When Paul Bagley signed up for the
International Fabricare Institute’s Award of Excellence
program last June, he didn’t realize that it would be his
most difficult challenge as a drycleaner.
However, after an intense five-month
process, his Ship Shape Cleaners plant in Brookfield earned the
Award of Excellence distinction.
He is one of only 47 cleaners nationwide
to claim the honor so far, and he is the first such cleaner to
make the claim in the state of Connecticut.
“It was a very long process,”
Paul recalled. “IFI wanted to be absolutely certain that
they were giving the award to the right person. It does make me
feel better because it is not an easy thing. I don’t
think that any of my competitors can do it. It is not a
cakewalk to pass it.”
To qualify for the Award of Excellence,
Ship Shape had to successfully meet several daunting
requirements. One test included a swatch of silk with six
different stains: mayonnaise, coffee, red wine, ink, spaghetti
sauce and egg. Not only did Paul have to remove each spot, he
also had to leave the silk in good condition.
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Also as part of the program, cleaners
must accrue a total of 30 points which are achieved in a
variety of ways such as taking pre-approved cleaning courses.
Paul earned many of his points by
maintaining current Certified Professional Drycleaner (CPD) and
Certified Environmental Drycleaner (CED) awards, participating
in a Sid Tuchman management group, having a clean record with
the Better Business Bureau, and being a member in good standing
in both IFI and NCA.
He also had to send pictures into IFI to
prove Ship Shape had a clean working environment with new
equipment.
According to Paul, all of the effort was
worth it. He wanted to prove to himself that he was up to the
challenge to be one of the best drycleaners in the country.
After being in the drycleaning industry
for 46 years, Paul is not very happy with the industry’s
negative reputation — a reputation which he believes has
been richly deserved.
“For years, newspapers and
television have been hammering drycleaners and I always thought
it was unfair,” he explained. “You know what? They
go to an area with simple stains on a garment, take it in and
cleaners don’t get it out. So, what else are they going
to do? I really think they are fair.”
Another thing that angers Paul is how
many drycleaners have already lambasted the Award of Excellence
program during its early stages.
“There are so many detractors on
the program,” he said. “If you pay attention to the
Fabricare Forum, there are so many people and all you hear are
negative comments. That’s terrible.”
Still, none of the negativity deters
Paul, who fully intends to keep earning points in the program
so that he can continue to proudly display its sticker logo on
his front door.
People often ask Paul how long he has
been in the drycleaning industry. He likes to refer to a
picture he keeps in his call office.
“In the picture, I’m three
years old and in my mother’s arms — with my sister
and my father — and I actually lived in an apartment
behind the drycleaning plant at the time. So, I really grew up
in the business.”
His father, Leslie, had owned
Bagley’s Cleaners in Flint, Michigan, when Paul was just
an infant. Years later, the Elder Bagley moved to Danbury,
Connecticut, in 1949 and opened another plant there while Paul
stayed with his mother in Michigan.
When Paul was 17 years old, he moved to
Connecticut to live with his father and began training with his
father, who ran a pretty tight ship.
“I worked for my father for 13
years,” he recalled. “I never knew what an
eight-hour day was. There was no such thing. It was six days a
week, all 12-hour days back then. He really taught me the
business. He was a tough guy, really old school. He spit
nails.”
Over the years, Paul took a lot of IFI
and NCA cleaning courses and improved his skills. In 1973, he
wanted to buy the business from his father, but his father
wasn’t ready to sell.
Instead, Paul sold his motorocycle,
borrowed on his life insurance and secured a loan in order to
come up with enough funds to buy Village Green Cleaners of New
Milford.
The first year of business was a bit of a
rude awakening for Paul, but he was still up to the challenge.
“When I started, the store was
supposed to do $600 a week — that’s what we
saw in the books,” he noted. “What we found out is
$200 of that was tailoring that the former owner took with him.
