Back in 1993, Ablitt's Fine Cleaners of Santa Barbara, CA, was experiencing an influx of growth. It was a stressful time for owner Neil Ablitt, and he had noticed that three of his acquaintances had all passed away within an 18-month period.
As a result, Neil said to his wife, Sue: "I don't care what happens this year. We're sailing out of here in November."
Confident that he had hired the right employees and management (Joe Babine serves as the plant's chief executive who makes all the decisions), Neil and Sue set sail and never looked back. Later in 1994, they upgraded to a larger ship (a 29-foot sloop named Shearwater) and have literally lived on the water ever since.
Of course, they still work hard in the plant every summer so that their management team can take vacations, but Neil believes that it is all well worth it. "The trick is...Joe calls the shots. That's the only way it's going to work," Neil said. "I am more of an idea guy. My job is to be a passive manager."
Ablitt's Fine Cleaners is an unusual company with a diverse staff of over 50 employees that represent more than two dozen countries, states and provinces. Neil believes this wide range of cultural backgrounds and philosophies fuels the business's success.
"We're successful because we like what we're doing and we like one another," he said. "There's a tremendous amount of mutual respect within all levels of the company and I think our customers feel that."
N eil was born in Seattle, WA, and moved to Santa Barbara when he was six. His parents had met while working at his grandfather's drycleaning plant, and they left to start their own after they got married.
However, Neil didn't grow up working around a drycleaning shop -- his parents didn't want him to continue the tradition. "My mother told me that the only reason they were in drycleaning was because my father was an orphan and she did not have a college education. The lowest thing on Earth was cleaning other people's dirty clothes."
Neil had been taught to be ashamed of his parents' occupation, and he even lied about it on a college information card. "I wrote down that they owned a grocery store," he recalled.
"I never realized that they got a new car every year. They had a beach house up north and paid for all of my expenses to go to college," he said. In time, Neil finally realized the truth.
"They loved the business, but they didn't tell me that. I wasn't smart enough to see it," he said. "It's how you look at the business. Are you cleaning people's dirty clothes or are you helping people with their lives?"
Nowadays, Neil feels differently about the industry and is quite proud to give back to the community. "We're pretty lucky. We're pretty happy," he declared. "We like to think that because of that, we try to give back."
Over the years, Ablitt's has supported many organizations, including the Soroptimist Club, Girls, Inc., the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, the Community Environmental Council, the Cancer Foundation and the Heart Foundation, to name a few.
Ablitt's has also provided free laundry service to Storyteller for the past five years. The local non-profit organization provides free day care for low-income mothers.
Before Neil realized that he wanted to be a drycleaner after all, he attended the University of Oregon with long-term plans to work for a big corporation someday. After his first year, Neil dropped out and decided to spend several months hitchhiking his way around Europe and North Africa.
He returned to the University of Oregon the next year with a new-found perspective on international affairs. He met Sue during that time, and, though she did not like him at first, he didn't give up. Now they have been married for over 35 years and have raised two daughters to follow their own paths.
Also during that period of his life, Neil graduated on the Dean's List with a B.A. in Political Science. He then proceeded to earn a M.A. in International Management at Thunderbird, the American Graduate School for International Management in Arizona.
In 1968, he joined Caterpillar, a company he spent the next dozen years or so with, helping to analyze dealers and train salesman. He had believed he would be mostly working on overseas projects, but he spent much of his time in the company's headquarters in Peoria, IL.
Neil just didn't fit in with the corporate atmosphere of strict rules and methods. "I was being somebody I really wasn't," he said, adding, "I like to do things differently. I don't care about method. I care about results."
Instead of being stuck in Peoria, IL, for the next few years, Neil opted to take a big leap into another industry: roller skate manufacturing.
Neil predicted that the roller skating trend was ready to explode because he had seen a growing number of skaters down by the beach in Santa Barbara. He organized a group of companies and soon another venture was underway.
"In a year's time, we sold something like $2 million worth of roller skates in 27 different countries," he recalled.
However, dissension in the company set in and one division bought the others out in an aggressive business maneuver, prompting Neil to leave.
Next up, he dabbled in working with manufacturers of drilling equipment in Mexico. He had sold the company's first machine for $500,000; but shortly after, the Mexican government devalued the peso, causing him to lose a lot of money and grow weary of international dealings.
In the early 1980s, Neil returned to Santa Barbara. His parents had sold their plant but kept the valuable property that it rested upon. The cleaners had exchanged owners many times and the current owner was having trouble with paying rent.
