tarting a business
during troubled economic times is a complicated endeavor;
however, starting one up during the Great Depression seems
downright impossible. Yet, Joseph DeLora, Sr. didn’t
think so. In 1930, he started a small wholesale
drycleaning plant named Deluxe Cleaners in
Clifton, NJ, with only a handful of employees. Now, over 70
years later, the business still operates in the same location,
although it has grown in scope with three satellite plants and
over 40 employees, and the building itself has been renovated
to house almost 9,000 sq. ft. of operating space.
Currently, the third generation of DeLoras
runs the family business. Patrick Jr. serves as president
alongside his sister Linda, who is vice president. The siblings
are simply trying to keep their grandfather’s dream
alive.
“The Great Depression was a
difficult time to start up a business. My grandfather was
always looking for where he could save a nickel,”
Patrick, Jr. said.
Joseph DeLora, Sr. fully appreciated the
value of a dollar and tried his best to get the most out of it.
It was that
business attitude that prompted him to
wonder whether a bomb shelter he built at the plant in order to
protect his family during World War II could serve a secondary
purpose. He came to the conclusion that one man’s bomb
shelter is another man’s fur vault.
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“My grandfather’s thinking was:
How could I make something out of this? What’s in it for
me?” Patrick, Jr. said. “He figured, ‘This is
great. I can make a bomb shelter plus I can store coats in
here.’ So, he added refrigeration to it. It’s got a
bank-safe door on it. It’s a nice sized storage
vault.”
Joseph, Sr.’s innovation has proved
quite profitable over time. “We’re storing over
1,000 coats a year with it right now,” Patrick, Jr. said.
“It’s been a pretty steady business over the years.
It’s something we can count on year after
year.”
In the 1950s, the second generation of
DeLoras — Joseph Sr.’s two sons, Jim and Patrick,
Sr. — took over the reins of the business. The boys had
grown up working in the company and Patrick, Sr. even met his
wife Tootsie there. She worked as a counter girl and
corresponded with him when he left to fight in the Korean War.
Upon his return, the second generation of
DeLoras sought to grow the family business. “In the
1950s, they diversified into tuxedo rental,” Patrick, Jr.
explained. “Then came the 1960s and 1970s and they
decided to go into drapery cleaning. That’s another big
business of ours. We have a full time decorator on staff that
goes to homes and takes the draperies down. We clean and press
them, then he goes back and rehangs them.”
Other services Deluxe offers include
wedding gown cleaning and preservation and garment alterations.
Patrick, Jr. believes Deluxe Cleaners’ success has been
largely due to its diversification. However, he also realizes
the dangers of diversifying too much.
“You don’t want to be too
diversified because then you lose focus of what you’re
really trying to do,” he said.
Tootsie and Joseph, Sr. raised all of
their children around the plant. Of all five, Patrick, Jr.
showed the most interest in working there. “I knew all
along this was the business for me,” Patrick, Jr.
recalled. Despite that enthusiasm, Patrick, Sr. still
encouraged Patrick, Jr. and his siblings to go out into the
world and try other occupations first.
Linda, who graduated with a master’s
degree in marketing in the early 1980s, worked for a marketing
company for over seven years after college before returning to
Deluxe.
atrick, Jr. had a slightly different path. After
graduating with a business degree from Fairleigh Dickinson
University in 1983, he worked for a financial firm for about
five months, but decided that was long enough.
“It was a decent job and all, but I
had drycleaning in me,” he recalled. “I just
couldn’t step away from the business.”
By the early 1990s, Linda and Patrick, Jr.
took the company in a new direction by implementing pickup and
delivery routes. It was a slow process, but a worthwhile one
nonetheless: routes now account for over half of Deluxe
Cleaners’ total cleaning volume.
According to Patrick, Jr., the trick to
building and maintaining successful routes boils down to one
primary factor: retention.
“It’s a lot of money to get a
customer, so the last thing you want to do is lose that
customer,” he explained. “We keep them by
communicating with them via an e-mail program that we have and
through a customer newsletter. There’s a constant dialog
with the customer, which is important. It’s something
that shows we’re different than the guy next
door.”
