National Clothesline

Richard Ehrenreich, CBI, SBA, CED, of Ehrenreich & Associates, an Olney based drycleaning

consulting, brokerage and evaluation practice, was awarded the title “Fellow of the International Business Brokers Association” at the November IBBA Phoenix Conference.

This is the highest honor and level of recognition that the IBBA awards. The qualifications include having served as a Certified Business Intermediary for at least seven years and making a significant contribution to the business brokerage industry. Fewer than than 100 IBBA members have received this award; Ehrenreich is the first person in Maryland to be so honored and was the only new recipient in 2005.

Ehrenreich has been active in the drycleaning industry for the past 30 years and commenced selling drycleaning businesses in 1969. He has served as president of the Washington-Baltimore Business Brokers Association for the past five years and has held leadership roles with the Metropolitan Drycleaners Association, the Mid-Atlantic Association of Cleaners, the International Fabricare Institute, the Olney Chamber of Commerce, the Wheaton-Kensington Chamber of Commerce, the Layhill Community Festival and Parade Committee, and W Group Commercial Real Estate.

The Coin Laundry Association Board of Directors is welcoming three new directors and recognizing the contributions of three who retired from the board at the end of 2005.

Ralph Daniels of Daniels Equipment Inc., Craig Kirchner of Maytag and Dick LaMaina of Equipment Marketers began three-year terms on Jan. 1. Dan Naumann of Great Lakes Commercial Sales, Inc., began a one-year term as CLA Chair.

Finishing a combined total of 33 years of service were Gary Gray, Jim McNutt and Pat Sullivan.

“Members serve in a variety of roles that complement the mission of CLA,” said Brian Wallace, president and CEO of CLA.

Headquartered in Downers Grove, IL, CLA is a not-for-profit trade organization with more than 2,500 members. Established in 1960, the association’s mission is to ensure a profitable and growing retail, self-service laundry operation by providing education, products and services to laundry owners. For membership information, call (877) CLA-IDEA or visit coinlaundry.org.

Brad Paluck of Mt. Hood Cleaners in Sandy, OR, has been named Tailwind Systems’ Manager of the Year. The award is given annually to the manager who has made the most out of the Tailwind System to make plant improvements in productivity, efficiency and with the most effective use of labor dollars.

Paluck has been a Tailwind client for over two years.

“When I first met him, he told me that he had come to the realization that Mt. Hood Cleaners had become more than he could handle,” said Don Desrosiers of Tailwind Systems. “His actual words were, ‘Don, I surrender.’ He firmly believed that he had given his business his best shot, but it wasn’t enough.”

“Maybe, it’s my management style,” he told Desrosiers. “I’m too nice a guy.”

Mt. Hood Cleaners is a multi-faceted company, with divisions ranging from real estate development to retail drycleaning and plenty in between. Mt. Hood has been heavily involved in restoration drycleaning for over 16 years and is a member of the Certified Restoration Drycleaners Network (CRDN). In fact, at a recent CRDN convention in South Beach, FL, Paluck and Mt. Hood Cleaners were recognized as the drycleaner with the most individual restoration jobs in the country — 557 in one year.

He was using the Tailwind System for his shirt department, his retail drycleaning and for all of those restoration jobs.

“I visit Brad a couple of times per year,” Desrosiers. “This has given me the opportunity to observe the improvements that he and Tailwind combined have made. But Brad struggled at first, and sadly, I can not say that I know exactly why he struggled. Perhaps set in his ways, he was the obstacle in his own way. But he had the will. He loves to run the plant.

“He said to me last autumn, ‘If I were to sell this plant to someone else, I wouldn’t mind staying on as an employee to run the plant. I love doing it’.”

He loves it more now, Desrosiers said, as he monitors his progress and sees huge differences in virtually every phase of his operation.

“Employee morale is way up, profits are up, and productivity has nearly doubled in the last six months,” Desrosiers said. “I know these things because Brad regularly faxes me the graphs. He's proud of them. He certainly should be.”

Desrosiers said he became “very aggressive” with Brad in September 2005 when he announced he had bought the rights to additional territories for CRDN. He now owns the majority of the Pacific Northwest.

“I simply told him that he was nuts,” Desrosiers said. “My rationale was simple: How can Mt. Hood handle twice as much volume without first fixing the key problem in the plant — sluggish productivity? There is only one way to fix such a problem: the Tailwind System coupled with a manager who knows how to administer it. That manager is Brad Paluck.”

Paluck joins past winners of Tailwind Systems Manager of the Year: John Mertes of Ziker Cleaners in South Bend, IN; Barbara Lewis of Puritan Cleaners in Richmond, VA; Chad Monteith of Ablitt’s Fine Cleaners in Santa Barbara, CA; and JK Parmar of Acme Cleaners in Orlando, FL