Neil signed on as a consultant for the next six months for the cleaner on the family's property, learning about the industry and becoming fascinated with it. The owner moved the plant, which, ironically, is now a competitor of Ablitt's, and Neil decided to utilize the 12,000 sq. ft. building for a new plant that he would start from scratch. He decided he would be proud of his product, so he opted to use his own name.
Ablitt's got off to a rocky start. Neil was undercapitalized severely because he had spent 18 months visiting over 125 cleaners, associations, manufacturers, etc., and he had depleted his finances.
"We're a learning organization," he emphasized. "We are always looking for new perspectives on business problems."
The market research paid off and the plant attracted many customers when it opened its doors in 1984. "I wasn't selling a clean shirt. I was selling service and it worked," he noted.
Oddly enough, Neil's customers are quite content even though he doesn't believe that the customer always comes first. "The most important person in this industry, as we see it, is our employee. The customer comes second," he said. "But, if we do our employees right, then they'll do the same to the customers."
Neil's philosophy has certainly worked for Ablitt's, which continues to flourish every year. "We are a growth company," he explained. "We've experienced growth for the last twelve years. With only a few exceptions, we have had double digit growth."
In fact, Ablitt's growth had originally created more problems than it solved. "I couldn't believe that success caused a problem financially," Neil remembered. "I thought success solved the problem."
To solve his expansion problems, Neil hired Joe Babine in the early 1990s. Not only did Joe help Neil with some more "prudent financial handling," but they also decided to put computer systems in.
Now that he had somebody eminently qualified to manage the plant, it was only a matter of time before Neil headed out for the open sea. Of course, he is still involved in the business and, though he spends a lot of time traveling, he still manages to find time to talk to drycleaners along the way and keep up with industry news.
He is a member of the California Cleaners Association and Methods for Management. In addition to graduating in the first "Leadership in Santa Barbara" class in 1990, Neil likes to attend meetings for the Santa Barbara City Council, the Parking District and the Chamber of Commerce.
Ablitt's mission statement -- "We want to create value for our employees, for our customers and for our community" -- is something that Neil takes very seriously.
In fact, Neil feels such a strong commitment to his community that he makes a conscious effort to be familiar with all of the technological advancements in the industry. Ablitt's has one of only two vacuum drycleaning machines in the U.S. "Under a vacuum, the perc molecules really take off and you dry faster," he explained.
Neil tracks the progress of all the different solvent technologies because he believes that drycleaners have an ethical responsibility.
"One of my favorite comments I heard on the radio is, 'Solvents are not environmentally unfriendly. People are environmentally unfriendly.'
"If you've got the wrong person in the drycleaning business, I don't care how environmentally friendly you call the solvent they use, they can still be doing damage to the environment," he pointed out. "Every solvent should be treated with respect. Just because a solvent is not regulated doesn't mean you can treat it as though it's environmentally friendly."
Kay M. Villa, president of Kay M. Villa Consulting in Needham, MA, has become chairman of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Committee D13 on Textiles. The 519-member committee develops standards related to textiles, including fibers, yarns and their components, apparel and notions.
Villa, a member of the ASTM board of directors and an active D13 members since 1990, is also a member of ASTM Committee E05 on fire Standards and F23 on Protective Clothing.
The D13 committee is one of 127 technical standards writing committees of ASTM, which is a voluntary standards development organization based in West Conshohocken, PA. The committee will next meet Oct 22-25 at the Omni Rosen in Orlando, FL. More information is available by calling (610) 832-9500 or visiting the organization's web site: www.astm.org.
Villa's consulting firm provides services to retailers, apparel, textile and fiber manufacturers; trade and professional associations; attorneys and testing laboratories.
For the fourth consecutive year, Vulcan Materials Co., the parent company of Vulcan Chemicals, has been named one of the 100 best-managed industrial companies in the world by Industry Week magazine.
In 1999, Vulcan produced record operating cash flow for the fifth consecutive year, record earnings for the sixth consecutive year in the construction materials segment and record sales growth for the seventh consecutive year. Vulcan's sales in 1999 were $2.4 billion.
"It's a great honor for Vulcan to be recognized by Industry Week as one of the world's 100 best-managed companies," said Donald M. James, Vulcan's chairman and chief executive officers. "Credit for this awards goes to our employees who, through their dedication talent, produce the results that make our company worthy of such recognition."
The top 100 companies were chosen from the Industry Week 1000, a list of the world's largest publicly held manufacturing companies based on revenues.
The Korean Cleaners Association of New Jersey held their Seventh Annual Golf Outing in August with the goal of raising enough money to purchase a building for a "Drycleaners Education Center."
The outing was held at Farmstead Golf Club in Lafayette, NJ, with more than 120 golfers, members and supporters from the allied trades participating. An estimated $4,100 was raised, the association said.
