National Clothesline

While concern for the present and worry about the future dominate our daily thoughts, there should always be time to reflect upon the past. Drycleaning has a long and colorful heritage that has been enhanced by people from all backgrounds with varied interests. The wide range of talents and interests that people have brought to the industry over the years — and bring to it yet today — is surely one of our strengths. And it’s always a source of curious surprises and stories worth telling.

While reading about baseball we stumbled upon the fact, mentioned only in passing, that the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson had at one time owned a drycleaning business. Obviously, that’s not a major point of interest for people who are focused on baseball lore, but it caught our attention, and some research turned up the information in our front page story this month. Jackson once told Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey that he could make more money as a drycleaner than as a major-league ballplayer. If only that were true today!

In a similar vein, it was while reading a Black History Month article that we learned about Thomas Jennings, the first Black American to receive a U.S. Patent. He was a tailor operating in New York City and his patent was for a clothes cleaning process called “dry scouring.” So far we haven’t been able to find out what the process involved, but since his patent was issued in 1821, he was about two decades ahead of the supposed official discovery of drycleaning by two Frenchmen, Jolly and Belin, in the 1840s. We wish we knew more about Jennings. We do know that in addition to his work in drycleaning, he served as assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of People of Color in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We also know that his drycleaning invention was cited by John Quincy Adams, then U.S. Secretary of State, in an 1822 report to Congress on patents issued the previous year.

This industry has a history worth remembering. Let’s preserve it.

It all boils down to perspective. The pessimist sees the proverbial glass of water as half-empty. He recognizes the full potential of the glass and isn’t satisfied unless it is met. He measures things in terms of how much better they could be. The optimist, on the other hand, surmises that the glass is half-full because he realizes how much worse things could be. He appreciates the amount of water that is in the glass because it’s better than not having any at all.

However, a more objective observer might say that both schools of thought are wrong… and also right. He would argue that the glass is simultaneously half-empty and half-full. It isn’t simply one or the other. The pessimist and optimist fail to see the big picture because they focus only on one aspect of things. The pessimist concentrates only on what has failed; the focal point of the optimist is what has succeeded. However, there is merit to both philosophies.

In the current economic crunch, most business owners feel like the glass is half-empty — and more water is being lost every day. As cleaning sales go down, the rim of the glass stretches further away, seemingly out of reach. The more desperate a plant owner becomes, the more he loses his ability to maintain an impartial perspective.

Have you done the same? Can you really look at your business objectively enough to determine what is genuinely working and what still needs to be done? Or, are you too busy working down in the trenches? Are you too close to see the big picture? If that is the case, how can you manage your store, let alone monitor the effectiveness of your management?

If you’re spending too much time on the front line and not enough time examining the bottom line, then you are running out of time, says National Clothesline columnist Al Robson. His article on page 26 prompts cleaners to stop wasting precious seconds. Hard decisions that will affect the future of your business must be made quickly, and, now more than ever, you cannot afford to make the wrong choice. Now is the time to look at your business with a proper perspective. Now is the time to know exactly where your business is succeeding and where it is failing. Only then will you be armed with the knowledge you need to make sure your business survives the rough road ahead.