For more than a century, French Hand Laundry and Dry Cleaners of Pasadena, CA, has helped restore, repair and rejuvenate some fairly impressive textiles, some of which have significant historical value and almost all of which have highly sentimental value.
I travel around to different plants and find that most of them are not using the best wetcleaning chemicals for obtaining optimum results. The cleaners usually say that their wetcleaning procedures are OK, but in reality they are not as good as they could be.
Last month, the Federal Care Label Rule avoided being repealed when the Federal Trade Commission voted 5-0 in favor of keeping it during a live broadcasted meeting.
The clothing tag regulation was first established in 1971 as a means to make it unfair or deceptive for manufacturers to sell clothing without providing clear and concise instructions on how to care for garments properly.
Many months have passed since the COVID pandemic first forced shutdowns across the country, but the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute is now ready to reopen its School of Dry Cleaning Technology — a big sign that things might be returning more and more to a semblance of normalcy.
I read a book a few years ago called The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande. Gawande is a surgeon with connections to Harvard and the World Health Organization. He pointed out that checklists are a main reason why flying is so safe and why medical mistakes at hospitals are declining. Personally, I have checklists for many aspects of my personal and professional life. The more routine tasks become, the more you need checklists to make sure you do not, mistakenly, believe you have already performed a critical task. For example, when you close the store at the end of the day, you probably do not want to leave machinery on, fail to set the security alarm, or leave the day’s receipts on the front counter.
Have you ever heard the expression penny wise and dollar foolish? It’s so easy to get caught up in that vortex while in the shirt business. This month, I present to you a few examples.
A long time ago, I stopped scrubbing collars on shirts. My rationale was pretty simple: Why would I want to throw labor at a problem when I was already buying chemicals that I believed should take care of that problem?
With summer upon us your drycleaning machine's cooling system will be under greater stress. It doesn’t matter if you are using a water tower, chiller, or city water for cooling. Conditions that weren’t an issue during the cooler months may become problems as the surrounding (ambient) temperature rises. Most of these hot weather problems will appear during the drying segment of the drycleaning cycle and are caused by faulty cooling.
In May, like so many of us, my wife and I escaped for a very much-needed vacation. The airports were getting back to having people, and the planes were packed. Much to my disappointment, I still could not enjoy my favorite air travel activity — getting a shoe shine. To use my travel time wisely, I took along a book I had not read for a long time. It was the classic, Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. The biggest takeaway from this book is a shift in the mindset about life, income and wealth, or building value. Becoming wealthy may not be your primary goal, but if it is, there is a reasonably predictable way to get rich in America.
The landscape of the industry has changed a lot over the past 15 months, and we need to learn from it, look at what lies ahead, and make a plan to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us.
If you are like me, you are celebrating a return to life as we used to know it. We are going out again, socializing, seeing friends. With this return will come more opportunities for you to grow your business
For almost half a century, American consumers have greatly benefited from the Federal Trade Commission’s Care Labeling Rule, and yet it had been considered as a candidate for the chopping block in recent times. In fact, its existence was threatened last month when the Commission voted on whether or not to repeal the regulation. Fortunately, the vote was unanimously (5-0) in favor of keeping it.
At the age of 11, Allan P. Johnson III managed a full staff for his own paper route. By the time he passed on at the age of 83 this last May, he had become a “peerless” drycleaner in Texas and a leader of the drycleaning industry on a national level.
SPOT Business Systems of Salt Lake City, UT, acquired Fabricare Systems, LLC, an Acworth, Georgia-based provider of the Fabricare Manager software solution for drycleaners.
Richard spent over 50 years working in the drycleaning industry including many years as a consultant in recent times as president of MMA Consultants of Fair Lawn, NJ,, and, previously, as the national sales manager for Hoffman-New Yorker for over 34 years from 1983 to 2017.
Lapels Dry Cleaning, an environmentally friendly drycleaning company headquartered in Hanover, Massachusetts, and its equity partner, Greybull Stewardship, L.P. (“Greybull”), recently announced the acquisition of Martinizing Dry Cleaning, 1-800-DryClean, Pressed4time, Dry Cleaning Station and Bizziebox. Lapels and Greybull have now merged these leading drycleaning companies into Clean Franchise Brands, LLC (“Clean Franchise Brands”), now the largest drycleaning company in the world, with 500+ stores in 40 states and nine countries.
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