Millionaire Kogan boss washes t-shirt in hotel bath, slams $20 laundry fee
Kogan’s millionaire founder has been spotted in Paris’ ultra-luxury shopping district offering some money saving tips.
Rich List retail boss Ruslan Kogan has slammed $20 hotel laundry fees as insane and taken to washing his clothes in a hotel bath this week.
On Thursday, Mr Kogan, the founder of discount retailer Kogan.com declared it a waste of money to pay expensive hotel laundry fees and encouraged his followers to use the bath just like him.
“It’s just very quick and easy to get the washing done yourself, rather than pay the insane prices,” Mr Kogan told his followers on X. “I just cannot bring myself to get a $10 t-shirt and pay $20 to have it cleaned.”
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The entrepreneur’s video showed several items of clothing in his hotel bath full of water as he mentored followers with money saving tips.
“This is what it’s very common for my bathtub in the hotel room to look like when I’m travelling,” he said.
“I grew up this way. My parents arrived in Australia with $90 in my pocket, we grew up very frugal and we made every dollar stretch and it’s in my DNA and the DNA of Kogan.com.”
Pizza order gone wrong
Mr Kogan’s frugality seemingly knows some limits after he also posted a LinkedIn video on Thursday where he walks around Paris’ ultra-luxury shopping square, Place Vendome, in a pair of sunglasses by designer French brand Cartier.
The sunglasses retail for around $1500 online - equivalent to 75 hotel laundry items. In response Mr Kogan said he’s happy to pay for excellence and great family experiences over a European summer, which also included trips to the Monaco Grand Prix and a luxury yacht in Croatia.
“The narrative is simple: I’m more than happy to pay for quality, craftsmanship, and great experiences for my family. I am happy to pay for excellence,” he told The Nightly. “I refuse to pay for exploitation. I have a zero-tolerance policy for getting ripped off on basic utilities. Washing a $10 t-shirt is a commodity service. Slapping an insane markup on it isn’t luxury, it’s just a bad deal.”
In the Parisian stroll the entrepreneur again highlighted how he was disappointed in a former Kogan.com employee who ordered 100 pizzas, without seeking to get the best deal across several different delivery stores.
The post created some controversy as some Kogan followers suggested the former employee did little wrong, while others agreed workers should spend a company’s money carefully.
The entrepreneur’s estimated net worth peaked at $500 million in 2020 as shares in his online retailer soared to more than $20 during the pandemic-era lockdowns. Since then Kogan shares have fallen back $4.27 and his 17 per cent stake in the business is worth around $70 million.
“We’re always driving prices down, we’re a discount retailer, we make more profit when our prices are lower. Yes, that sounds counterintuitive, but lower prices drive more volume,” Mr Kogan said on X. “I reckon if hotels halved the price of laundry it would 10x the volume. And they would make way more money.”
On Thursday he told The Nightly the bigger lesson from his videos is to understand that he built Kogan by offering cheap prices to shoppers.
“I think hotels would make a lot more money by lowering the price and massively boosting volume. It’s the ethos that built Kogan - low price, high volume!” he said from Paris.
