Small Wonder
ACME Cleaners of
Orlando, Florida is a small plant with a big heart. With less
than 50 employees altogether, it isn’t easy for owner Jim
Parham to offer some of the same benefits as many of the bigger
businesses in the city, but he finds a way to do it anyway.
So far, his efforts have proved quite
successful since ACME has been named by the Orlando Sentinel as
one of the area’s top 100 companies (of all sizes) for
working families for 11 straight years.
In addition to that, ACME was singled out
in 2003 with a Small Wonder Award for being the top small
business employer in all of Orlando.
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Instead, Jim offers just about everything
else he can think of, including full benefits, paid vacations,
a 401k plan, an annual family picnic, lunch-and-learn parenting
seminars and a slew of other services designed to keep his
employees around for the long haul with ACME.
“There are times when you get
exasperated because you’ve done it for several years and
the employees, well, expect it,” he said. “But,
what we do — like with our Christmas party —
we’ll let everybody vote on where they want to go. We
have a “River Ship Romance” option and do a cruise
down a river. We’ll go to the whodunit plays... the
dinnertime theaters. The kids were always a part of it, but
then they voted that down. They wanted to go somewhere fancy
and nicer than they would not normally get a chance to go
to.”
Listening to his employees helps Jim
accomplish his main goal of making the workplace a better
atmosphere.
“We weed out the troublemakers
really quickly,” he noted. “Every workplace has
their people who like to generate trouble and we find them and
tell them they aren’t going to last. I do talk to them so
they know we’re watching. It’s like mom and dad.
When dad calls them in to have a talk with them, they know
something’s up. My wife, Sarah, is the same way.
She’s in charge of the sexual harassment program here and
when stuff happens and mom calls them in, they know
they’re in trouble.”
Jim often uses parental terms when
referring to his plant staff because it’s such a
tight-knit group.
Not only do he and his wife maintain
close, personal relationships with workers, but ACME is
currently employing its fifth generation of the family now that
Jim’s grandson Randy has started working there.
The company can trace those family roots
all the way back to 1928 when Jim’s great uncle, Dick,
first serviced local residents of Winter Park, Florida.
“He started with what we call wet
wash — picking up laundry that was already in laundry
nets, washing it, extracting it and delivering it back,”
he said. “There was no pressing. That was all done in one
day.”
In 1946, Jim’s uncle, Ernest,
purchased the company along with friend J.D. Peck. Previously,
Ernest Parham had worked as the manager of Orlando Steam
Laundry, the biggest drycleaning and laundry business in
central Florida.
Jim initially came to work for both men
in 1960 when he was 20 years old. Like his great uncle before
him, Jim started out in the home delivery field.
It didn’t take long, however,
before Jim began to expand his knowledge. In 1964, he took the
full-time 12-week course offered at the National Institute of
Drycleaning. The course was a lot easier for Jim since he had
already trained under the tutelage of J.D. Peck.
“I was trained in the wetcleaning
department — things like taking white collars off of navy
outfits and jackets, hand clean them and sew them back
on,” he recalled. “You never charged anymore,
either. If it needed to be done, you just did it. You could
take pride in your work.”
Not long after polishing up his cleaning
skills, Jim took a more active management role in the company.
Then, in 1972, he bought ACME outright. At the time, he was
determined to keep its quality level up, but he wanted to bring
about some changes, as well.
“The thing that had impacted me the
most was that we had an employee retire because of health
reasons and she had been with my uncle at ACME Cleaners for
years,” Jim said. “She kind of retired with a
handshake and a pat on the back... you know: ‘Gosh, you
did a wonderful job. See you later.’ That bothered me.
“When I took over, I decided I was
going to have some kind of retirement plan and be more for the
employees. I just wanted to start on what I felt was the ground
floor there. It was the people and how hard they worked and how
much they looked forward to their vacations. So, I started paid
vacations for all the employees.”
It all kind of steamrolled from there.
Though Jim lacked the resources of big corporations, he still
strived to offer similar benefits. It all seemed worthwhile
when the Orlando Sentinel recognized the company as a top
employer eleven years ago.
“When they first started it, the
full benefit program was something only the biggest employers
had at the time and we had that,” Jim recalled. “We
were doing a cafeteria benefit, a 401K and the vacations and
paid time off. We also had a savings plan — a Christmas
club where we would match employee savings. When December came,
the people who did save — which was 100 percent of them
— we matched it.”
Jim’s inspiration for the Christmas
Club was simply to find an easier way to hand out December
bonuses.
“It’s always so difficult
come December time to do bonuses. Who is going to get this and
who is going to get that and this employee always tells that
one,” he said. “So, why don’t we just have
everybody throw in so much, which makes it easier on me so we
could match that amount in the company’s savings account
every week so we don’t have to come up with a whole bunch
of money at one time.”
In the ensuing years, Jim kept coming up
with new employee perks, including free financial advice, 100
percent tuition reimbursement for college or business-related
courses (as long as the employee earned at least a C grade) and
a children’s activity center where employees can take
their kids whenever an emergency crops up. At one time, Jim
even offered morning Bible classes at the plant.
With so many benefits, it’s no
wonder that ACME has a low turnover rate and a high production
efficiency as part of the better working atmosphere Jim worked
to create. Of course, there are a few intrinsic rewards, as
well.
“I was at the dentist’s
office one time and the hygienist came and she started going on
and on, running around and telling everybody, ‘This is my
working dad.’ It felt really good.”
Jim’s image as a drycleaner has
come a long way. It doesn’t seem that long ago when he
felt nothing but frustration about his occupation.
“For so many years, when you told
somebody ‘I work for a drycleaners’ — they
kind of said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad’,” he
laughed. “I took it personally. I was extremely proud the
first year, and every year after that, when we hit the top 100
list. If the whole industry worked harder in doing that and
making it a better workplace for our people, it would be a lot
easier to get people to work for us.”
According to Jim, image is still the most
persistent thorn in the industry’s side.
“One of the thinkings that a lot of
cleaners have had — and I did at one time — is:
‘People we hire only care about the bottom dollar, the
paycheck. They don’t care about the benefits and this and
that’,” he said. “Those aren’t the type
of people we want working for us because that’s the type
of person who is going to go somewhere else on another corner.
We’ve stuck to the benefits and now have the type of
employees who are looking for long-term employment.”
Giving back to employees is only part of
the equation; Jim also believes in supporting the local
community and the industry.
He recently rejoined the board for the
South Eastern Fabricare Association and also participates in a
Sid Tuchman management group.
Locally, he keeps active on the chamber
of commerce and the Rotary Club, of which he is a past
president. He has worked with the Better Business Bureau on
occasion, too.
In the future, he looks forward to
retiring so he can have more time to golf and fish. Until then,
however, he’ll continue to handle the demanding reins at
ACME, which has the distinction of running the valet service
for the Disney hotels, and is also a member of the Certified
Restoration Drycleaning Network.
The company additionally offers bridal
gown preservation, hand finishing of all of its shirts and
contains its own alteration department.
With so much to oversee, Jim is glad that
wife, Sarah, works by his side. She has been with the company
for over 20 years, simplifying his job considerably.
“It does make it a lot easier
because a family business is like another child,” Jim
explained. “Normally, it’s the child who is the
squeaky wheel — the one who requires the most
attention. So, if only one spouse stays home all of the time or
is somewhere else, then they don’t understand the
problems and the attention that the job needs.”
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