Partner Perspective: An Interview with Chris White of America’s Best Cleaners
Continuing on our interview series on our blog, Richard Fitzpatrick interviewed Christopher White about America’s Best Cleaners and the state of the industry.
This is a transcript of a recorded conversation.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
I’d like to welcome Christopher White, the Executive Director of America’s Best Cleaners. We’re going to talk about his association and the state of the dry cleaning industry.
Chris, first, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Could you give me a little bit of background about yourself, how you came into the industry, how you got into ABC, and how that organization has developed over the last 20 years?
Christopher White:
Sure, Rich. Thanks for having me and I appreciate the Kreussler Insiders interviews that you have put out for all the industry to read and for the Kreussler clients.. My dry cleaning background starts when I was 17 years old, growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania. Friends of mine worked for Ideal Supply and Chemical and needed someone to come and help them move equipment around their warehouse and help duting equipment instalations. Then when I went to college at Slippery Rock University for sports medicine, I would help on the weekends with installs, and learning how to rebuild everything you could think of in a dry-cleaning plant. That turned into a summer job, selling machines and helping service equipment. The Summer between my sophomore and junior year I went on to work for Major League Baseball as an assistant athletic trainer. I loved that job but I realized that I really enjoyed my evenings and weekends and staying in sports medicine was not really something I was going to continue to pursue looking into so I changed my degree to sports management. I thought I was going to be a sports agent or manage a sports team.
That turned into me selling more dry-cleaning machines, and then having a chance encounter with a gentleman at a PDCA Convention in Atlantic City one night. His name is John Mahdessian. He owned a company called Madam Paulette in New York City. We were able to bid on the job, do the construction, and won the bid. We then helped the family find the property that they eventually bought. That turned into a carte blanche project for two and a half years of designing and building the most state-of-the-art cleaning facility. A year later, John’s father called me and said, “I need someone to come run this place.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a dry-cleaning manager or director of operations or whatever that title was going to be. I was in my early 20’s enjoying my traveling life of selling machines and helping to design and install plants throughout the Northeastern U.S. I made him an offer I thought he would refuse, and they accepted it immediately. The next thing you know, two weeks later I’m renting a U-Haul and driving out to New York City to start a 10-year journey at Madame Paulette. I was brought in as the general manager in the beginning and helped streamline all the systems, and get all the labor into control. Four years in, that turned into me being promoted under contract to be the Director of Operations and working there for just over nine more years. When in a family business you learn where your limits are for growth and ownership.
While I worked there, we were the only dry cleaner ever in the world to be listed the Best of the World by the Robb Report. We won almost every year the Best of New York of New York Magazine. And our client list was the Who’s Who in entertainment, fashion, and design. I was fortunate to work with some amazing people in the fashion world, working with the teams at Vera Wang Bridal. We did a very large bridal gown cleaning and restoration business. We were running that facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week with over one hundred employees. During the day we did our retail dry cleaning. At night, we did all the bridal and restoration work. The only time the boiler was shut down was on Sunday night for about six hours and then we would switch boilers to keep them both at peak operational efficiency.
During my last two years at Madame Paulette, I was invited to be an affiliate of America’s Best Cleaners by the founder, Ed D’Elicio. And then I was asked to be on the board of directors and I was just fortunate to be exposed to a lot of great high-end operations from the Eastern United States, and a couple out West, and realized that there’s more to this industry than just being a Director of Operations.
When I left Madame Paulette I wanted to be something more. I wanted to find a little bit more freedom, and I wanted my own business. When I left on March 4th, 2005, I left Madame Paulette and didn’t have a decided a career. I knew I was going to get into consulting. I had several cleaners around the country asking me to come in and help them do some work in their operations. So I did that.
Ed offered me an opportunity that seemed exciting to become the Director of Business Development for America’s Best Cleaners. My role then was to work all my relationships in the fashion world, and the technical fashion space and use my operational experience to help take ABC and make it a truly independent quality certification mark. At that time, it was basically just a cost bureau of high-end operations on the East Coast, and it was a really good group and we did a lot of great things together. Ed and I both knew there was more opportunity in the luxury goods space. I knew this for certain because for years while at Madame Paulette I would get asked, “Who do you know in L.A. that can do work like you? Who do you know in Florida that can do work like you? I’m going to be at my house in Europe. Who in Paris can I send my items to?” For me, it’s very hard when you’re dealing with that type of clientele to refer someone and not know anything about them. We always viewed a refer as an extension of our brand’s reputation and we were very conscientious of the brand Madame Paulette and what type of work we did so we almost never gave a referral. Before I left, we were shipping anywhere from 10 to 12% of our business around the world, outside the United States with a good portion still being shipped in the United States. That’s how in-demand our service was for that type of client.
