From Survival to Growth: Clean Show 2025 Exceeds Expectations (Part 2)

ORLANDO, Fla. — While attendance at Clean Show 2025 signaled an industry ready to invest, the educational programming also served operators who were hungry for knowledge.

From social media strategies to AI applications, drycleaning professionals packed session rooms throughout the late August event. Also, the debut of Innovation Awards — drawing more than double the expected entries — celebrated breakthrough technologies.

In Part 1 of this series, we examined how the show exceeded expectations. Today, we’ll recap some of the educational sessions that drew standing-room-only crowds, and acknowledge the winners of the inaugural Innovation Awards.

Learning Opportunities

Educational sessions drew strong attendance throughout the show, with many filled to capacity as attendees looked for practical knowledge to improve their operations. The Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI) sponsored several key sessions covering topics from customer journey mapping to community engagement.

“The topics we brought were designed to help business owners make the most of the opportunities available to them,” says DLI CEO Mary Scalco.. “Most of the sessions during this year’s show were filled or were close to capacity with attendees looking for tips to move their businesses forward.”

Sessions of particular interest to dry cleaners included:

Attracting the Social Media Generation — Panelists Shaquille Pariag (Clairvoyance), Rechelle Balanzat (Juliette Laundry), Ken Sandy (Dryy Garment Care) and John Rothrock (Yale Cleaners) presented DLI’s Social Media Action Committee initiative, designed to raise the awareness of potential clients to what today’s cleaners can bring to their lives.

Rothrock demonstrated social media’s viral potential, noting Yale Cleaners grew from 10,000 followers to nearly 900,000 with more than 110 million views in 90 days — all from video clips created on a cell phone.

Panelists emphasized simple content works best: starch application, stain removal and wedding dress restoration videos consistently perform well, with viewers commenting, “I didn’t know that’s what dry cleaning was.”

The panelists stressed authentic storytelling and showing the human side of business, as these videos often outperform technical drycleaning content.

The Client Journey — Dave Coyle, owner of In the Bag Cleaners in Wichita, Kansas, and team leader and coach of the Maverick Drycleaners group, presented “The Client Journey,” focusing on how to delight clients and build a self-operating business that generates cash flow.

Coyle emphasized the importance of targeting the top 20% of clients who value time over price, and shifting from transactional relationships to genuine connections where clients feel appreciated, important and included.

The Only Option at Any Price — Glen Gould, speaker, author and drycleaning plant owner at Connections Companies LLC, presented strategies for positioning a drycleaning business as the top choice for customers regardless of price.

He challenged the traditional belief that businesses can excel at only two of three factors — price, quality, service — arguing that companies can deliver all three by meeting customer expectations and targeting the right segment. Gould’s approach centers on authentic community connection and deliberately attracting the right customers rather than trying to serve everyone.

Cleaning for a Cause: Community Impact and Business Growth — Panelists Brian Harrell (A Cleaner World), Kathy Benzinger (Benzinger’s Clothing Care) and Norman Way (Puritan Cleaners) demonstrated how charitable programs strengthen both communities and businesses.

Harrell’s “Give a Kid a Coat” has collected more than 1 million coats since 1987. Benzinger’s “Free Fridays” offers cleaned children’s clothing monthly to families in need. Way emphasized cause marketing should represent “intentional connection to community needs with authentic action,” highlighting programs like free flag cleaning and Puritan’s “100,000 Meals” campaign.

All three advised starting small, partnering with community organizations and involving employees — an approach that builds brand loyalty while making a meaningful impact.

Innovation in Out-of-Home Laundry — Andy Gibson, president and CEO of Tide Services, urged operators to invest in innovation, sharing insights from Tide’s 17-year operation of drycleaning locations and laundromats.

He points out that 66% of guests under 35 prefer app-only interaction, reflecting younger consumers who don’t distinguish between dry cleaning and laundry — they simply want clothes done. Gibson emphasized balancing technology with fundamentals, highlighting innovations from GreenEarth, Union and Sankosha as examples of how investing profits in innovation drives growth.

Generational Fluency — Jessica Stollings-Holder, co-founder at Regenerate, delivered a keynote on understanding the multi-generational workforce. She emphasized viewing generations as “a lens, not a label,” explaining how each grew up in different worlds with distinct communication channels and defining moments shaping workplace behaviors.

She explored generational theory and characteristics of baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Alpha, highlighting how conflicts arise from misunderstanding — like differing definitions of “hard work,” with boomers associating it with time and place while younger generations focus on outcomes.

Her key advice: create “shared pools of meaning” to ensure everyone operates from the same premise.

Economic Outlook: What to Expect in 2025 and Beyond — Chris Kuehl, managing director of Armada Corporate Intelligence, delivered an economic overview covering tariffs, Federal Reserve policy and labor challenges.

He emphasized that manufacturing’s biggest challenge isn’t tariff protection but labor shortages, noting that every baby boomer will reach retirement age by 2030, creating a demographic collapse in the workforce.

Kuehl predicted modest Federal Reserve rate cuts and highlighted strong consumer spending from upper-income earners. He pointed to automation and home robotics as emerging trends, predicting one in three U.S. households will have domestic robots by decade’s end. (You can read our coverage of this session here.)

Unlock the Power of AI to Revolutionize Your Business — Kristina Stubblefield, digital marketing specialist at So In Media Group, demonstrated how AI can transform drycleaning businesses through “pre-baking the oven,” or feeding AI detailed business information upfront for personalized, authentic outputs. Through live ChatGPT demonstrations, she showed the difference between generic responses and pre-baked results incorporating specific services, brand voice and local details.

Recognizing Innovation

For the first time in its history, The Clean Show presented Innovation Awards to honor exceptional developments in textile care technology. The response exceeded the organizer’s expectations.

“We were expecting maybe 30 applications to come in,” says Greg Jira, group show director for show organizer Messe Frankfurt. “We had more than 70. That went over very well. The announcement of the four winners was standing room only. I think we’ll expand on that going forward into Las Vegas.”

Awards were presented in four categories, each highlighting a different aspect of innovation in the industry:

In the Best New Application category, the winner was Laundroworks, Powered by Cents, for its WashLynx Mobile App, which enhances the customer experience in vended laundry operations.
Laundrylux took the Best New Product award for The Tosei by Electrolux Combo Washer/Dryer, a space-saving solution that combines washing and drying in a single unit.
The Best New Technology for Sustainability award went to Ecolab Textile Care for its 3D TRASAR™ Technology for Effluent, which helps operations manage their environmental impact more effectively.
Shanghai Huayuan Electronic (TEX-BIT) won Best New Technology for Automation with its TEX-BIT AI RFID Digital Textile SaaS Platform for automated textile tracking and management.

The competition also recognized several honorable mentions: Zucchetti Centro Sistemi for its Titan 900 Scrubs Dispenser with Ozone Sanitization (New Application), DEMA Engineering Co. for Aurora Plus (New Product), Hybridworks Textile Solutions for its Rotating Hydrolysis Reactor (New Technology for Sustainability), and Continental Laundry Solutions for Sortech, its Automated Sorting Solution (New Technology for Automation).

Come back Tuesday for Part 3 of this series, where we’ll highlight some of the many new product and technology offerings exhibited. For Part 1 of this series, click HERE.