UAE’s Washmen Named World’s Best Large-Scale Laundry Business at CINET Global Best Practices Awards 2026
(MENAFN- Soul Communications) Dubai, UAE, November 2026: Washmen, the UAE’s homegrown app-based laundry and garment care service, has been named the best large-scale retail laundry business in the world. The company won the Overall Award in the Retail Textile Cleaning (BIG) category at the CINET Global Best Practices Awards (GBPA) 2026, held on 23 October in Milan.
CINET (Comité International de l’Entretien du Textile) is a global trade association for the professional textile care industry, representing some 100 organisations, 300 liaisons and a global network of more than 50,000 industry experts. The annual GBPA awards assess businesses on their overall performance, alongside sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship and national excellence. Washmen achieved the highest scores across these areas, securing the Overall Award in the Retail Textile Cleaning (BIG) category at the 2026 edition. Washmen finished ahead of finalists from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, France, Malaysia, India and Nigeria in its category. It was the only Middle Eastern business among this year's Overall Award winners and also received the UAE Country Award, given to the highest-scoring company from each participating country.
What Set Washmen Apart
Washmen's global recognition reflects its performance across every part of the business, from cleaning quality and team development to sustainability and innovation. Key initiatives and achievements include:
●Quality at scale: Processing around 25,000 items every day, with a 98% stain removal success rate.
●Investment in people: Ongoing, hands-on training, including 34 internal programmes for the customer experience team between February and August 2026, with team members receiving three to five hours of training each week.
●A more sustainable approach: 95% of cleaning capacity carried out using Wet Cleaning and GreenEarth, gentler alternatives to conventional solvents such as PERC.
●A solar-powered facility: A solar-powered, state-of-the-art facility spanning more than 60,000 sq ft.
●Technology and innovation: Integrating AI across every aspect of the business to improve efficiency, service and decision-making. AI now handles damage and missing item claims from the moment they arrive. Missing item claims now close in under a day, down from five, and damage claims in four days, down from six. A new AI-enabled approval flow for shoe care orders lifted average order value by 18.9% within a month of launch. On the customer side, Washmen’s AI agent has resolved more than 12,000 chats, with 91.4% of eligible conversations settled on first contact.
Rami Shaar, co-founder of Washmen, said “It took eleven years for the world to officially recognise Washmen as the best, but we've been operating at this level for at least four years. In 2022, I flew to Milan for the CINET Global Awards, basically the Oscars of laundry, and we won World's Most Innovative Laundry. That award pissed us off because we knew we were the best in the world, not just an innovation gimmick. We built our technology to deliver excellence at a scale and consistency the world hadn't seen before, and today, with AI, we've taken it into another stratosphere.
Along the way, many saw us as just another startup burning through venture capital, when in reality, we were disrupting an industry at a speed they couldn't comprehend. Today, our size, success and this global recognition speak for themselves. I always tell my team that when there's no competition, we compete with ourselves, and every day we build a better version of Washmen. Well done to everyone who made this possible.”
Jad Halaoui, co-founder of Washmen, presented the company’s story to the international audience in Milan. He said: “When we launched Washmen eleven years ago, we saw an opportunity to rethink an industry that hadn't changed much in decades. Mobile was a big part of that shift, allowing us to build a reimagined mode of interaction between people and their laundry service providers. We leaned and continue to rely heavily on customer service for insights on what we need to do better. Our departments coordinate closely every week to eliminate root causes driving negative experiences. From a customer’s point of view, we are only as good as their last order with us and it is our job to work hard and keep earning that trust with every order and interaction. This is a never-ending process and we intend to continue building on our operational advantage to make the customer experience more seamless. Having this approach recognised on a global stage is a proud moment for us, and it pushes us to keep raising the bar.”
Washmen launched in Dubai in 2015 with a simple idea: book laundry through an app and have it collected from your door. Eleven years and 30 million clean items later, it has served more than 200,000 customers and been named the world’s best in its category. Today, the business has a team of more than 500 people, serving doorsteps across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah every day while handling everything in its own 60,000sqft+ facility. Its services cover laundry and dry cleaning, home linens, shoe and bag care, and The Finery, its high-end dry cleaning service. For Washmen, the latest win is a milestone, not a finish line. The company remains focused on pushing its own standards further and being better than it was yesterday.
