By Riley Kaminer
Let’s face it: no one actually likes doing laundry. Loading and unloading loud, lethargic appliances saps up our time and energy – not to mention the inefficient use of water and electricity. And the worst part? On average, Americans spend two hours a week doing laundry.
Perhaps nobody on planet earth was more vexed by laundry than Nico Ramirez. After attending middle and high school in Miami, Ramirez ventured to Boston for college. While there, his laundry situation was far from ideal.
“My laundry room was four flights down and in another building,” he told Refresh Miami, noting that facing the freezing cold and snow all winter just to do laundry was not exactly a fun experience.
“And that was a good scenario,” Ramirez continued. “The best scenario was that you go back and somebody took your clothes and put them all over the floor because they were impatient.”
That’s when Ramirez got thinking about a better solution. From 2019 to 2021 he brainstormed some ideas sporadically. Then in 2021 Ramirez dropped out of college to pursue his dream of frustration-free laundry full-time.
After having raised $500,000 – $100,000 of which came from Alexis Ohanian’s 776 Climate followership – and assembled a team of three full-time and 5 part-time staff, Ramirez launched hardtech startup Paradigm Evergreen.
The company’s first product, which is set to be released later this year, is called Eeva. The device looks a bit like a mix between R2D2 and a laundry hamper. The idea is that at the end of the day, users drop their dirty clothes in Eeva. About an hour and a half later, the clothes are washed and dried. Users can either connect Eeva to a water source, or dump out and replace the water themselves.
“So laundry goes from something that takes hours to do and involves a lot of manual labor to something that is quick, convenient, efficient, and gets done within a minute a day,” said Ramirez. “That’s about seven to 14 minutes a week versus the hours it takes today. So we’re really reinventing what it means to do laundry.”
People are taking notice. Despite still putting the finishing touches on their product, already 1,500 people have put down deposits to secure the first Eevas. A further 75,000 people have also expressed interest. The Paradigm Evergreen team is currently gearing up for an Indiegogo campaign through which Ramirez hopes they can sell $1 million of Eevas at $799 each.
Ramirez also noted that the team spent a lot of time developing a compact, ergonomic shape while also offering environmental benefits. “Traditional machines use a ridiculous amount of water and energy,” he asserted, explaining that machines rarely differentiate between clothes that have simply been worn one day and those with major stains. “Eeva can save you up to 60% on your water and energy consumption.” Eeva will also show users their environmental impact through an app.
So why haven’t the major laundry players come out with a similar product themselves? “It’s not in their best interests to reinvent a highly profitable industry. This is the job that someone from outside the industry – a startup – has to take on and exponentially innovate on behalf of the industry.”
This spring, Paradigm Evergreen is planning to raise a $3.5 million round to build out the team and accelerate their production processes.
Looking beyond Eeva, Ramirez hopes that Paradigm Evergreen will have a positive impact on their customers’ lives on a daily basis.
“We really want to have an outsized impact not only in laundry but climate change and eventually expand from there and into other industries where we feel there has been a real lack of innovation.”
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