National Clothesline

About 100 cleaners gathered in Las Vegas for a two-day management seminar last month sponsored by the International Fabricare Institute.

“Management Techniques for Today’s Drycleaner” was the theme; the main focus was on diversification opportunities and maintaining a motivated work force. Similar to the first IFI management seminar held last year, the program was geared primarily for larger-scale drycleaners, but the plants represented ranged in size from as many as 120 employees and 11 locations to as few as nine employees with just one location.

Rex Carrigan, an industry consultant who specializes in route building, led off the diversification discussions with a keynote speech entitled “I’ve got a truck. I’ve got a driver. Now what?”

After his talk, attendees were randomly divided into five roundtables. Each table had a discussion leader who spoke on his specialization and then answered questions. The leaders rotated so that every group participated in each topic. In addition to Carrigan who led discussions on routes, leaders were: Ron Kantor on leather cleaning; Rick Botnick on on-site drapery cleaning; Mike Smith on fire restoration; and Wayne Wudyka on mold treatment.

More roundtable discussions took place in the afternoon. For these sessions, starter topics were given to each of the 11 tables but participants were told they could go off-topic, which led to many discussions of environmental matters, alternate solvents, employee training and retention and community involvement. These led to some original ideas as well as interesting variations on the usual. Angel Suarez of Rey’s Cleaners in Coral Gables, FL, related how his declaration that he would not accept Benneton garments after the company said it would open stores in Cuba brought considerable media publicity, including radio and TV interviews.

The topic switched to employee retention on the second day with customer service specialist Laura Barron. The title of her talk tells her story: “Are we having fun yet? If your employees are having fun, your customers will be smiling, too.” She was followed by several cleaners who talked about what they do to motivate employees as the finale for the two-day program.