If you’re anything like us, you tend to procrastinate the household chores until it becomes too unbearably dirty or until a strange scent starts wafting through your pad. And while there are other home management solutions out there such as Helpling and Honestbee, which does cleaning and grocery shopping respectively, there is no one-stop-fits-all solution. Until now, that is. Butler In Suits is the brainchild of Poon Da Qian and purports to do everything from grocery shopping and cleaning your house to picking up your mail.
Poon is a serial entrepreneur. At 15, he helped his mum to manage the F&B business that his dad left behind after passing away, and expanded it to 10 outlets and 40 employees. He started a cafe that expanded to three outlets in two years that ended after he was conscripted into National Service. Even while he was serving, he started a luxury hotel review website that covered over 200 luxury hotels in Asia.
Butler In Suits started when Poon was searching “through the laundry basket for a pair of socks and a shirt that still had to be ironed”. It was then that he had this eureka moment. “What if I could have someone do all these for me automatically and professionally? What if, instead of managing my home for an entire day, I could spend this time doing the things I wanted instead?” Poon recalled.
And if you’re worried about leaving your home in the care of a stranger, Poon reassures us that every butler is thoroughly vetted and every subscriber will receive a $1 million insurance for their house in the event of damages or anything else untoward that arises.
We sit down with Poon to find out more about Butler In Suits.
What are the pain points that you discovered while researching this idea and how does Butler In Suits solve them?
From our research, we found out that on average, singles and married couples in Singapore spend at least eight hours every week managing their homes and completing chores like laundry, groceries, and cleaning. Butler In Suits helps our subscribers save more than 14 hours every week. We achieve this by combining human expertise with technology.
Our in-house trained home managers are assigned to weekly home visits, while time-consuming tasks like laundry and groceries are automated by our backend systems. We also install robot vacuums in our subscribers’ homes, which operate for at least an hour daily. Through these processes, we are able to optimise and automate the home management process for our subscribers.
How is Butler In Suits different from the other grocery + cleaning services out there already in the market?
Butler In Suits is the only comprehensive home management subscription service in Singapore. We fully automate the process of cleaning, grocery, and laundry, making it hassle-free for our subscribers, allowing them to spend more time doing the things they love.
Other services, on the other hand, will require you to go through a lengthy process to get your laundry or grocery shopping done. For example, you will have to log in, choose what you want, add to cart, place the order, schedule, and wait for your items to be delivered. All this could add up to an unnecessarily large amount of time – considering that you would have to do this multiple times each month.
Okay, what’s the one-minute pitch?
We are currently servicing Singapore island wide. Our service usually appeals to professionals seeking a better lifestyle. With Butler In Suits managing their homes, they can now spend their free time doing the things they want. They will also return back to a home that’s been made up for them with everything stocked and cleaned, and all laundries done and pressed.
What are the plans you have? What does the customer get?
We have three plans for different sizes of homes.
1. The $240/month plan comes with one visit every week for one- to three-bedroom apartments.
2. The $440/month plan comes with two visits every week for three- to five-bedroom apartments.
3. The $600/month plan comes with three visits every week for apartments with five rooms and above.
On average, each visit will be around one to 1.5 hours. As a progressive service, we are able to deliver time savings via the combination of robot vacuums, professional home managers, as well as powerful backend processes that are able to seamlessly handle the laundry and grocery demands of our subscribers.
You’re not wearing a suit.
When I initially started Butler In Suits in 2016, I actually wanted to have our home managers visit our customers’ homes wearing suits, hence the name Butler In Suits. However, that didn’t go well with Singapore’s hot and humid weather! (laughs)
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