National Clothesline

By Bill Bogus

Good drycleaning will always be a challenge of ability. Knowledge and experience are needed to improve ability. Proper training will make you an expert. We all aspire to become successful, and to be successful we need knowledge. The International Fabricare Institute (IFI) teaches knowledge in order to inspire students to become successful.

Drycleaners with limited skills create sameness, and sameness can only compete with low prices, which leads to problems — big problems, namely, making no money.

As a drycleaner, you are also a competitor, and others may not like the way you do business. Drycleaners become suspicious of each other. They don’t hate each other, but they don’t want anything to do with each other. In this climate of doing business, there is no exchange of ideas or knowledge. Who wants to help the other guy so he can take away your business? When someone goes bankrupt, it’s “Good bye, Charlie.”

Back in 1907 a number of drycleaners didn’t like what was going on. This was no way to build a desirable industry. This crazy attitude had to stop. Twenty-five good-minded cleaners got together and formed an association so that all cleaners would have the opportunity to learn and become better drycleaners. This would stop competitors from spitting on each other’s shoes and start shaking hands. And they did. They shook hands often, but some hands wouldn’t shake.

It is important to know that the 25 drycleaners not only formed an association, but they also laid the ground work in building a drycleaning industry. To do that, they had become an institution. They had to be sure that the drycleaning service was desirable and necessary. Drycleaner joined the institution and made an obligation to fulfill that intent.

The driving force that made drycleaning a strong industry is the institution. It all started 95 years ago. That same institution is now known as IFI. Today that dedication of the founders is becoming eroded and the cause is the unwillingness of many drycleaners to become more knowledgeable in order to strengthen the industry.

Why is it that students come from all parts of the world to learn and study at IFI? They want to be knowledgeable drycleaners. This is why they come from Australia, Korea, Ireland, Japan, Turkey, El Salvador, Bermuda and other countries.

But today we have more drycleaners who are not members of the International Fabricare Institute. By not being members and learning, we have become easy pickings for predators. They are the big guys who are trying to get rid of us.

What we are doing as drycleaners is taking the benefits, but not the responsibility, that we owe our customers who provide the benefits. Are they getting the kind of service they want or are they getting the kind of service they don’t want?

Back in 1989 Carmelia Bernardi, a columnist for National Clothesline and field representative for the North East Fabricare Association, found out, but was not too surprised, that many customers were getting the kind of service they didn’t want. A program on national television drew her attention because it wasn’t praiseworthy of drycleaners.

A young lady was bothered with a stain on her skirt and the MC on the program said, “Don’t let it bother you. Take it to a drycleaner and he’ll take care of it.”

She said, “I did, and he didn’t take care of it.”

A number of guests in the audience yelled, “Drycleaners don’t remove spots anymore.”

Then someone asked, “Why not?”

The response he got was: “They don’t want to.”

Then someone else said, “I think they don’t know how.”

The audience had mixed feelings about drycleaners.

Ms. Bernardi found that many drycleaners were sending customers a sorry message, known as the “sorry tag”.

She ended her article with this message: “After 45 years in the drycleaning industry, I am still learning. When I hear someone say be knows enough and doesn’t need to learn more, I feel sorry for this person. He doesn’t know how much easier and professional his work can be with proper knowledge and training.”

That article was timely when it appeared in 1989 and is even more so today. Proper knowledge — where does it come from? It can only come from a learning institution. For the drycleaners, the proper knowledge comes from IFI.

Many immigrants coming from Asian countries are educated and many are bilingual. Immigrants from South Korea have knowledge and they speak and understand English. Many understand drycleaning because there are drycleaning plants in South Korea, and they have cleaners who have graduated from IFI.

So what’s the problem?

Many of the immigrants who came to our shores were “wannabe” drycleaners who didn’t understand the drycleaning market and the impact they caused on certain areas that led problems for survival — too many cleaners and not enough volume. They didn’t understand or take time to find out the kind of service American consumers wanted. They did not communicate, and learning more had a lower priority.

To survive, they battled each other with prices that diminished the value of their service. When the big discounters came in and clobbered the little discounter with a price they could not match and still survive, they needed help.

IFI could not help, which caused anger. What they didn’t know was that IFI as a teaching institute is forbidden by law to discriminate or favor one more than the other. The institute is licensed and regulated by the government to teach.

Not long ago, and still fresh in my memory, drycleaners hungered for knowledge like a bear hungers for honey. Many drycleaners at that time were members of IFI and they would send the spotter or spotter-to-be to study and learn drycleaning with emphasis on spot removal. General Course classes were big then with many students attending. Drycleaners had good relations with customers and business was thriving.

Korean drycleaners are needed as members of IFI to strengthen the industry. Like nobles and knaves in any group, people will find a knave and not a noble to use as an excuse to discriminate against that group. If they can’t find one, they will make one up.

In an earlier time, almost all the cleaners were members of IFI because the knowledge of drycleaning was there. They got a lot of it and they practiced what they learned. One such drycleaner I know of is Harold Wiesblut. Not only did he practice proper drycleaning, he became an in-plant consumer advocate. He worked for his customers’ expectations and, importantly, he searched for spots and stains like Sherlock Holmes searched for clues.

Harold Wiesblut’s persistence paid off with customer satisfaction. The name of his plant is Presto Valet. For those who don’t know, the meaning of the word “valet” is one who performs personal services and takes care of clothing, and that’s exactly what Presto Valet does. Buddy Gritz, Harold’s son-in-law, is doing exactly that today. He’s taking care of business.Bill Bogus is president of Textile Restoration Services Inc. in Laurel, MD. He can be reached at (301) 776-4961.