And so that rang a bell in my brain, like hold on. There is this huge market out there of high-end luxury purveyors and consumers and sellers and dealers and boutiques of expensive wardrobes that are looking for a service partner that they can trust. Our goal at the time, and Ed and I both agreed, was how do we make this a legitimate certification agency that benchmarks the highest quality that we can put out in the dry cleaning or garment care industry?
Christopher White:
We were fortunate. We had partners like Kreussler Chemical, and we had Veit at the time and Miele when we were all talking about wet cleaning and Rich, to your credit, your introduction to Dr. Seiter at Kreussler GmbH and the Hohenstein Institutes, and how Kreussler helped us understand that there is already a standard out there in Germany that at the time the RAL 990 Standard had been around for 50, 55 plus years. Now it’s close to 75 years of master dry cleaning competencies.
And we made the investment and took the time to go to Germany on multiple trips to learn from the Hohenstein Institute.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
You talked about this concept of a certification, which is completely unique to the industry. There was not, here in the U.S. anyway, the idea of identifying skill levels. That was basically left up to the consumer. The consumer would go, and if the local dry cleaner wasn’t satisfying their needs, they’d continue to look until they found a good cleaner that met their needs. No different than if they were looking for other service providers. The shops that could take out stains and press well got more business, maybe through word of mouth but you usually had to find them through trial and error.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
You and your former partner, Ed, had this idea of being more than just a cost group, comparing numbers and trying to figure out, well, how do we make more money on a shirt or something like that? And you were like, “How do we standardize best practices?” I guess that’s what you started off doing to try to standardize and document best practices and incorporate that into a certification. Can you talk a little bit about how difficult that must have been initially to kind of establish what is great cleaning?
Christopher White:
Sure. Yeah. And you’re right. It’s this industry is so fragmented and so individualized that I’m not taking away from anyone their success, but everyone thinks they’re the best, right, in what they do. And it goes back to the saying, you don’t know what you don’t know. Our question, our challenge was how do we take all this knowledge that’s been around all over the place and standardize it into something structured, and then how do we score it, right, objectively? Because there’s a lot of subjectivity to a lot of things that we do, especially in quality, but there is science behind making it objective. We asked around our people in fashion, our partners, And where we were brought and made aware of the Hohenstein Institute, and we were made aware of EFIT and what EFIT does.
Christopher White:
Most of the public-facing certifications that have ever been in the industry have just been by companies saying, “Buy our products and we’ll put this master cleaner listing on your thing.” And there was no qualification legitimately behind that. You just had to buy the product. Or in other instances, it was simply paying this fee and filling out this questionnaire and doing a stain removal swatch so you are basically self-certifying to a third party and you got this sticker. That’s not a real certification.
Christopher White:
We went to talk to people in the service industry. We’re fortunate to have a partner called HS Brands International. They’ve been our partner for almost 20 years in regard to looking at what is great service on the client-facing side. They’re a secret shopping company. And so we met with them about best practices in the client-facing retail space. In the dry-cleaning space, we went to the Hohenstein. I mean, I spent weeks in Germany one time with Dr. Seiter from Kreussler, from Mr. Wexler, and then also from Jurgen Tagge, and all the people at Hohenstein, drilling, testing, taking the RAL 990 standard, understanding how it’s employed, going out into the facilities in Germany and doing the process, and then making the notes and the modifications for the U.S. market because there are a lot of similarities in the European market, but there’s a lot of things that are different between what goes on in Europe and the United States.
Christopher White:
One is the finishing. In the United States, we finish a lot more. We do a lot more shirts. At the time in Germany then, they were well known for cleaning and top-of-the-line cleaning and technical aspects in that regard. We adopted all of that, and there’s a lot of great science that’s behind that.
Christopher White:
We also adopted their approach to quality control. A lot of people are used to our trade associations giving you these sheets that diagram out these 27 points that you need to make sure are perfect on a jacket. And it’s 15 points on pants. And we learned from Hohenstein and through deep studies through their PhDs and their human interaction and their ergonomic people, is that those are important things for technical training, but when you’re doing the certification, you have to look at it through the lens of the customer. So that was really kind of the step back is like, we’re technicians at heart, all of us in the dry clean industry. And it’s always been a challenge for us to step into the customer’s eyes. And so, really making the certification an outside-in-looking view was kind of the challenge. And then how do we modify that and then make it as objective as possible?
Christopher White:
What Hohenstein taught us, especially with quality control is it’s not about the minute detail It’s, is it right or wrong in that space from the customer’s view?
