace machines, she says, "when I can't buy parts."

She plans to acquire a second laundromat before the end of 2026.

She has three criteria for a business: recurring customers, not seasonal, and recession- and COVID-proof. Her definition of success: "being happy and being in control of your time."

She isn't alone. A 2023 report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business found that 76% of business owners plan to exit within the next decade, representing more than C$2 trillion in business assets. More and more young people like her are taking over these "boring" businesses from retiring baby boomers.

Thinking

1. Buying a business can be less risky than starting one. A laundromat with equipment, a location and past customers skips the hardest part of starting from zero. Maureen's store had an extra opportunity: the previous owner barely opened, so weak sales came from neglect, not from location or demand.

2. Finding a seller takes legwork. She skipped brokers, listed every laundromat in the city and delivered letters door to door. More than 20 letters produced one call, and one was enough. Many small owners nearing retirement never list their businesses online.

3. Cash flow comes from the extra work you're willing to do. Self-serve is the base. What really made the store profitable were wash-and-fold and commercial laundry, services that need staff but carry higher margins. She turned the store from waiting for customers into going out to find them.

4. You need to survive the slump, and have a fallback. She made it through months with almost no revenue because she used savings rather than a loan, so there were no repayments; the swim school still brought in income; and her parents covered shifts, saving on labour.

5. Listen to influencers, but verify for yourself. She credits Codie Sanchez with getting her interested in laundromats, but her mindset was "let's see if the internet is true." In the early months, she felt "the internet's lying to me." What actually turned the business around were the commercial clients she found herself.

Action

1. Start by looking at the "boring" businesses around you. Laundromats, car washes, vending machines and self-storage have steady demand and repeat customers. List the ones in your city and observe their hours, traffic and equipment.

2. Spend a few months learning the industry. Like Maureen, find an industry podcast, read up and talk to people in the business to understand the key numbers: margins, equipment life and repair costs.

3. Contact owners directly. Write a simple, sincere letter saying you'd like to take over their business, and deliver it in person. Many owners close to retirement have no plans to list, but are open to talking.

4. Get an experienced person to check the deal. You may not need a lawyer and a broker, but find someone with years in the industry to judge the equipment and whether the price is fair.

5. After buying, find the wasted potential first. Are the hours long enough? Are there add-ons like wash-and-fold, pickup and delivery, or commercial clients? Many old businesses don't lack demand; they lack attention.

6. Start with savings rather than debt, and keep a fallback. If you can, buy a small business with your own money while keeping another income source, so you have time to get through the slow start.