College students are notorious for waiting to do laundry until they are down to their last pair of socks. To help remedy this predicament, Bennett Siegel ’13 and Alexandra Dorda ’13 have taken their own initiative to expand services available to Stanford students.

When Siegel arrived on campus last fall, he was upset to find that, unlike many other universities, there was no laundry or dry-cleaning service on campus. Over this past summer, he started having discussions with Dorda, who also felt the campus could use such a service. The two began brainstorming together and eventually launched Cardinal Clean in the middle of fall quarter.

Siegel and Dorda covered the start-up costs of their company, which seeks to provide Stanford students with an affordable, door-to-door laundry and dry cleaning service, Dorda said.

Customers can sign up online for laundry service or dry cleaning for the quarter or the entire academic year. The laundry service is set at a fixed rate, while the dry cleaning service is based on a deductible points system.

The service provides a laundry bag, which is picked up from a collection bin outside of dorms before 1 p.m. on either Tuesday or Friday and is returned to that bin after 5 p.m. the next service day. Weekly laundry service, which includes washing, drying and folding, costs $549 a year or $199 per quarter.

Before Siegel and Dorda launched Cardinal Clean, they did research to gauge how interested the campus would be in their organization.

“We needed to make sure everything was perfect so that when we started, we would execute it well,” Siegel said.

They sent an e-mail survey to several groups and dorms on campus and received a surprising amount of interest. Of 250 people surveyed, 60 percent reported they would want to use the dry cleaning service, and 25 percent said they would take part in the laundry service.

Along with confirming customer interest, they contacted more than a dozen similar organizations at other universities to gain some insight into the ins and outs of starting a small business.

They contacted most of the laundry services in the area and decided to use the same commercial dry-cleaning organization that does the dry cleaning for many area hotels.

Although funding and generating interest in the idea was relatively easy, Dorda and Siegel soon discovered that starting their own small business was harder to do than it appeared on paper. The number of important details began to pile up quickly. But despite the workload, they remained the only two partners in the endeavor.

“We wanted it to be our own,” Dorda said.

They proceeded to get the word out on campus about their new service by e-mailing lists and posting flyers. However, what they found to be most successful in attracting new customers was word of mouth.

Dorda said that there has been interest so far because “everyone at some point needs dry cleaning done. It is just inevitable.”

Many students who have used the service have been pleased with the process.

“Everything was done very professionally, and it was a very hands-off process for me,” said Casey Finch ’13, who subscribed to Cardinal Clean during fall quarter this year.

Finch also enjoyed the online nature of the service, which she said made her interactions convenient and efficient.

Siegel said he feels optimistic about Cardinal Clean’s performance so far and that “room for growth is unlimited because the campus is so large.”

The duo said it hopes to continue to seriously evaluate feedback from customers and improve the service. According to Siegel, he and Dorda are “always trying to get feedback along the way to make sure that the product that we are providing is top.”