So, yes. We may, as a technical team, train operators to not have cat face on the collar or not have a puckering here or there. In our certification, it either looks great or it doesn’t there. So we look at things as a collar, front, sleeve, yolk, back, and it’s either perfect or not. And that’s how we make it objective. If you see a wrinkle, it’s wrong and we deduct points on that. And then we work with our affiliates to say, “Hey, here are the areas that we’ve recognized. Here are the trends. Let’s focus on what specifically now are those things.” And then we give them action items to work on for the next year on top of making sure that they’ve met the certification because our certification is annual. I mean, we inspect annually all of our affiliates on almost 500, and… What’s it now? 560 different points. And that’s not even including the garments. And then the garments, we look at various points.
Christopher White:
So our affiliates get a physical visit. They are secret shopped a minimum of eight times a year randomly both on their routes and their retail spaces. And then we measure and monitor all of their online scorings to make sure that they’re up to snuff. So we get fed all of the online reporting and reviews. So if you start getting two-star reviews or something, we see them and we hit our affiliates with that. We tap them on the shoulder and say, “Hey, we need to pick this up.”
We did a complete overhaul of our certification shops this year. It was the first time since2018. We usually do it every two years, but with COVID we were delayed. We did our four-year overhaul of the annual site inspection reporting. So that’s being deployed now this year.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
I think about things like consumer consciousness about packaging materials and waste. I remember 15 years ago, packaging was king. Everything that you could do to present the garment and prepare the garment and protect the garment would be done by high-end cleaners so that when the garment got back to the closet, it looked exactly the way it did when it left the press. But that required a lot of waste, a lot of stuff that went into that the consumer maybe at that time was like, “Eh, bundle it up. Throw it in the garbage,” but now they’re like, “Eh, how do I get that same look without so much stuff?” And I would imagine that would be a challenge that you guys have probably overcome over the last five years, but an example of how things change.
Christopher White:
I could tell you right now at Madame Paulette, our standard was 12 pieces of tissue for a suit jacket. 12 pieces of high-end white tissue. That’s a lot. It was four for the shoulders and the yolk and three for each sleeve. And then there’s two for if you needed to touch it up around that. It’s insane to think about the paper we went through
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.
Christopher White:
We started to work with our partners in the fashion world and sourced different products and materials. We were the first organization to partner with Marinetti Hangers back in 2000. We realized that tissues were great but putting that Brioni suit back on a hanger very similar to what Brioni uses added the high-end packaging feel that eventually resulted in a hanger recycling program well before it became the necessity it is today. And now that we’re 22 years into this we evolved from there and with our partnership with the Green Business Bureau. In our space in the dry cleaning world, and especially when we start getting into the environmental space of things, everyone was about solvents, Everyone’s about solvent, this solvent that, and I was about it too. And then I started doing research and working with the engineers at the Green Business Bureau and what they were building there and helping build that green certification for dry cleaners.
Christopher White:
And we found that exactly to your point, the packaging is the number one major footprint that affiliates or all dry cleaners have. Our single-use poly, our paper tags, our tissue, the plastic clips, the cardboard collar stays and it’s just, the list goes on and on and on. And they are used through garment coverage. One and done, never to be used again. Even at the time, hangers and at Madame Paulette, we were the first ones ever to adopt putting everything on wooden and plastic hangers. I mean, this is 20, some plus years ago where we were leading the charge on that. And we found that the value was in getting those hangers back, and we didn’t even know at the time that it was an environmental thing. It was more for a quality and presentation thing, so… But at the end of the day, we realized that the use of that was impactful.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Currently, you have a base of affiliates that participate in America’s Best Cleaners. A lot of them came to you as established cleaners within their market. Has it been your experience that membership with America’s Best Cleaners works better or is more advantageous for a cleaner that already has established itself in the market? Or have you found that basically a cleaner at any level could benefit from participation?
Christopher White:
Well, I’m certain that a cleaner at any level could benefit from participation, at least from the listening side of it and hearing what’s going on. I think that some may be a little overwhelmed and intimidated in contributing, but for us, we’re a public-facing brand. We are first and foremost a quality certification mark. We’ve trademarked our brand. It’s meant to be that first. And what that does is, we make sure that the people that are in the room contributing, right, are of a certain stature or maturity in their business, both in their business mindset and the establishment of their business in their local region, that allows for us to have really high-level calibrated conversations. And so you can imagine how much air can be taken out of a room if we have to constantly go back and recalibrate an entry-level person in the industry up into our conversation. The major standard that we require, first of all, is everyone in our group has to be doing at least a million dollars a year. And we’ve decided that a million dollars from a long time ago is an established brand. You have to offer route pickup and delivery service. And this has been around for 22 years.
Christopher White:
You have to be able to service the entire MSA that you cover.. The ABC brand is a protected mark when you have your market, you own your market and you are who we refer to. We don’t have even degrees. There was discussion years ago about having silver and gold and platinum. And there are people that find value in that. For us, we like to keep it simple and objective. You are either the certified the best or you’re not, and there’s no other way to look at it.
