National Clothesline

Three days of themed seminars will be scheduled from Sept. 27-29 for the Coin Laundry Association’s Management Conference at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, CA.

Prior to the weekend, CLA will kick the festivities off with a Welcome Cocktail Reception on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 26.

The first block of educational seminars on Friday will cover “Employee Issues and Tax Considerations.” In addition to the annual distributor workshop and the annual manufacturer workshop, CLA will host an Idea Exchange/Round Table session.

Also scheduled on the same day will be several seminars, including: “The Employment Relationship — A Marriage of Sorts” by Myles Mattenson, attorney at law; “Effective Training for Your Laundry Attendant” by Andrew Cunningham; and “Tax Considerations for Coin Laundries” by Richard Weisinger, CPA.

In the evening, attendees can enjoy a dinner reception and boat cruise on San Francisco’s famous “Horn Blower” cruise line.

Saturday’s theme of educational sessions will be “Store Construction and Design Made Easy.”

Daniel Marrazzo, a construction expert and multiple laundry owner from Morrisville, PA, will discuss “The Top Ten Considerations in Building a New Laundry.” CLA Executive Director Brian Wallace will be on hand to present “Coin Laundry Design Workshop.” Also scheduled for Saturday is a session on “Design Techniques for Your Laundry.”

Sunday’s programs, dealing with “Preparing for the Unexpected,” will include three separate sessions: “Retirement and Succession Planning for the Laundry Owner” by Terry Lease, CPA and professor of accounting; “Loss Control: Make Your Laundry Claim Resistant” by Ruby Burch, executive coordinator of CLA Insurance; and “Survival of the Fittest: Combating Today’s Competition” will be presented by several laundry owners across the nation.

Prior to the three-days of educational sessions from Sept. 27-29, CLA will include a “Basics For Beginners” pre-conference program on Thursday, Sept. 26 that is ideal for those who are thinking about entering the coin laundry industry or are about to open their first coin laundry.

Included on the day’s venue will be a networking luncheon where Brian Wallace will offer an “Industry Overview.” Other topics scheduled throughout the day will be: “Buying an Existing Laundry vs. Building New” by Clay Pederson, president of Business Consultants International; “Evaluating an Investment in Coin Laundry” by Dan Naumann of Great Lakes Commercial Sales, Inc.; “Choosing the Right Location for Your Laundry” by Bob Eisenberg, senior vice president of the Sales Coin Laundry Division of IPSO, USA; and an open forum of laundry owners will discuss “Coin Laundry 101.”

Pre-conference fees are $119 for members and $149 for non-members if received by Sept. 3. After that date, the cost goes up to $149 for members and $179 for non-members.

Registration for the three-day conference costs $429 for members and $529 for non-members prior to Sept. 3. After that date, the cost increases to $529 for members and $629 for non-members.

Discounted rooms at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco have been secured at a rate of $159 per night for conference attendees. Call (415) 788-1234 for reservations. For more information, call CLA at (630) 963-554.

Deborah Rechnitz of Methods for Management will be a featured speaker at the Oregon Dry Cleaners Association annual convention in Portland, OR, Oct. 4-5. She will present, “Where’s The Money,” a seminar designed to help drycleaning owners to understand how to monitor and improve their profitability. Participants will be challenged to evaluate their own businesses, their past results against expectations and against the results of their peers. The development of a comprehensive budget and an increased understanding of how to track these results in the future will also be explored.

Specific topics to be covered in this workshop include:

• Basic financial review

• Understand relationship between pricing, volumes, costs and percentages

• Analyzing sales and costs by breaking them into their individual and manageable components

• Short term and long term financial management with benchmarks, budgets and historical comparisons

Other speakers at the convention include Darcy Moen of the Golomb Group with a discussion on data mining and a representative of the Department of Environmental Quality with a report on the status of the Oregon clean-up fund.

The Radisson Hotel in Portland will the convention headquarters. Special room rates of $89 a night are available. For more information contact ODCA, (503) 244-9707, or visit the association’s web site: www.oregondrycleaners.org.