Route conference for Golomb Group
“Your Route to Success” is the
title of a conference planned by The Golomb Group for
Oct. 5-6 in the Chicago area at the Oakbrook Terrace.
The conference will offer a comprehensive
series of presentations on building and maintaining routes.
“We receive several calls a day with
members asking how they can start a route,” said Dennis
McCrory, president of the Golomb Group, a Chicago-based firm
that handles marketing for drycleaners nationwide.
“They want to know everything from
how much it costs to get off the ground, how long it will take
to recoup their investment, to what sort of advertising
promotion would make it work best. It’s definitely what
everyone in the industry is looking at to grow their business
in a shrinking market.”
Definitely not new to the industry, the
concept of home delivery routes has been around as long as
drycleaning. Routes experienced a heyday in the 1940s and 1950s
when practically everyone used them and sent all laundry and
drycleaning to one central plant, said Jim Parham, owner of
Acme Cleaners in Orlando, Florida.
“When I used to do the route, I
would walk in the door, pick up the cleaning from the couch and
get a Coca-Cola out of the refrigerator,” Parham
recalled.
Routes began to decline with the
increasing popularity of package plants and the growing threat
of crime, Parham said. “Residential routes completely
ceased in the latter part of the 1970s.”
Today, Parham is one of a growing number
who are looking to get back into the route game. Thanks to
growth in Orlando, increased traffic and more difficult
commuting, customers are looking for ways to save time. At
least that’s what Parham is banking on.
“We just started getting back into
it this year because we’ve seen it has worked with other
cleaners and we are trying to follow the tide,” he said.
Craig Campbell, owner of Fishburn’s
Fabricare Centers in Dallas, TX, believes that routes are
“the best method of making yourself bullet-proof during a
bad economy.”
Routes afford owners the ability to grow
gradually, at a customized pace and cost. If one area
isn’t working, simply move to another and overhead
remains the same. Routes offer a benefit over dry stores
because there is never the threat of the landlord raising the
rent or customer traffic dropping off.
Thanks to the rising interest in
establishing routes, Rex Carrigan has a full dance card these
days. A former route manager for White Way Cleaners of
Nashville, TN, Carrigan has been working as a private
consultant for the last two years.
“I get about three phone calls a
week, on the average, of new customers who want to establish a
route and want me to show them how to do it,” Carrigan
said. “I go on premise and train them right at their
place, work with the whole staff and get everybody on the same
team.”
When Carrigan was still with White Way, he
periodically entertained visitors interested in learning about
routes. When he left the company, requests began coming in for
his expertise. Although he has heard of other companies
offering training programs utilizing their own routes as
models, Carrigan believes he is the only consultant who goes
on-site.
“I ride with the owners and drivers
and train people on how to go door-to-door, building the
relationship between the driver and the customer,”
Carrigan said. “It’s unique in that I can actually
look at their territories and make suggestions on whether the
area is right for a route.”
Although Carrigan has conducted workshops
and is frequently invited to speak at seminars, owners want the
hands-on evaluation that he provides. “Sixty to 70
percent of the people I work with already have existing
routes,” he said. “I just go in and give them a
little polish.”
Carrigan, along with several other
industry experts, will be sharing his expertise at the Golomb
Group conference.
For more information contact, The Golomb
Group, 7664 Plaza Court; Willowbrook, IL, 60527 or call (800)
679-5856.
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