Christopher White:
I would say that for certain, I know that people that have been aware or had gone to or participated in some of our public offerings. Obviously, the last thing was our leadership forum. During COVID we got a lot of great responses from everyone, and they got just a small sampling of the level of discussion and conversations that take place in our accelerator meetings.
Christopher White:
And you know, Rich, you’ve been to our meetings. We’re pretty much, I would say, once you’re in the affiliation, we’re a pretty open affiliation. We don’t restrict other dry cleaners from being in any other group. We don’t believe in that at all. We believe that whatever works best for you to make you successful in your business, you should be involved. And so that’s the approach that our owners typically have is that by default for the development of their team members, I think we just organically draw people that want to excel and want to be better and are in that mindset and want to bring that appreciation of themselves to their staff and let them feel that also.
Christopher White:
So… And I’ve said this from day one to all my affiliates, even back from my Madame Paulette days teaching my managers. So I was like, “Look. We can buy a piece of equipment and it’s going to help our business, but it’s going to depreciate on day one. Our employees, if we hire them properly, we should be appreciating their value every single day. We should be teaching them something new. We should be letting them participate. We should hear what they have to say. And maybe sometimes it’s not right for right now, but don’t discredit what your team members are saying. They will appreciate in value.”
Christopher White:
And so we kind of feel the same way about how we conduct our meetings, how we want our owners to be involved is they naturally come in, they’re open, they share, they’re not derogatory, but there is accountability in our group. We hold everyone accountable. Our standards hold everyone accountable, so that we, as an ABC, our corporate team are the ones that hold their feet to the fire. And that alleviates the other affiliates from having to check on or check-in or check out other affiliates. I mean, they know that if you met the standard that I’ve been through it and I’ve had Chris or the team through their business, and they’ve passed the 500 plus checkpoints. I know that they have met the standards and are the caliber of people and business owners that I feel comfortable learning and sharing with.. So now everyone’s forward-thinking.
Christopher White:
I think that’s probably the biggest benefit for us, and I know for our affiliates, is the ability to be able to have really elevated discussions without the conscientious worry if someone doesn’t belong or is not there yet. It Doesn’t happen.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Okay. So basic benchmarks have to be met. You obviously encourage cleaners to kind of like strive for that. You always want people to be successful, but you guys would kind of like to see your affiliates at least establish themselves in the marketplace, have these basic things ready to go, and be able to come into the group and not only learn, but participate and share at a level that gives them space, headspace to grow, but obviously, they’re not dragging the rest of the conversations down. Maybe not the best term for it, but…
Christopher White:
Yeah. Sure. I mean, it… Yeah. And also, we have to be real. Every business is different. So we have a standard everyone rallies around and we all know that’s what it is, but the way people approach their finances and where they are in their life, and what they want to take out of their business is different. When you start looking at someone’s EBITDA differently than someone else’s EBITDA. Yeah. There are some rules of thumbs out there, but what’s defined success for yourself, and we’ll help you get there. How are you defining? You have a whole team of peers in the industry, but also our team in-house that will do whatever we can to help you reach those goals. We want you to be clear about what those are, and we want you to be clear about your team members, what they are, and what that allows then is you to go from the old Malcolm Gladwell notion of going from Good to Great, And constantly staying on the cutting edge. And we’ve learned through all these recessions and now COVID is how important a plan is.
It is important to react to things, but not have a business built about being reactive. We want to be proactive, and that’s a huge shift for a lot of people in this industry.
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America’s Best Cleaners at a recent group meeting
Richard Fitzpatrick:
That brings me to the next topic, which is obviously some things within ABC are consistent, like your quality standards and the certification process, but then there are probably more relevant current topics that you guys are focusing on and COVID has changed business for a lot of people. What are the conversations that you guys are focused on? What are you talking about with your affiliates now versus, say, five or six years ago?
Christopher White:
Well, I mean, labor, in what we do, how we attract, and how we retain labor has always been a conversation. It’s just now our position’s different. We literally had a… I think you were part of that accelerator meeting when we were talking about labor, and we were talking about how we were getting lots of labor, but not very skilled or qualified labor. And now here we are is, our affiliates are doing tremendously well, right now. They’re really successful and they’re all growing, coming out of the pandemic, but they’re having challenges with labor again, but they just can’t get employees in the door. The problem always has been the qualification of the skills of the labor coming in. So previously our conversations were looking at the labor force and maybe looking at how we can isolate skills in certain people because we had a lot of people coming our way and we were trying to build deep benches and control labor that way. Now it’s how do we broaden the skill set of each individual in your company, gain more value, going back to that appreciation aspect of it?
