s a young man
growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, Mack Davis quickly
developed a wide variety of industry-related skills while
helping his father, John, at Medlin-Davis Cleaners.
Mack’s father had previously been a tenant farmer in
eastern North Carolina, but he moved to Raleigh with a strong
desire to pursue another line of work. He excelled at his
second job as a drycleaner for Carolina Cleaners and eventually
hooked up with Bill Medlin, a route person for a local dairy
who had been doing his job since the days of horse-drawn dairy
carts. Bill had established a good customer base and John had
technical skills.
Together, they formed Medlin-Davis
Cleaners in 1948 and spent the next 28 years as partners and
friends.
Mack, who considers himself a man of
traditional values, ironically had no desire to carry on the
tradition of the family business. He had worked plenty at the
plant, but it didn’t hold a future that interested him.
In fact, it steered him into another direction altogether.
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For the next four years, Mack
attended East Carolina University where he studied industrial
technology. Afterward, he taught the subject at a high school
in northeastern North Carolina for several months before he
returned for graduate school at North Carolina State University
in the summer of 1965.
During that time, Mack also
performed duties as an officer for the Marine Corps and married
his high school sweetheart, Marie, a retired school teacher who
once owned her own kindergarten daycare facility called The
Little Red School House. The couple have been married
for over 37 years now and enjoyed raising two children together:
Curt, who works in the customer service division of GrayBar
Electric, and Susan, who is working on her doctorate in early
childhood education at the University of North Carolina.
fter completing his first year of graduate
school, Mack requested to pursue a second year, but was
abruptly turned down. “It was denied because they needed
bodies in Vietnam,” he recalled. By the strange stroke of
coincidence, Mack, who served with the rank of captain, was in
charge of a couple of familiar faces. “Two guys in my
unit were Marine sergeants who had been my students. We enjoyed
talking about fishing at the old Merchant’s Mill pond
back in North Carolina,” he said.
In all, Mack served for 13 months in
Vietnam as an artillery battery commander. “It’s a
long time when they’re shooting at you almost every
day,” he said. “There was a lot going on back in
those days.”
After fighting in the war, Mack
spent his last year with the Marine Corps stationed at Camp
LeJeune in North Carolina, even though he requested to serve in
Hawaii or California. “They would always assign you to
the duty station closest to your home of record. It cost them
less to move you when you got out.”
After he had completed his duties
with the Marine Corps, Mack went on to pursue other avenues,
but he never truly left the service. “You know what they
say, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’,” he
said.
Next, he worked for the electronics
division at Corning Glass Works for about a year. The company
had a plant in Wilmington, NC, and Mack gained some experience
as a product supervisor.
Having acquired technical skills and
understanding of the ins and outs of a production department,
Mack shifted gears again and decided to enhance his people
skills. For a couple of years, he sold real estate. “When
you’re paid by straight commission, it’s just like
somebody who waits on tables,” he said. “You
understand very well what customer service is about and
hopefully how to deal with conflict resolution in a pleasant
manner.”
Mack enjoyed selling so much that he
and a friend started their own residential real estate business
in Wilmington in 1970 and worked together for another six
years.
n all that time, Mack was unaware that he was
gathering a diverse background of knowledge that would one day
prove to be quite helpful for his work in the drycleaning
industry. By 1975, he still had no intention of working at
Medlin-Davis Cleaners. However, when his father’s partner
became terminally ill with cancer, Mack was asked to help. For
the next year, Mack juggled his duties with his father’s
plant in Raleigh while maintaining a business and a family in
Wilmington.
One day his children gave him an
unexpected wake-up call and Mack and Marie made a decision.
“I think we had been in Wilmington about a year when my
young kids asked my wife and I if we were separated,” he
said. “We realized we needed to get the family back
together. So, we sold The Little Red School House business and
moved back to continue to help my dad.”
When the family moved to the area,
which was located in the heart of the North Carolina Research
Triangle — consisting of Duke University of Durham, the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina
State University in Raleigh — the town had approximately
7,500 people. Today, the population is over 100,000.
Mack’s company has used the population growth to
his advantage.
“There was a lot of growth in
our area that represented a lot of opportunities, and we saw
those opportunities,” he said. “We saw a market
niche and went after it by opening stores.”
Shortly after entering the industry, Mack
was recruited by the North Carolina Association of Launderers
and Cleaners and has been on the board of directors off and on
ever since. One thing he noticed right away was that
educational programs were not easily accessible to North
Carolina cleaners.
He felt that the next generation of
drycleaning needed more experience. “I think when I first
got into the business after the wash and wear/polyester era,
there were not very many young people getting into the
industry. But, there were a lot of old timers and they were
very knowledgeable,” he recalled. “There was a
knowledge gap between that generation and the very few young
people that began to trickle into the industry. We began having
different seminar series all across the state. We bridged that
gap.”
Over the years, Mack has helped
NCALC in many capacities; he currently serves as the
association’s president elect.
ducation isn’t just something Mack sells
to other cleaners; it plays a large role in his plant, as well.
Not only does he try to keep current on industry information,
but his employees must also keep learning. “We try
to be pro-active all the way around with our business,”
he said. “We constantly are doing technical training for
customer service. We just try to do things that will represent
our business well, and we believe that maybe it will help to
represent the industry well, also.”
In addition to participating in a
cost management group with Sid Tuchman, Mack has long pursued
environmental concerns and has participated in some influential
stakeholders’ groups since the mid-1990s. “One was
helping to develop the legislation for the Drycleaning Solvent
Clean-Up Act, which helped me to realize the forces of work
beyond our own industry,” he said. “Another
stakeholders’ group that I was involved in, that was
required by the legislature, was to look at existing cleaning
technologies and emerging cleaning technologies and evaluate
them.”
In the latter project, Mack had the
rare opportunity to represent two different cleaning solvents:
perc and GreenEarth.
Mack initially opted to use silicone in
1999 after studying all of the alternative solvents on the
market. He felt GreenEarth was the safest choice available on
the market. “I was looking for a technology that was
environmentally friendly that would allow me to keep control of
my business. We wanted a process that was safe for our
employees, our properties, and one that our customers would
like,” he said. “In GreenEarth, we had found such a
technology that we could utilize in machines that were very
similar to those we were already using. Our downside risk was
extremely limited because, if we were not happy with it, we
could pull it out and use hydrocarbon or DF-2000.”
Fortunately for Mack, there has
never been a need to make a switch. “Cleaning problems
have been minimal. We have had very good success on the
different kids of clothing that we can clean,” he said.
Nowadays, all ten locations for
Medlin-Davis Cleaners are serviced with a total of two perc
machines and two silicone machines. Mack has no regrets, but he
admits that being environmentally friendly isn’t
necessarily a marketing advantage.
“There’s a strong
environmental interest in this area,” he explained.
“But, even in our area, there’s a large percentage
of the customers — over 90% — where the environment
is not much of an issue. They’re just mostly concerned
about whether it is ready on time and ready to wear, and good,
friendly and knowledgeable service. It’s still true
today... the basics are what this business is all
about.”
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