Super Marketer
Though he is only 35 years old, Darcy Moen has already retired from the drycleaning industry after owning his own plant, Mobi Cleaners, for 16 years.
However, his "retirement" keeps him as busy as ever. In addition to offering his services as a computer database marketing consultant (a field that has zero competition), Darcy designs web pages, writes for Fabricare Canada, provides technological assistance to Canadian distributors for BUFA, teaches a marketing class at the University of Regina (though he has never been a university student), and helps his father maintain a business named Coulee Pickings, Ltd., which preserves plant materials for the nutraceutical and dermaceutical industries.
Of course, that is to say nothing of the fact that Darcy likes to invent things in his spare time, such as a set of pictographs -- outlined sketches of various garment types -- that help counter personnel to mark problem areas on clothing, greatly reducing the risk of somebody overlooking a stain. He is also responsible for the "dumb hook," a $2 product that hangs on a person's front door so that route drivers can pick up and deliver drycleanable garments when a person isn't home.
He is currently working on a radio frequency tag for drycleanable garments. "Through the software you would be able to tell how often a garment has been cleaned, who has worked on it, what has been done to it in the past, and how much money you've earned from the garment," he said.
Yet, all of his projects aside, Darcy doesn't regret retirement because it has given him more time to spend with Lisa, his wife of four years, and their three-year-old son, Madison.
The decision hadn't been easy, but Stan Golomb of the Golomb Group persuaded Darcy that his marketing talents would help lead the next generation of drycleaners. Ultimately, however, it was the words of his son, Madison, that convinced him.
"It's kind of sad when you come home for your four hours off on a Sunday and spend a little quality time with your wife and your boy that you hardly ever get to see and he looks at you and says, 'Daddy's working.'"
Darcy has actually been working for most of his life. Born in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the Moen family travelled throughout Canada as Darcy was growing up because his father was a consultant for Agriculture Canada.
When Darcy was nine, he wanted to make some money so he started his first business.
"I saved my allowance and bought myself a lawn mower at a garage sale for $25. A couple of little old ladies with blue hair on our block hired me to come out and cut their lawns every Saturday morning and they paid me $10. In two-and-a-half weeks, I had my investment back," he said.
Within six weeks, word of mouth had spread to the point that Darcy could no longer do all of his work in one day. His father had a solution.
"My dad bought the business from me for $500 cash and kept me on. We built it up in the next nine years. We had our own greenhouse. We had our own tree farm. We had underground sprinkling. We were cutting, on average, 250 yards a week."
By the time Darcy was 18-years-old, the Moen family moved again and had to sell the business. It was sold in eight different pieces (six of which are still active today) for $400,000.
Darcy's last year of high school was interesting, to say the least. He had transferred to a school that had a curriculum comprised mostly of things he had learned at his previous school, so he only showed up on test day to take exams. During the day, he spent most of his time going to the University of Saskatchewan.
"They don't take attendance at the university so I would just sit in the class," he recalled. "Somedays I would be in pre-med class. The next day I would be in pre-law. Then I'd drop over into engineering."
Darcy spent his nights stocking shelves for a grocery store. "I was 340th on the seniority list. It was a union job," he recalled. By making himself available for all shifts (even graveyard), he gained ground. "I had worked my way up the seniority list until I was number seven," he said.
That positioning helped him greatly when Super Valu opened up a Megastore in Edmonton. At 19, he moved so that he could be a manager for all of the store's edible items, an inventory estimated to be worth between $1 and $2.5 million per week.
Such a task could daunt anyone so young, but Darcy had a trick up his sleeve. "In high school, I had been tested. It turns out that I have a three-dimensional mind and ranked as a near photographic memory," he said. "I think in pictures, basically. I have about a three- to seven-year retention."
Not one for corporate life, Darcy eventually left his job at the supermarket and liquidated everything he owned in order to move to Ottawa to work at Spic-N-Span Cleaners. He decided that drycleaning might make for a good living.
Darcy learned what he could at that job, and, in 1985, moved to Regina to start a one-person, 650-sq.-ft. drycleaning shop called Mobi Cleaners.
