National Clothesline

Once again, cleaners must fend off an attack from a competing product designed to divert dwindling drycleaning dollars away from the industry. In recent years, the market has seen the emergence of so-called home drycleaning kits and appliances, such as Procter & Gamble’s Dryel and Whirlpool’s Personal Valet. These products promised to freshen up, dewrinkle and remove basic stains from clothes, ultimately enticing consumers to make less trips to the cleaners. Yet, none of these products actually cleaned clothes, which might explain their limited success. Sure, a small portion of the industry’s revenue has been stolen away, but drycleaning is still the number one-option (by far) for those who like their suit jackets finished, their shirts starched and their pants creased just right.

Now, however, another player is taking a swing at the industry. In September, J.C. Penney announced the coming of the Stafford Washable Suit which never has to be taken to the cleaners. It can be cleaned in the comfort of your own home. How does this miracle suit work? According to J.C. Penney, the company has replaced traditional suit interiors with technologically superior components that can withstand the wear and tear of home laundering. For a custom fit, the two-button jacket and double-pleated cuffed pants are sold separately at $190 and $80, respectively.

Once soiled, the garments are placed inside a mesh bag and cleaned using a gentle wash cycle (with your detergent of choice). Drying is accomplished by simply hanging the washed suit and pants on a quality shaped hanger. Once dry, J.C. Penney recommends a light touch up with an iron. The suit is being marketed to people who seek a less expensive and time-saving alternative to drycleaning. Yet, the garment has to be washed, hung out to dry and ironed, which is hardly quick or convenient. There is simply no comfort to be found in cleaning clothes at home. As for the overall cost factor, it is safe to assume that drycleaning is more expensive, but, as the old adage goes: you get what you pay for.

It’s hard to believe somebody thought a washable suit could capture some of the drycleaning industry’s pool of potential profits. The final proverbial nail in this product’s inevitable coffin is that it is still capable of being drycleaned an interesting quality for such a miracle garment to possess. It’s almost if J.C. Penney realized that the suits will eventually be stained and require a professional’s touch. It’s almost as if the company itself realized that there is just no substitute for the real thing.

Sometimes it seems you just can’t win.

Liquid carbon dioxide cleaning is generally regarded as the most environmentally benign of all the various solvent cleaning options available today. Even those who are not big fans of the process acknowledge that there is little or no chance of any air, soil or groundwater pollution emanating from a carbon dioxide cleaning plant.

So it came as a surprise to learn that a group of neighbors near a Hangers Cleaners plant in North Carolina are mounting a campaign to keep the company from expanding. The plant wants to install another CO2 machine to boost its cleaning capacity. The neighbors don’t want it. One nearby resident, in fact, has gone so far as to create an entire web site (stophangers.infozone.com) explaining his vehement opposition to the expansion. The opposition centers on environmental issues of a different sort than those that cleaners, landlords and government regulators usually concern themselves with. The opposing neighbors are worried about the impact on their environment in terms of noise and traffic. That, according to Bob Proctor, author of the web page, apparent leader of the opposition and a math professor at the University of North Carolina, will degrade our living environment.

Too much traffic at the drycleaners? When did this become a problem?

Ironically, it’s another UNC professor who finds himself the target of Proctor’s wrath. That would be Joseph DeSimone, familiar to many in the industry as a developer of liquid carbon dioxide drycleaning technology. He’s one of the owners of the Hangers plant. Apparently in his effort to create an ecologically and socially responsible cleaning system (as the Hangers Cleaners web site puts it), he overlooked one thing: there’s no pleasing some people when it comes to the environment.