So, I was left with $400 a week. Can you imagine that? I really
had to work hard to get that number up.”
At first, Paul did everything — the
cleaning, the pressing, the assembly and bagging and waiting on
customers at the counter. After one year, the business brought
in $1,000 weekly, which was quite a milestone considering Paul
kept insisting on putting out the best quality possible.
“I hand-ironed every single
lining,” he said. “It was just good service and
quality work. I have always been a stickler for that. Everybody
says they do quality work, but a lot of people don’t know
what quality work is.”
In 1976, Paul purchased Ship Shape
Cleaners in Brookfield. The business continued to grow even
though Paul originally had wanted to keep things down on a
small scale.
In 1982, he opened a shirt plant in
Danbury, which lasted about a decade. When he closed down the
shirt plant, he expanded the Brookfield store from 1,500 sq.
ft. to about 3,300 sq. ft. However, the biggest changes of all
were still on the horizon.
About three years ago, Paul decided to
switch to GreenEarth solvent and has yet to regret the
decision.
“The cleaning is just better, hands
down,” he said. “Everybody says perc is the best. I
just don’t believe that. It is different. Other cleaners
that ask me about it just don’t believe it. They just
think perc is the only cleaner and they don’t think that
GreenEarth works, even when they see it work in front of them.
They don’t believe what they see.”
While Paul is “ecstatic to be out
of the perc business,” he does not believe in
bad-mouthing the industry-leading solvent.
“I don’t want to say negative
things about perc,” he said. “But, we’ve come
a long way from the old days when we used to have the old
foot-stopper presses and the smell of perc.”
About the same time Paul was making the
switch to GreenEarth, he also decided to relocate Ship Shape
Cleaners into a former competitor’s plant located about a
half mile away. The project was nothing short of a nightmare.
“The formica on the counters was
just Scotch-taped,” he recalled. “So, the first
thing we did was my wife used contact paper on them and we
painted the office while we ordered the custom-made counters.
We used four industrial trash bins taking all of the garbage
out. Plus, we took the cleaning machine out and all of the
presses out. We completely stripped the building. It was a
mess.”
Paul and his wife, Roberta — who
has now worked by his side for a quarter of a century —
put in 90 hours a week trying to get the store ready. The plant
needed new ceilings, new flooring, new plumbing and the
electrical wiring needed to be upgraded up to code. The couple
also oversaw the installation of several tons of air
conditioning and the building of a boiler room in the basement.
“The basement had looked like a
dungeon,” Paul laughed. “That’s how bad it
was. I don’t know how the guy ever worked in
there.”
In all, the project cost over half a
million dollars. The final result netted the Bagleys a Plant
Design Merit Award from American Drycleaner.
These days, Paul oversees a total of 21
employees, which is not quite as small as he had originally
intended.
“It just didn’t work
out,” he confessed. “But, you know what? It worked
out for the best.”
Paul prides himself in being a
“tough but fair” employer who challenges his staff
and expects good results.
“I treat my people well, but they
have to produce,” he explained.
The tight ship Paul runs also extends to
the area of customer service. Though they handle “over
1,000 customers per day,” they know most of them by first
name.
Whenever possible, Paul tries to give
curious customers a first-hand tour of their cleaning machines
which are right next to the front counter.
“Anytime somebody sort of looks
toward the back, I say, ‘Come on and walk with me.
Let’s take a look’,” he said. “It
really amazes people. People think it all goes into the machine
and comes out in plastic. They have no conception of what goes
on. Once people see the operation and all of the handwork that
is done, they realize there’s a lot that goes into
drycleaning.”
Of course, Paul does not mind putting in
the effort, but he does believe that it’s up to him to
inform his customers of the fruits of such labor, such as the
IFI Award of Excellence.
“I put a flyer on every outgoing
order that we won the award so our customers know,” he
noted. “I also did that when we won the Merit Award for
Plant Design. You have to beat your own drum.”
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