GLENDALE, Calif. — The California Cleaners Association (CCA) installed Ray Rangwala as its new president during the 2024 Drycleaning & Laundry Expo West, succeeding Past President Toran Brown.
Rangwala has had a long career in the drycleaning industry, and is currently principal of Esteem Cleaners here in Glendale. He has also been a member of the CCA and the SoCal Cleaners Association for the past two decades.
In Part 1 of this interview, we discussed Rangwala’s background, his charity work in his community, and his thoughts on being CCA president. Today, we conclude by focusing on the issues he believes are vital to both the CCA and the industry as a whole.
ADC: In your view, what are some of the biggest challenges currently facing the drycleaning industry on a national level, and then on your local level?
RR: On a national level, I believe there are too many vendors and too many equipment suppliers for the market that’s going to be left for us as dry cleaners, because competition is intense.
The customers are also changing. The younger customers are not into wearing nicer clothes yet. So, it’s our job to show the next generation why our industry is valuable. They seem to just want wash and fold, which does not pay the bills if our minimum wages are $20 an hour. At a low price point, we cannot turn it around fast enough, and the customers are not happy.
Most of the dry cleaners I know are offering pickup and delivery, but now with Uber, DoorDash and other services, the customers are willing to pay X amount of money for Del Taco or McDonald’s. If those services are having such high usage, why are we giving it away for free? There’s more for us to learn from other industries.
ADC: What emerging technologies or trends do you think will shape the industry’s future?
RR: As far as emerging trends, I think the biggest one is consolidation. We’re going back toward more central plants and hub-and-spoke systems, where you have one huge place with a bunch of equipment, and then trucks that are going back and forth servicing those remote locations. I think it’s going that way, at least in cities like LA where the rents are so high, and the landlords are worried about environmental issues as well. It’s tough to get full processing plants and have them at only 30% to 50% of usage capacity. It’s a tough industry.
Look at the printing business, for example. It’s got high-cost equipment, but people are running it on a second-shift or third-shift basis to see ROI. Maybe, as an industry, we need to start looking at additional shifts, rather than more locations, where you can use the machines that you already have.
ADC: What advice would you give to someone just starting out in the drycleaning industry today?
RR: My biggest advice is if the kid buys the business from their father, don’t learn the bad habits of your father. Learn the best way to do it, which is by joining an association. Learn how to do it by learning from the best. Mentors are important, and many will teach someone how to do it if they know that person has a zeal to learn.
Second, go to association meetings. The people who are there are the cream of the crop of our industry. They want to help you. They want to help each other and their competitors — you will need them when your boiler or a drycleaning machine dies. So, it’s good to have contacts in your industry when you need to say, “Hey, I need help for X number of days.” Associations are important for that.
In the drycleaning industry, some people are second- or third-generation dry cleaners, but then there are some of us who are brand-new dry cleaners, who are immigrants from different countries who bought a part of the American dream and believe that dry cleaning is a way to get there. If nobody’s taught you anything, if every single thing you’ve learned is by picking it up as you go along, it’s difficult. Learn from the best. Learn from the people who are going places. It’s the company you keep — the best advice will be given by the friend of yours who’s been to your store, rather than an equipment guy who’s trying to sell you a tractor when all you need is a pickup truck.
ADC: When you step down from your CCA post at the end of your term, what do you want to have accomplished?
RR: That there are more successful cleaners who are competing with each other — and not by giving coupons. Coupon usage has already gone down. Dry cleaners are doing more targeted marketing.
By the end of my term, I also hope that we’ll have more members so that we can pass information on to each other.
Immigrants and other dry cleaners who bought their business years ago and are now trying to sell that business today cannot unless they are on solid financial ground, making money. There’s a lot of shakeout happening, and that’s going to happen down the line. I’m hoping that people who came to America for a dream are able to continue to live that dream by selling the business to somebody else, and have the business succeed in the long run.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
