Let’s take the pain out of shirts
hirts are a pain
because the revenue that they generate is disproportional to
the amount of headaches they cause. Shirts are a pain because
they require 50 percent of our management time and only 20
percent of our gross revenue.
Sometimes we sub-contract the headaches to
another person or party.
Does that cure all? Hardly. Sometimes
it’s worse. And subbing out the shirts doesn’t
necessarily mean that we use a shirt wholesaler either.
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Somehow we still feel the pressure,
though. Either because we see the myriad of issues that exist
or because we know that customers still have complaints in
spite of our efforts or because payroll is too high even when
we are short-handed!
All of this would be a whole lot more
acceptable if only we were able to charge more for our shirts.
Perhaps our revenue per piece is $2 less than it is for a
drycleaning piece, but we spend just as much time administering
issues with shirts as with drycleaning.
If we sub-out the shirts to a wholesaler,
we have no sympathy for his plight. When a customer complains
or when we need to double-check every shirt for missing buttons
to head-off complaints, we’re suitably annoyed. We
believe that we have delegated this chore and we really
shouldn’t have to do this.
Furthermore, we believe that we are paying
a premium for this wholesale service, further reducing our
revenue, not to mention increasing our personal work load. We
reason that if we did our own shirts, they would be perfect and
our cost would be less.
In my many years as a plant owner or
operator, I processed millions of shirts for hundreds of
wholesale customers. Among those are customers that I lost
because they wanted to begin doing their own shirts.
I think of three in particular because
they all have unique stories. They were Ted, Gene and Fred.
Ted was a good businessman who competed
with the Chinese laundry next door. He only had a half-share of
his potential business because his customers apparently liked
on-premise work.
Many of his customers dropped their shirts
off at the Chinese laundry and then walked next door to his
shop to drop off their drycleaning. He bet that he’d
double his business if the shirts were done in his store.
He was right. He did just that. He also
liked that he could “control” (his words) the shirt
service.
Gene’s motive was ego. Although he
claimed that he liked the service and quality from me, he
wanted to do his own shirts. His resume included many years of
managing a large commercial laundry/drycleaning plant with a
shirt department. His basic mentality was that a drycleaning
plant had to have a shirt department. He did it.
Fred, however, did not have much of a plan
but felt that he was surely a major player in the area because
he had six satellite stores. He built a new plant from the
ground up which, of course, included a shirt laundry. It got
ugly after that.
Ted had a vision, a plan and proved
capable of executing it all. A year after starting his shirt
laundry, I had occasion to speak with him.
Naturally, I asked him about the shirt
business. He expressed contentment regarding his decision to
invest in his plant and felt it was the right move.
The fact that his business did indeed
double was not only impressive but also surely contributed to
general satisfaction about his venture into the shirts
business.
But his most overriding comment was his
astonishment about how much of his time shirts took.
Taking on your own shirts really is
approximately equivalent to doubling your drycleaning
overnight. Twice the pieces, twice the problems, twice the
commotion.
True, there may not be twice as many
employees or twice as much equipment, but that very fact
illustrates my point: Shirts are a pain because they require a
disproportionate amount of management. They do not provide
twice the revenue nor twice the profit. Ted is now a long-time
Tailwind Systems client and I keep in touch with him as often
as I can.
Even with a layer of management between
himself and the rank and file for insulation, he will still
tell you that administering the shirt department takes a
substantial chunk of his time. It is much easier when using a
wholesaler. You don’t have to worry about absenteeism or
any other labor issue.
Supply cost? Don’t care. Cost per
shirt? No problem. You can spit it out in a second. But using
that wholesaler doesn’t mean you’ve beaten the
issue du jour.
When a customer complains about shirts,
you are damn peeved. The problems that they cause directly
result in lost customers and you are certain that it is
entirely the shirt guy’s fault.
If you are a good manager, you will manage
your way through this quality issue, but I assure you that this
will be a challenge. Think it’s hard to manage your own
employees? Try attempting to manage someone else’s.
It’s so hard, in fact, that most people don’t have
a clue about how to begin.
That brings up Gene. You see, Gene
doesn’t think that shirts take much management and he
makes himself right. Shirts need the management, he just
doesn’t do it. Remember that his motive was ego. So he
goes into the shirt business on the cheap with a used bantam
unit.
I was in his plant one day. He had been in
the shirt business for a while by now and wanted me to start
doing his shirts again. At the time, he was nearing retirement
age.
There he was, pressing the shirts himself
at the rate something like 15 per hour. At this time he claimed
that he had more work than his equipment could handle.
Perhaps, but he also claimed that was
producing perfect quality. I remember how he spoke about three
seconds too soon. He said, “The quality is perfect”
as he grabbed a shirt cuff to demonstrate his claim.
The cuff was horrendous. His face was
crimson. He sidesteps the need to manage his shirt department
by simple not doing it. No employee management, no quality
control, maybe service issues. Yet he claims that all is fine.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
Fred is clueless. He designs a shirt plant
without professional help, and doesn’t care about what it
will take to run the department. He’ll just hire a
manager. Even if it were that simple, supervising your shirt
department manager can be most time-consuming and frustrating.
Actually, Fred hired a rather good manager
— one that used to work for me. But without support from
ownership/upper management, good managers aren’t so good
in the final analysis. Fred may agree that shirts are a pain,
but may not realize that he contributes to it.
Shirts are a pain because the revenue that
they generate is disproportional to the amount of headaches
they cause, but we are our own worst enemy.
The cyclical issue exists because some of
us are guilty of using entry-level management, or no management
at all, in the shirt department (because that department
doesn’t make any money), which results in sub-standard
results and probably losses rather than profits. We loathe to
assign our best manager there, fearing that that person is
“wasted.” Probably not. It takes a tough manager to
squeeze a nickel out of a dollar bill.
Donald Desrosiers has been in the
shirt laundering business since 1978 and is a work-flow systems
engineer who provides services to shirt launderers through
Tailwind Shirt Systems, 867 Spencer St., Fall River, MA. He can
be reached by phone at (508) 965-3163 or by e-mail at tailwind1@comcast.net and he has a web sites located at: www.tailwindshirts.com and www.dondesrosiers.com
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