With four competitors in the immediate vicinity, a fierce market battle ensued. Darcy needed a creative business approach. He came up with a stuff-and-save sale when his competition's owner was on vacation. He delivered 5,000 printed bags and offered customers a $12 cleaning special for all the garments they could stuff.
The strategy worked. "I had clothes everywhere. People were coming in droves with huge orders and that just absolutely made the business," he said.
Six months later, a new owner bought the competing plant, turning it into a Sanitone cleaner with 65 employees, six store locations, three route drivers and 9,000 sq. ft. of plant space.
Darcy should have been hopelessly outmatched, but he found a new weapon: his computer system. After buying some pretty expensive software, he spent many hours studying customer demographics. The work paid off.
"I noticed that I could determine when a customer was coming in based on past spending history," he said. With that knowledge, Darcy could discover who his best customer's were, what kind of advertising they responded to, and had a reliable way to generate income whenever he needed it.
Or, in his words: "You can control the flow of business within your business with your point of sale systems."
Mobi Cleaners certainly relied heavily on aggressive marketing tactics, but Darcy also tried to offer higher service to customers. When he had come up with the garment pictograph, his customer complaints dropped immensely. Out of 50,000 processed garments, only 26 were rejected.
Mobi Cleaners also offered an emergency drycleaning service to hotels, which attracted a prestigious clientele. "I've done work for four heads of states, five prime ministers, all kinds of premiers, Hollywood movie stars, even the Queen of England when she was in town. It's been kind of neat," he said.
Nowadays, Darcy consults over 50 clients with his unique strategies, and he doesn't even have to leave Canada. "All the client has to do is leave his computer on, give me the password and the phone number to his computer, and I'll do the rest," he said. "The technology is there, why not use it?"
Darcy is the first to admit that his approaches are often unorthodox, yet he believes that business should simply do what makes sense.
"I don't think I'm that smart," he said. "The only thing I do different is I question authority. I use the rule to get what I want. I actually act on impulse. While everyone else is thinking about it and marvelling at how wonderful it could be, I'm actually out there doing it."
Darcy, who describes his own life as the "weird-as-you-want-to-be world tour," also believes that fear is irrelevant.
"As human beings are always afraid of an unknown outcome, if they knew the outcome before they had an action, there would be nothing to be afraid of. So, every time you do something, there is one of two possibilities: either it works or it doesn't. Either it's yes or it's no."
Thinking outside the box has always brought results for Darcy. He challenged Revenue Canada on the wording of a tax law and increased the number of tax deductions for drycleaners.
When a customer, who also happened to be a university professor, convinced Darcy that he had a lot to say, he took her advice and started writing. Not only did that lead to his column in Fabricare Canada, but Darcy's writing has been published in several other industry publications in as many as ten different languages.
Then there was the time Darcy challenged his father-in-law, a long-time Canadian public official, that he could do more to pay off Canada's billion dollar deficit than the entire provincial government.
The wager was only for a cheeseburger, but Darcy did not relent. He ran a widely-publicized special that donated 25 cents for every pair of pants cleaned on Budget Day to be applied toward Canada's deficit. In all, Darcy raised over $125 to be paid toward the debt. "The budget the government tabled -- they went another billion dollars in the whole," he laughed.
Ironically, the government had to reject the check Darcy sent because it wasn't economically feasible to start a new account to cash it. Still, the story sums up Darcy perfectly: "I just like to challenge boundaries to see how far you can go and get away with it."
Maine Cleaners in Saco, ME, received a Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence for its pollution reduction efforts. Gov. Angus S. King Jr. presented the award at a ceremony in Augusta in September.
Ken Crepeau, manager of Maine Cleaners, said the company has been working on pollution reduction since the late 1980s. By 1999, the company had reduced its waste production from 5,955 pounds a year to 3,842 pounds a year. When increased cleaning volume over that time period was accounted for, the waste reduction amounted to 50 percent.
"Although these reductions were very good and above the mandated standards, we could foresee that further reductions would be very difficult using the perchloroethylene technology," Crepeau wrote in his application for the Governor's Award.