Christopher White:
We’ve been looking at career pathing more than we ever have. Why is it important to have a career path for someone coming into your business? Because we’re not competing against other dry cleaners right now for labor. We’re competing against every service sector and every hospitality type business out there, and they’re paying wages in the $20 an hour range and they’re paying massive benefit packages. And when you start looking at benefits packages that are at the $28 to $30 an hour range in some marketplaces and it’s trickling throughout the country, that’s a challenge.
Christopher White:
We’re looking at the conversations are, what is it about my company, my culture, and the knowledge that we impart to our people to help them feel empowered and growing and appreciated? And we want to keep them. We want to keep them now. And so there’s been a lot of great discussions about that in our affiliates, and they’re definitely higher level than we’ve ever had before. I mean, we’re talking about gain-sharing programs and working with The Great Game of Business on how to get people to buy in and get bonused out for performance, but also open-book management, treating them like mature adults and letting them understand how a business runs, so they could see it from the business owner’s eyes.
Christopher White:
And these are very empowering things. And I will tell you, most dry cleaners that I’ve known historically would basically crap their pants if they knew that there are dry cleaners out there with their P&Ls publicly displayed on their production floor for all the employees to see and let them know. And it’s empowering. It’s amazing what that does for the business.
Christopher White:
And we’ve been working on that for several years, and we’ve had some affiliates that have broken through many years ago with that. And now that’s open-book management is becoming more attractive than ever.
Technology, Rich, is always the thing. And we’ve seen technology leaps now in regards to route services, the mapping that goes on with that. Obviously, COVID pushed a lot of people into moving between pickup and delivery. Our affiliates were already ahead of that. As I said, that’s just part of our certification. You had to have pickup delivery.
Christopher White:
And we’re really fortunate that partners that we’ve had all along, like SPOT Business Systems and all that have allowed us first looks and beta test groups to get that technology in our hands sooner than later, to keep a competitive advantage. And now it’s more than ever AI functionality and how to deal with webchat and communicating with customers.
Christopher White:
So I think the industry is now starting to come around a little bit more to where we were always trying to strive to be, and that was being a client-centric business first and foremost that does this service. Whether it’s cleaning clothes or now cleaning your whole laundry or doing your household items or whatever it may be, outside cushion covers, shoes, sneakers, we’ve always been targeting and listening to what the luxury market’s been doing.
Christopher White:
And fortunately for a lot of our affiliates, they’re listed as the best in their marketplace, and the luxury market has not stopped spending. So a lot of our clients are seeing a lot of that growth. They may not be spending it on specifically the same things they were two, three to five years ago, but they’re still spending a lot of money and they need service.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Going back to the mid-1990s through the 2000s, we saw a lot of outside investment in automation technology. We saw the introduction of radio frequency ID chips, barcoding, automated assisted assembly systems, automatic bagging systems, and computer-controlled storage, and then it just kind of stopped, and we really didn’t get past the automation of some of the aspects within our plants, which are really labor-intensive like finishing. Do you think that we kind of like dropped the ball on that? Or do you think we went as far as we could with automation in regards to labor?
Christopher White:
No. I think there are a lot of opportunities. You mentioned, RFID technology. So going back to that, I mean, those were ABC affiliates that were deploying RFID technology. Jones Cleaning Centers, Platinum Cleaners down in Naples, Florida. I mean, these were cutting-edge facilities in design, but also process flow. And I think a couple of things caused that. One, labor got cheap and available, so the upfront cost on some of that technology is quite extensive. I think RFID has got a space and it’s definitely going to come back. At the time in the ’90s antennas were expensive, the ranges were spotty, and they were picking up things incorrectly.
Christopher White:
The other thing is that RFID chips had to be reused. There was still a lot of labor on the mark. When the heat seal label came in, that permanent label that had all the descriptors and all the history on it, was a great thing on the customer service side. But it was an awesome thing on the back-end production side. Mark in times and accuracy is just in, we are off the charts now. We’re talking about 150 to 175 pieces an hour getting marked in accurately with consistent pricing. That’s a huge improvement in process accuracy and speed.
Christopher White:
And that takes a lot of the human factor out of mistakes that were taking place. The back end on the assorting assembly side, I mean, Metalprogetti has just been blown up in this space in regard to how they’ve been able to make the efficiencies. And there are other systems out there too, like Garmentsort that are hybrid semiautomatic, and that work for some people in their budget.
Christopher White:
But I think RFID, as soon as RFID and now there’s already happening right now with near-field technology… There’s already technology out there now, Rich, that the textile industry where there are buttons now that have near-field scanners on there. It’s not even RFID. It’s the NFS scanners on your phone that can pick them up. They’re inventorying whole retail shops now with mobile devices with NFS technology. And that’s because they’re able to program those chips easily with the information and the skew data on there.
