CHICAGO — While the everyday challenges of operating a drycleaning company can test the patience of owners, sudden changes in consumer demand and market forces can test the very foundations of their businesses and livelihoods.
In Part 1 of this series, we examined how successful operators are able to navigate their drycleaning companies through difficult times. In Part 2, we looked at ways these leaders prepare their companies and their employees for the unexpected.
Today, we’ll conclude by exploring the necessity of communicating well with customers and how adaptation can be a crucial part of navigating uncertain times.
Customer Communication and Loyalty
Building and maintaining customer loyalty during disruptions requires well-thought-out communication strategies.
Tom Zengeler, president of Zengeler Cleaners in Northbrook, Illinois, believes that his focus on employee retention directly impacts customer relationships.
“If customers constantly see different people when they come into the store, especially when they want something done a particular way and have to explain it again and again, that can snowball on you,” he says.
Interacting with customers on a consistent basis helps to instill a sense of loyalty in them, says Toran Brown, owner of Rytina Fine Cleaners & Launderers in Sacramento, California, and that became apparent to him during the pandemic.
“That really involved personal outreach from us as owners, usually via email, just letting people know what was going on, or at least where we were and what we were doing,” he says. “As we transitioned back into some normality, we still periodically let people know, ‘Here’s what you can come to expect. Here is what we’re doing, and here’s how we can help.’”
For Jan’s Professional Dry Cleaners in Clio, Michigan, customer service remains paramount in its core values, and using secret shopper services is a major part of the endeavor.
“We started to use a company that does actual quality-control testing,” says Nick Nelson, a member of the Jan’s Professional Dry Cleaners management team. “They do random phone calls to the front counter to ask random questions just to see how the person behaves. They give a score based on how courteous they were. We then use those reports to help train and teach the front counter what the expectations are.”
Adapting Services and Operations
Sometimes, letting go of traditional practices can unexpectedly benefit a business beyond simple reductions in overhead.
“We ran a traditional route service where we served the majority of customers twice a week,” Zengeler says. “We changed that to an on-demand model, where we sent a text message to them the night before asking if they wanted us to stop. Going on-demand allowed us to operate the same volume with our routes with fewer route drivers and gave the customers the same service that they always had. We operated more efficiently because we had fewer vehicles on the road and fewer drivers.”
Also, reducing the number of production facilities has proven to be the more optimal setup for Zengeler’s business.
“We’ve found it even more manageable operating two versus four,” he says, “and my team liked it. We still have our two that we shut down — they’re still ready to go. But we retooled the two that we’re operating to the point that, if one of the production facilities went down, we could do all the work in the other production facility. Pre-COVID, we would never have been able to do that.”
While Jan’s Professional Dry Cleaners doesn’t want to discontinue any service, Nelson believes it needs to be agile enough to lean into the services in demand, along with new offerings.
“We really try not to quit doing anything,” he says, “but there are some things where we would now contract out more than what we used to, such as leather work, to help with the workload. But we really haven’t subtracted because we’re always trying to grow. We’re always trying to see where we could add more services, to help our customers and to increase our income as well. Things morph and change, but they didn’t really go away.”
For Brown, one of the most significant challenges on the horizon for Rytina Fine Cleaners involves dealing with changing customer demands.
“My greatest concern is how we continue to grow our business in a changing consumer environment,” he says. “Consumer trends worry me probably more than anything else does. We can deal with the economy, we can deal with regulations, but ultimately, we have to serve our customers in the way they want to be served.”
Stronger Together
One way individual dry cleaners can survive an increasingly difficult marketplace is to come together and share ideas. By gathering, cleaners can learn from the experience of others when it comes to uncertain times and determine how best to guide their businesses forward.
“I have strong relationships with industry groups,” Zengeler says. “I think being involved in supportive industry groups helps one another, to learn what ways we can better operate more efficiently, to be more knowledgeable and to have an ear to the ground to hear what’s going on throughout the industry and throughout the business community. My involvement with industry groups has helped me so much over the years. I continue to cherish those relationships and stay involved with them.”
“I’ve always belonged to cost groups and associations,” says Jan Barlow, who owns Jan’s Professional Dry Cleaners. “I find that belonging to those groups is a way to keep myself focused and on track. They’ve been my accountability partners.”
Brown has also found industry organizations invaluable, having been a part of groups such as Methods for Management (MfM) and America’s Best Cleaners (ABC) for many years.
“These environments are safe spaces in which people can say, ‘Here are the mistakes I made, here are the things I wish I would have done,’” he says. “I think, at the end of the day, our industry is stronger together than it is individually.”
To get the most out of such groups, it’s important to go in with the correct mindset, Brown believes.
“In the past, there’s been some concern where, ‘Well, I don’t want people to know what I’m doing. I don’t want people in my plant. I’m not comfortable sharing what I consider to be secrets,’” he says. “But the truth of the matter is that if we’re going to survive difficult times, we’re going to do it all together.”
For Part 1 of this series, click HERE. For Part 2, click HERE.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
