NEW YORK — The drycleaning process is, to most customers, a black box. Clothes go in. Clothes come out. What happens in between is largely invisible, and that invisibility, Zach Pozniak of Jeeves NY argues, is exactly where trust gets lost.
Pozniak, co-owner of Jeeves NY, the New York drycleaning operation he runs with his father and co-owner Jerry Pozniak, shared his experience of building his company’s social media presence during a recent Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI) Marketing Masterclass webinar.
In Part 1 of this series, we explored the two content categories that anchor Pozniak’s approach: general garment-care education and behind-the-scenes process content. Today, we’ll get into how those ideas translate into practice and where the strategy has real limits.
Opening the Black Box
The behind-the-scenes content that Pozniak calls his bread and butter does something promotional copy can’t: It shows the complexity of what dry cleaners actually do. A heavily oxidized vintage gown being methodically pre-spotted and wet-cleaned over multiple passes. A hemline blackened from an outdoor wedding, gradually restored. These aren’t selling points. They show dry cleaning in action.
“I think just pulling back the curtain a bit more to show what we do is important,” Pozniak says. “I have nothing to hide here. I want to show you how well we did in removing the stain on this Chanel coat. And here’s the before and after — our proof of why this is something you should consider an investment in.”
Equipment walkthroughs have performed particularly well for Pozniak. A shirt buck, a steam tunnel and a nine-foot linen press are ordinary fixtures in any plant but genuinely unfamiliar to the customers dropping off garments at the counter. Pozniak says audiences respond to them with real curiosity.
Before-and-after content works even for operators who don’t want to produce video. A pair of photos showing the garment as received and the garment returned communicates the same basic message with minimal production overhead.
From Hard Sell to Soft Sell
The same principle that drives video content has reshaped how Jeeves NY handles email marketing. The shift was straightforward: Stop leading with promotions and start leading with information.
Memorial Day discounts and service reminders gave way to neighborhood updates, client success stories and seasonal care tips. Before the holidays, the emails go out with guidance on inevitable holiday stains, such as red wine on white tablecloths. The tone, Pozniak says, is intentionally low pressure.
“Instead of shouting at people in our email saying, ‘Use us for this,’ it’s a bit more playful,” he says. “Maybe there’s some education in there. We’re trying to gently enter people’s subconscious and trust so that they want to read our emails because they might learn a thing or two.”
The results, spearheaded largely by Jerry Pozniak, have been significant. Email open rates roughly tripled after the messaging shift, from a range of 15 to 19 percent up to 45 to 50 percent. On Instagram, the move from stock images to informative posts pushed reach from under 1,000 per post to five million.
Those numbers reflect something Pozniak sees as a broader shift in how people respond to business communications.
“I think a lot of people are tired of being sold to directly, and learning a bit of something goes a really long way,” he says, “especially when people are in their free time on social media. They may still take something away, even if it is from a business.”
The Honest Accounting
Pozniak is also straightforward about the downsides of this approach, and those downsides are worth taking seriously before committing the time.
First, the work is real. Filming, editing, posting and managing audience feedback is not trivial, and early on it requires learning tools and workflows that don’t yet feel natural. It gets faster with repetition — Pozniak estimates he’s now four or five times more efficient than when he started five years ago — but the early investment is genuine.
The results can also be slow and hard to measure. Pozniak won’t promise that consistent posting translates to new customers in any trackable timeframe, because he can’t make that promise honestly.
“I think this is more of a two-to-five-year play, if not longer,” he says. “I just don’t want you to have too high of an expectation.”
He’s also direct about the alternative. For some operators, the better return on that same time is simply doing excellent work.
“It may be more worthwhile to focus on doing an amazing job cleaning and word of mouth is your marketing, and that’s amazing.”
Come back Thursday for the conclusion to this series, where we’ll cover the practical side of getting started, how Pozniak thinks about content creation and what he sees coming next for dry cleaners willing to invest in an online presence. For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