Christopher White:
I think Moore’s Law is going to take over. It’s already, we know from your work in Kreussler on the industrial laundry side, that programmable RFID chips are available. Tunnel scanning and tracking in wash wheels and processing through the plant is available now, but they are static RFID chips built to block static items. Once we get to that aha moment with the technology where we can program RFID chips, like we can heat seal labels, I think you’re going to see passive scanning and passive productivity and move into play very quickly, especially now with the consolidation that’s taken place after COVID.
Christopher White:
The plant designs that we are doing now inside and outside of our affiliation are 30, 40, and 50,000 square foot facilities now. These are large central operating plants that are going to have the money, that are going to want the technology to measure, and monitor labor. And they’re going to want to mimic as best as possible what Amazon can do, or even like Rent the Runway can do, and track the process flow of garments through every single hand, every single workstation, every single storage facility, know where it is at all times, and be able to at some point at your choosing, divulge that information, that transparency to consumers, because that’s what they want.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Going to give you a magic wand and tell you, you can fix one thing in the industry. What would it be?
Christopher White:
If I could fix one thing in the industry, what it be? Wow. That’s a big one. Let me get back to you on that answer. It’ll come to me while we’re talking.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
All right. That’s fine. Somebody comes to you at a trade show, and says, “Hey, I know you’re the executive director of America’s Best Cleaners. I’m not there yet, but could you give me some advice? What things should I be focusing on in my business right now? I’m having a hard time growing my customer base,” or, “I’m having a hard time dropping enough to the bottom line.” What would you say to them?
Christopher White:
Yeah. I will always tell an owner, no matter what, is to one, and get involved in your local business community and find out what’s going on and who are the people, because those are your potential clients and there are people locally that may be able to help you in your business. It’s not just about the dry cleaner. Second thing is, have you had any formal training? Whether it’s the DLI or having a consultant in and work with your business.
Christopher White:
I think that unfortunately for a lot of dry cleaners, they think they’re in this space and they run their domain and many of them are very successful, but I think they’re hesitant to reach out and ask for help. And I think that reaching out, having a conversation with someone that can come in and work with you and your business and help you intimately identify those things could be the most amazing aha moment for you even if you’re receptive and open to it.
Christopher White:
And so, I always would say quality is king. And when I say that, focus on your quality. Is your quality, every piece going out consistent and at the level, you’re satisfied with? Is this type of service you’re delivering to your client the quality level you want? I always tell owners, “Step outside of your ownership role. Look at your business as a customer and be critical. Be that annoying Yelp review customer that you hate to yourself and be honest with yourself and really self-assessed and ask for help.” And you know what, Rich, that’s probably the biggest thing right now I’d ask if I was a magic wand, is for dry cleaners out there to know that there are people in this industry that yes, sell products and yes, sell services, but they’re not all out trying to steal from you. They’re out there trying to help you be successful because if you’re successful buying their products, they’re going to be successful.
Christopher White:
And I think we’ve always had this cynical mentality about how we approach the fashion industry, how we approach some of our allied tradespeople. And I think that if we were to turn that around and be receptive in listening, active listening to what people are sharing with you, especially when it comes to the customer side, know that these are not personal attacks. These are people attacking your service. And if you could step away and have the emotional intelligence to look at it, that way, this whole industry could turn around on a dime.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Let’s just assume that a recession is coming. You could argue that some economists are saying, “Eh, there’s a path forward that doesn’t include a recession,” but let’s assume that path is already limited and that we’re going to be entering a recession. What are you telling your affiliates to do now in preparation for what could be a downturn in the economy over the next two years?
Christopher White:
Same thing I have told them in every recession or even going through the COVID. Stick to your plan, lean into your marketing, keep on delivering quality. Don’t give up. Lean in. Don’t pull yourself out of the space. Everyone that I’ve toured the Western United States and the Northeast United States since Covid’s been up, all the dry cleaners that I know that have been vocal out there on social media, have continued their marketing campaigns up, they are gangbusters busy right now.
Christopher White:
Those that reduced their hours to four hours a week or every other day and just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut… You are never, even in a recession, going to cut your way to success. Your cost should already be in line. If you’re not paying attention to your cost side, I mean, after COVID, I don’t have any help for you. But revenue will be king, and you have to get revenue wherever you can and don’t be afraid to take revenue any way you get it in a recession.
Christopher White:
And I think everyone already knows after… Whoever survived this last COVID pandemic knows that you got to be flexible and meet your customers where they’re at. Can’t be rigid, my hours are this, and this is when I do business, and that’s that. And if that’s the way you’re going to run a business, then you’re going to get what you deserve. Seriously, that’s just… You’ve got to be… You got to lean into it.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Do you think there should be a harder barrier to entry for this industry?