Last May the company replaced its perc equipment with hydrocarbon machines using DF2000. That, Crepeau expects, will lead to further reductions in waste generation, down to under 1,000 pounds per year.
"We believe we can achieve close to a 90 percent waste reduction," Crepeau said. He expects solvent consumption to be less than 200 gallons a year, down from 800 gallons.
Crepeau attributes the latest reduction to a combination of DF 2000 and the two Satec 50-lb. cleaning machines that replaced two 40-lb. perc machines. He said that the machine recovers more than 99 percent of the solvent in each load.
Luther M. Myers, president and owner of Textile Innovators Corp. in Windsor, NC, is the new chairman of the D12 committee on soaps and other detergent of the American Society for Testing and Materials. The committee is one of 128 technical standards writings committees of ASTM, a voluntary standards development organization. Myers is also a member of the D13 committee on textile and the F11 committee on vacuum cleaners. His company supplies standard textile materials that are used in quality control, product development and standardization of liberalities of the detergent, dye stuff and chemical industries.
The Ontario Fabricare Association launched its new web site, www.fabricare.org, last month during its annual conference in Niagara Falls.
The web site includes an OFA member section which is password protected, an industry section that is open to all drycleaners and affiliated industries and a consumer information section.
The OFA section provides access to the association newsletter, current event and industry news, information about allied trades, classified advertising, training information, a public discussion group and even a place to apply for OFA membership on-line.
The consumer section has information on rules and regulations governing the industry, hints on clothing and fabric care, tips on choosing a drycleaner and a way to locate OFA drycleaners across Ontario.
Site development was made possible through contributions to the Training Renewal Foundation and Human Resources Development Canada in creating the Drycleaning and Laundering Industry Adjustment committee.
"The launch of our web site represents a very significant milestone in the work of our committee," said Reg Quinton, chairman of the joint OFA/IAC Profile Building committee. "We are very pleased with the end result and are certain that the site will provide a great value to both our members and to the general public."
Two new members have joined the board of directors of the Textile Care Allied Trades Association, as announced by TCATA president Leland White.
Bruce Johnson of Chicago Dryer Co., Chicago, IL, and Richard Greco of Hoffman/New Yorker, Bloomfield, NJ, will fill the unexpired terms of Jim Onkst and Tony Strike.
Johnson served as president of TCATA from 1992 to 1994 and is currently a member of the association's product safety committee. Greco services on the advisory committee of member exhibitors. Their terms will expire in 2001.
Mike Achin of Laidlaw Corp., was appointed chairman of the membership committee.
TCATA's next convention will be held at the Eldorado Hotel in Santa Fe, NM, May 2-5, 2001. Charlie Thompson, vice president/publisher of American Trade Magazines in Chicago, will serve as general convention chair for TCATA's 2001 convention. Brent McWilliams, vice president, sales and marketing, of Laidlaw Corp., will chair the business program committee for the convention.
Two drycleaners in the Portland, OR, area, received Environmental Stewardship Awards as part of a multi-city nationwide tour in which GreenEarth Cleaning is honoring cleaners who have switched to its patented drycleaning process.
Honored were Jay Bleich, owner and operator of Bee Tailors in Portland, OR, and Mark Ickert, owner and operator of Custom Care Fine Drycleaning and Laundry in Vancouver, WA.
Both businesses were certified last year as national beta test sites for GreenEarth solvent.
Bleich has been the owner of Bee Tailors and Cleaners, which has two locations, since 1995. His father, the late Ben Bleich, founded the business in 1951.
Ickert has tried to be an environmental conscientious cleaner since he opened Customer Care Fine Drycleaning and Laundry in 1988.
Special guests and participants at the award ceremonies included Dick Dezeeuw, coordinator for Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality; Jennifer Allen, director of Oregon's Economic Sustainability program; Lily Longshore from the City of Vancouver's industrial Waste Unit; Multanomah County Commissioner Beverly Stein; and Dan Ogden from the staff of Washington State Representative Val Ogden.
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