Of course, talking to customers is only
half the battle; it is also paramount to listen, which is
precisely why Linda sends out feedback surveys several times a
year to find out what other services customers want.
“Our goal, especially with our
delivery customers, is to be able to do everything they
have,” Patrick, Jr. said. “We don’t want them
to have to call somebody else for something they need if we can
take care of it. We’re trying to make our services as
convenient as possible. If they ask us to do something,
we’ll do it.”
It’s difficult for any business to
survive over 70 years, but a family business can be
particularly strenuous, especially when it comes to passing the
torch to the next generation.
“Every generation makes it more
difficult. Statistics show it,” Patrick, Jr. noted.
“The third generation has a higher failure rate than the
second generation. Some people get the business too
easily.”
In order to avoid that mistake, the DeLora
family has shared a common business philosophy since Deluxe
Cleaners’ inception. According to Patrick, Jr.,
it’s rather simple: “Keep producing that high
quality garment and your business will continue to
grow.”
“I know every drycleaner says
they’re a high quality drycleaner. Many say it, but
really they’re not. We are a high quality cleaner. We
really pride ourselves on the high quality, ready-to-wear
garment. We really concentrate a lot on the finishing and the
packaging. A lot of people will package to hide their quality,
but we package to highlight our good quality.”
Linda and Patrick, Jr. plan to continue
operating Deluxe Cleaners for a long time to come. They
aren’t really worried about any family complications
coming between them. So far, the pieces have always seemed to
fall in place for them.
“My sister and I are completely
different people. I think it makes for a great team,” he
said. “We complement each other a lot. We look at
different sibling combinations. I think we’re the only
two of the five that could have really taken this business
over. It was a good choice.”
Perhaps it was never a choice at all, but,
rather, fate that made sure the two well-suited siblings ended
up working together. After all, their parents had met and fell
in love there, so maybe Deluxe Cleaners has some unusual magic
in it walls. Ironically enough, lightning ended up striking
twice when Patrick, Jr. hired Colleen, now his wife of ten
years. “She started working here about 1986. She was my
favorite counter girl,” he said.
olleen graduated from Rutgers University with an
accounting degree and previously worked with an actuary firm.
Now, she provides the bookkeeping for the plant. The
couple have three children: Renee, 7; Monica, 5; and Edward, 3.
Linda also has a six-year-old daughter named Elizabeth, so
there are plenty of opportunities for a fourth generation to
run the business.
Patrick, Jr. has a very busy schedule.
When he isn’t at Deluxe Cleaners, he serves as a board
member for the North East Fabricare Association and as chairman
of Downtown Clifton, a merchants’ association for his
business district.
He also stays active in the Neighborhood
Cleaners Association, the International Drycleaners Congress,
the local chamber of commerce and the Rotary Club.
Despite his heavy work load, Patrick, Jr.
considers himself a fortunate man to be able to work side by
side with his family since the young fourth generation DeLoras
carry on the family tradition of spending a lot of time at
Deluxe.
“The cousins kid around and say,
‘I’m going to take this desk and you’re going
to take that desk,’” he said.
Though Patrick, Jr. admits he hasn’t
given the idea of the next generation taking over someday too
much thought, he is sure that he’ll be happy to help them
whenever they need it; after all, his father still visits the
plants every week and acts as a consultant even though he is
retired.
“It’s so wonderful to have a
guy like that because he’s probably the most
knowledgeable guy I know in this business,” Patrick, Jr.
said. “He has many, many years in this industry.
He’s Sid Tuchman and Stan Caplan rolled into one. If we
have a problem, he’ll give us his advice or his past
experience. He’ll never tell us what he thinks we should
do. He lets us make our decision without stepping
in.”
Not only does Patrick, Sr. encourage his
children to make their own choices, but he also encourages them
to make their own mistakes.
Patrick, Jr. added: “Every time we
make a mistake, he says, ‘You’re learning.’
He likes for us to make mistakes because he feels that we learn
when we make mistakes.”
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