Christopher White:
Yes and no, but yes. In general, I think there should be. I think if you look at all the facets that take place in a dry-cleaning business, I mean, we are a multitude of different industries. We are a logistics business. We’re a production processing business. We’re a client relations business. We’re a problem-solving business. I mean, that’s the number one thing that we do is we solve people’s problems. They got dirty clothes. It’s a problem. We got to solve it.
Christopher White:
And when you look at all those facets and all the things that back that. We’re talking about multiple trucks on the road that are driving around all over the place trying to make stops in a reasonable time. We’re talking about chemicals and chemistry that are being used and deployed on people’s textiles and clothes and in the workforce. We’re talking about systems and process facilities that have equipment that is around some rather dangerous kinds of things. I’ve seen… You and I both have been in plants that are just absolute death traps, and I think that all of those have different aspects that require some degree of certification, but the expertise to be good at them if you did them on their own. Especially when you consider that we use high-pressure boilers and have limited or no requirement to understand how to use them in the U.S. at least in Canada you must have an operational certificate that you must maintain.
Christopher White:
And I think that yes. Just like there is for any other trades like plumbers and electricians that deal with these various things, and it’s very much what happens in Germany, is that there should be a permitting certification type realm that in a certain period of time, over two to three to five years, you meet some requirements of safety and process capability, and then the market takes over from there.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. Okay.
Christopher White:
And I think it’s important because we are a huge labor company. I mean, that is mostly what we have. So we’re dealing with people, and the more that we can protect both the customer side and the operational production side of people and have some degree of standard, it’s only better for all the good operators, because we know that this industry has been taken down by the bad operators day in, day out. That’s why we have the Seinfeld jokes out there. And that’s why we have the taken to the cleaners. Or the notion that when you walk into a dry cleaner… If I were to line up 100 dry cleaners and I’d go into 65 to 70% of their plants, those plants or those stores or retail, they are not even clean. They’re full of lint and dust and old and dusty stuff. And we’re supposed to be the ones presenting a fresh, clean, safe place for us to solve your dirty clothes problem. We can’t even keep our place clean ourselves.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. It’s terrible, what we’ve done to ourselves. The problems that we’ve created ourselves for the industry is really, it’s daunting. So hey, in 2032, your hairline’s going to look a little bit more like my hairline. What do you think the industry is going to look like?
Christopher White:
I think we’re going to continue to see a large consolidation of operations throughout all the markets. And I think it’s going to end up being almost like the beer industry. You’re going to have your big players, and then you’re going to have your local boutiquey shops. There’s still something important in American society about the habit of going out to independent small businesses. And I hope that that still stays true for our industry, but also many industries. Because I travel a lot and I know you do, Rich. A lot of cities are starting to look the same. They look like the same mall. The airport looks the same. The truck stops look the same. The downtown areas are starting to look the same.
Christopher White:
There’s this homogenization of America where some of these cities are losing their identity, and their identities were formed by independent small businesses. The coffee shops, the restaurants, the local dry cleaner, the gift shop, the toy shop, everything that was local that built and promoted local artisans and artisan businesses or crafts or agriculture, where are they going? And why are they leaving? And why are we allowing ourselves to give it up, to have the same old thing at the same old place at the same time? Where is that? Why is that?
Christopher White:
And it’s unfortunately sad to see that take place, and I hope that changes. And it’s happening across the world, but I have to say, traveling to Europe and Asia, whatever, for whatever reasons, there’s still that feeling of, if I go to Barcelona, big city, I know I’m in Barcelona. Even if I go to a small city in Germany… Like Wiesbaden. It’s Wiesbaden. It’s not the same. It’s…
Richard Fitzpatrick:
It’s not Munich. It’s not Berlin.
Christopher White:
It’s not Munich.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
It’s not… Yeah.
Christopher White:
It’s not a little town. It’s not Perugia.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.
Christopher White:
It’s still… They have their identity. You used to be able to go to Cleveland and you’d know you’re in Cleveland because there was a sense of Cleveland. But now if I go to Cleveland, I go to Kansas City. Can I tell the difference?
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. Probably.
Christopher White:
Other than they all have a football stadium. They all have a baseball stadium. They all almost look the same. Now there’s a little bit of architectural difference, but they’re all going through the same downtown renaissance where everyone’s trying to make it look like New York City. And have this loft-style living and then five Starbucks. And all the Lululemons and really, some of our downtown areas, unfortunately, are starting to look like airports or what the malls used to look like.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. It’s becoming the competition for wood-fired pizza and craft beer in every restaurant.