Players receiving awards included the following:
Cheunsik Park; medalist; Joonbae Choe and Ms. Jisuk Kim; "Longest" award; Dongjae Shin; "Closest" Award; Bongjo Jang, first place, Team A; Myungjae Lee, first place, Team B; Hyunbae Park, first place, Team C; Ms. Jinhwa Jung, first place, women's team,
Closest Hole in One awards went to Eunghong Rho, Yichang Kwon, first place, (round-trip air fare to Korea); Jeongmok Woo, Ms. Yongja Lee, second place, DVD player; and Heungsik Moon, Daeha Jeon, third place (TV with VCR).
Kleener King Corp., a chain of drycleaning stores in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, recently opened a new 23,000-sq.-ft. drycleaning facility and headquarters in the Bronx Bathgate Industrial Park.
The dedication ceremony honored the memory of José Osvaldo and Carmen Delia Aguiar, the parents of the company's president, José O. Auiar Jr., and the pioneers of Kleener King. They opened their first store in the South Bronx in 1956 with money they had saved and borrowed from family and friends.
The Bathgate facility is part of Kleener King's growth strategy and will serve as a support center for the company's expansion plans which includes at least 40 stores within four years, creating more than 200 jobs for area residents.
The plant was built with $2.6 million of funding by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as a public/private effort with Kleener King.
In August 1999 Kleener King completed a $6.1 million financing package with assistance from the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp., the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone and the Empire State Development Corp. based on the company's commitment to create employment for area residents.
Continental Girbau Inc. and its parent company, Girbau, S.A., celebrated the inauguration of a new U.S./Canada headquarters in Oshkosh, WI, this summer. The 37,500-sq.-ft. facility, is home to the largest of eight subsidiaries owned by Girbau which is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain.
More than 150 Continental distributors and invited guests attended the event.
"Our new building and an additional 8.5 acres to a total a 13-acre land purchase from the city of Oshkosh proves that Girbau is setting a solid foundation with high expectations for the future," commented Leonard Kafer, president of Continental girbau.
Thirty-four technical, service and sales representatives from distributors of Union Drycleaning Products USA attended the two-day "Union University" service school and technical seminar at company headquarters in Hapeville, GA.
Training was conducted by Vic Williams, Union's technical manager, who said that the new, larger facility allows Union to instruct a larger group of distributor personnel and cover more technical subject in greater detail than was previously possible.
"We now can conduct intensive "hands-on" training for the Union U-2000 Series, L-700 Series, HL hydrocarbon, GH GreenEarth, the new HP and HPA hydrocarbon slimline machines, and the new P&C perc slimline units, as well as the Union Dialog 700 computer with increased efficiency, he said.
Attendees included the following: Ray Neeley and Terry Lawless of O'Dell Equipment, Louisville, KY; Todd Landry of Jim Welsh Inc., Baton Rouge, LA; Ray Fusco Jr. of RAF Equipment, Passaic, NJ; Steve Spore and Mike Amos of Cleaners Equipment, Kansas City, KS; Russell Willard and Richard Warren with Consolidated Laundry, Raleigh, NC; Mike Myers of Kay Equipment, South Bend, IN; Ben Prema, Bhaves Patel and Ted Kim of Gulf States-Georgia; Jose Ramon Regalado of Joven Sales and Service, Los Angeles, CA; Barry Harrison, Dwayne Brechin and David Anderson of Trademark Equipment, Birmingham, AL; and Dean Martin of Martin Franchises, Cincinnati, OH.
Also, Dino Georghiou, Ray Broughton and Juan Jiminez of Evangelos Drycleaning and Laundry Equipment, Bronx, NY; Brad Szczotka, Phil Demarco and Darin Szczotka of Eagle Star Equipment, Troy, MI; Danny Keener of DBK Enterprises, Cumming, GA; James Joloey and Keith Jensen of Weinberg Supply, Minneapolis, MN; Jeff Dietrich and Ron Bald of USA Clean-Carman, McKees Rocks, PA; Karl McCranie of Belemy Machinery, Atlanta, GA; Tom Karman of Western Multitex Corp., Fullerton, CA; Robert Lee, Hudson Choi and Kwang Jin Kim with New York Machinery, Bronx, NY; and Sung Hong of U.S. Machinery in Beltsville, MD.
All participants received a certificate of completion which qualifies them as Authorized Factory-Trained Union Service Technicians. For information on future "Union University" schools, contact the company at (404) 361-7775 or e-mail unionusa@mindspring.com
Copyright © 2000, National Clothesline Maintained by: Hal Horning