CINET (Comité International de l’Entretien du Textile) is a global trade association for the professional textile care industry, representing some 100 organisations, 300 liaisons and a global network of more than 50,000 industry experts. The annual GBPA awards assess businesses on their overall performance, alongside sustainability, innovation, entrepreneurship and national excellence. Washmen achieved the highest scores across these areas, securing the Overall Award in the Retail Textile Cleaning (BIG) category at the 2026 edition. Washmen finished ahead of finalists from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, France, Malaysia, India and Nigeria in its category. It was the only Middle Eastern business among this year's Overall Award winners and also received the UAE Country Award, given to the highest-scoring company from each participating country.
What Set Washmen Apart
Washmen's global recognition reflects its performance across every part of the business, from cleaning quality and team development to sustainability and innovation. Key initiatives and achievements include:
●Quality at scale: Processing around 25,000 items every day, with a 98% stain removal success rate.
●Investment in people: Ongoing, hands-on training, including 34 internal programmes for the customer experience team between February and August 2026, with team members receiving three to five hours of training each week.
●A more sustainable approach: 95% of cleaning capacity carried out using Wet Cleaning and GreenEarth, gentler alternatives to conventional solvents such as PERC.
●A solar-powered facility: A solar-powered, state-of-the-art facility spanning more than 60,000 sq ft.
●Technology and innovation: Integrating AI across every aspect of the business to improve efficiency, service and decision-making. AI now handles damage and missing item claims from the moment they arrive. Missing item claims now close in under a day, down from five, and damage claims in four days, down from six. A new AI-enabled approval flow for shoe care orders lifted average order value by 18.9% within a month of launch. On the customer side, Washmen’s AI agent has resolved more than 12,000 chats, with 91.4% of eligible conversations settled on first contact.
Rami Shaar, co-founder of Washmen, said “It took eleven years for the world to officially recognise Washmen as the best, but we've been operating at this level for at least four years. In 2022, I flew to Milan for the CINET Global Awards, basically the Oscars of laundry, and we won World's Most Innovative Laundry. That award pissed us off because we knew we were the best in the world, not just an innovation gimmick. We built our technology to deliver excellence at a scale and consistency the world hadn't seen before, and today, with AI, we've taken it into another stratosphere.
Along the way, many saw us as just another startup burning through venture capital, when in reality, we were disrupting an industry at a speed they couldn't comprehend. Today, our size, success and this global recognition speak for themselves. I always tell my team that when there's no competition, we compete with ourselves, and every day we build a better version of Washmen. Well done to everyone who made this possible.”
Jad Halaoui, co-founder of Washmen, presented the company’s story to the international audience in Milan. He said: “When we launched Washmen eleven years ago, we saw an opportunity to rethink an industry that hadn't changed much in decades. Mobile was a big part of that shift, allowing us to build a reimagined mode of interaction between people and their laundry service providers. We leaned and continue to rely heavily on customer service for insights on what we need to do better. Our departments coordinate closely every week to eliminate root causes driving negative experiences. From a customer’s point of view, we are only as good as their last order with us and it is our job to work hard and keep earning that trust with every order and interaction. This is a never-ending process and we intend to continue building on our operational advantage to make the customer experience more seamless. Having this approach recognised on a global stage is a proud moment for us, and it pushes us to keep raising the bar.”
Washmen launched in Dubai in 2015 with a simple idea: book laundry through an app and have it collected from your door. Eleven years and 30 million clean items later, it has served more than 200,000 customers and been named the world’s best in its category. Today, the business has a team of more than 500 people, serving doorsteps across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah every day while handling everything in its own 60,000sqft+ facility. Its services cover laundry and dry cleaning, home linens, shoe and bag care, and The Finery, its high-end dry cleaning service. For Washmen, the latest win is a milestone, not a finish line. The company remains focused on pushing its own standards further and being better than it was yesterday.
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