National Clothesline

Gatherings of drycleaners are becoming a common sight in Las Vegas. Following a January Brainstorming with the Best conference there sponsored by the National Cleaners Association, Vegas was the host city in February for the International Fabricare Institute’s Kick Butt Marketing and Management conference. In the not too distant future, cleaners will be gathering in Vegas again for the Clean Show in June of next year.

The two-day IFI seminar at the MGM Grand Hotel featured six seminars starting off with marketing guru John Haskell, a.k.a. Dr. Revenue, whose Thursday morning program got cleaners to examine their company marketing programs and work on plans to make them better.

Also featured at the conference were presentations by Tiffanie Williams and Kirsten Whitten of Tiffanie Williams & Co., the firm hired by the FabriCare Foundation to develop a public relations campaign for the industry.

The firm has developed a web site (www.fabricarefoundation.org) and has launched other initiatives, including an e-mail news service and lining up industry experts to act as spokespeople to the media and general public. Williams and Whitten explained how many of the same techniques can be adapted by an individual cleaning company.

In a Friday program, Trudy Adams, director of customer service and sales for Cleaner’s Supply, told attendees that hiring, training and retaining good employees is the key to providing top-level customer service.

Two of IFI’s top people also spoke. On Thursday, CEO Bill Fisher gave an overview of the Award of Excellence program and told how cleaners are benefiting from it.

Chris Allsbrooks, IFI garment analyst, used results of secret shopping expeditions to illustrate things cleaners do that turn off customers and how those things can be corrected.