A 1929 laundry business that cleaned circus performers' costumes became Cintas, now a $8-9 billion company. The founder's son scaled it from $180,000 to $1.6 million in eight years, then expanded into uniforms, fire extinguishers, and facility supplies sold on subscription.
In 1929, there's this guy and he starts this company cleaning the rags and uniforms for circus performers, turns that into a business, and he calls it ACME Industrial Laundry. And he kind of scales that up, but not a lot. It's a very small business. By 1960, his son comes into the business and he's like, let's grow this sucker. It's doing $180,000 in revenue, which is something like $2 million today. After 8 years, the business grows to $1.6 million a year, which is the equivalent of like $15 million a year. He's now expanded into laundry company uniforms. Now they've renamed the company to Cintas. It's a $75 billion company. They launder uniforms, but they also supply the uniforms. But then they've expanded. So like if there's a fire extinguisher in the bathroom of a restaurant, it probably has come from them. If there's cleaning supplies, it probably comes from them. They do something like $8 or $9 billion a year in revenue, and it's subscription revenue.