Christopher White:
In 2035, I hope that the industry, yes. There will always be a place for the large, maybe regional brands. And we know that there are some national brands taking hold. And I think the types of garments and the type of service that the consumers need now, compared to what it was 10 years ago, is making it easier for them to make inroads because there’s not much difference in even the wardrobe that people are wearing now. I mean, I travel a lot and I see a lot of clothes. I literally… And I will tell you this, Rich, we updated our garment quality control shops for the first time where we combined garments. We took dresses and skirts and made them one item now because we hardly see dresses in dry cleaners, and we hardly see skirts anymore. Very small pockets in certain cities and all our certification is representative of the blend.
Christopher White:
We look at a lot of shirts now. We look at a lot of pants now and not as many suit jackets. We don’t even see vests. I mean, I can’t even tell you the last time I’ve seen a vest in a place, and we had an earmark that put in neckwear as an item. Scarves and ties. Four years ago, that was in our planning. We should probably add that in there just because in the high end we see it. We don’t see that now, so it’s not part of our vernacular or what we’re doing.
I will just tell you right now where we are at ABC and what we are doing right now, consciously thought about it last year, put it into motion this year is, we are developing a training team to help get out there with our affiliates and help them train and not lose our artisan skills and crafts that are disappearing daily.
Christopher White:
I mean, literally, I was in Vancouver last week and I was with one of our clients who is retiring. She’s 34 years of really great operational skills gone. This person loved to talk about and work on vintage restoration, bridal cleaning, and redyeing and had a love and a passion for fixing these things. And when someone like that leaves and doesn’t pass on that knowledge, where does that knowledge go? It’s gone.
Christopher White:
And so… So important for us in America’s Best Cleaners in our mission trying to service the luxury market, the high-end clients, the high-end fashion world, it’s imperative for us to keep that skill and artisanship alive. And so that’s a lot of where we are working with our affiliates now is, we have this standard, but we’re doing our darnedest to make sure that you can exceed that standard and wow your clients with that old world, traditional knowledge. We will continue to uphold our tagline “ The best brands cared for by the best hands”. And that’s just the way we’re trying to continue that trend.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
And that’s something that probably wasn’t in your original model was to become the stewards of this knowledge base. But it’s something that you’ve had to start to do to guarantee that it lives beyond the generations that had it.
Christopher White:
Yes and because of Covid we had to pivot so, we now provide monthly presentations in our accelerator programs, and topical conversations about what’s important for owners. And now we have larger operations here. They’re top-line managers who don’t come from this industry, on what’s important in the technical aspect of our industry. And then we provide them the templates and years of knowledge of idea sharing, comments, photos, whatever is out there in a 22-year history, a library that we have online for them to have access 24/7 to help them.
Christopher White:
And that’s why they’re called accelerators. They accelerate those non-knowledgeable, highly skilled managers. They’re management people. They have the management mindset that’s always been missing from our industry. They just don’t know the Xs and Os of our industry. How do we get them caught up as fast as possible? So it’s like, bring in a new star quarterback into the team. How do we get them on the playbook? How do we get that playbook adopted, and implemented in working to be a championship level as soon as possible? And so not to make the sports metaphor, but that’s kind of where we’re at. That’s what we’re doing. And that wasn’t something that we did. We met before we had our meetings. We worked with the fashion industry and we were just constantly working relationships and we still are doing that.
But now we’ve had to put in this next-level component because the opportunity is there and we’re running a business, but also the need is so high, and I’ve invested 30 plus years of my life in this industry. I don’t want to see some of the amazing work that I’ve done personally, and people that I’ve associated with, just go for naught and turn into a commodity because there’s still high fashion out there. There’s still costume work. There’s still vintage restoration.
Christopher White:
And now with the circular fashion movement coming on, we’re really paying attention to the fashion as an asset movement where this next generation is buying better brands because of the environmental aspect of it, and because now there’s a resale market. So they look at fashion as an asset, not so much as a styling trend, but instead of buying Zara or H&M fast fashion trend base, this next level of better consumer is buying nice clothes, well-known brands, because they know they can wear it for three weeks, couple months, but then they can put it up on a resale market and get almost all their money back. And sometimes they even appreciate. We never knew garments as appreciating.
The Economist wrote an amazing article on it several months ago called Fashion as an Asset Class about this. And that’s why you see it’s a $52 billion market now, the resale fashion market right now, and it’s growing.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
That’s a whole other conversation.
Christopher White:
Yep. It is.
Richard Fitzpatrick:
Christopher White, Executive Director of America’s Best Cleaners, I want to thank you so much for giving us some time to talk about your organization, really the only certification out there for dry cleaners that are looking to move to the next level. If you haven’t had a conversation with Chris, we’re going to share all of his contact information. And of course, if you’re coming to Clean Show, he’s going to be on the floor for a few days with his entire team. You definitely want to track him down and have his ear for a few minutes. Chris, thank you so much for your time and for everything that you’ve done for the industry.
Christopher White:
Thanks, Rich.