National
Clothesline
With 14 locations scattered throughout
central Virginia, and about 220 employees on the payroll books,
Puritan Cleaners plays a leading role in its community.
Though Puritan has been in business for
over six decades now, the family behind the brand name has been
in the industry even longer.
Gary Glover, the current president of the
company, pointed back to over 70 years ago when his
grandfather, Joe Fuschini, became the first in his family to
own a drycleaning company.
Back then, the plant
was called Progressive Cleaners, and it
was located further north in Arlington. Joe’s inspiration
for the name came from the New York World’s Fair whose
theme in 1939 was “progress”.
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“He got things rolling in the 1930s
and expanded into his own company,” Gary said. “He
was a route man, or, back in those days, I think they called
them ‘bobtailers’. He was a very personable fellow.
He was the personality behind the business that helped it grow.
He was married to a lovely woman named Maude who was the money
person.”
About 20 years later, a second generation
of the family followed the couple’s lead when
Gary’s father, Ed, married into the family business.
He didn’t have any drycleaning
experience, but it hardly mattered as he caught on quickly. It
helped that he had spent the previous handful of years as a
catcher in the New York Giants minor league system and was
quite used to having curveballs thrown in his direction.
“My dad was a professional baseball
player out of high school. He played in the minor league farm
system and finally figured out it was time to go to
work,” Gary explained. “My dad is a quick study and
a production-minded person. He’s really the one who grew
the company. ”
Living up to the
“Progressive” name, Ed has always been a proponent
of cutting edge technology.
“He was always getting into stuff
like one of the first White conveyor pre-assembly kind of
things — you know, those old style conveyors that used to
break down work for you,” Gary said. “I remember
they were really proud of that in the early 1960s. They got a
lot of recognition. They were also some of the first people to
have the dry-to-dry equipment.”
Puritan did not come into the picture
until the 1960s, at which time Gary’s father purchased
the plant in Richmond as the family expanded its reach to
central Virginia.
Gary’s interests, however, pointed
in another direction. Like many third generation cleaners, he
worked some at the plant in his spare time growing up, but he
was more interested in something else: the hotel and restaurant
industries.
In 1976, he graduated from the University
of Miami with a degree in business administration and was well
on his own path. Around that time, he also was given a unique
opportunity to see the world and learn a lot about teamwork as
part of a junior national volleyball team.
“I was lucky enough to travel the
world in the 1970s, playing volleyball all over the
place,” he recalled. “My best trip was to Poland,
behind the Iron Curtain, in 1976. At the time, they had the
gold medal team and they hosted our junior team to a 14-day
tour through the country. It was unbelievable. It was just a
trip of a lifetime.”
In Poland, volleyball was by far the
country’s most popular sport then. The team played in
front of thousands nightly. Gary also made trips to Canada and
the Pan American Games.
In 1978, some bad news lead to a positive
homecoming for Gary. His mother had fallen ill and his father
asked him to come help with the cleaning business.
“I came home to help my dad and we
just hit if off,” he said. “He gave me a lot of
opportunities and we’ve been together ever
since.”
The partnership has worked due to the
fact that the two generations of Glovers complement each other
well.
“I just jumped in with both
feet,” Gary noted. “I lean toward the marketing
side. So, we had a nice combination because I could add a
little bit to the marketing area that was something he
didn’t enjoy as much, and he was a production expert and
quality guy.”
Over the years, the family has had the
unique distinction of mastering two completely different
markets: both high end and discount cleaning.
“We were in with the one-priced
cleaning business in a big, big way from 1985 until
2000,” Gary noted. “We opened up One Price
Cleaners. We kind of lead that regime in northern Virginia for
a long time. We did good volume for 20 years and sold that
company. That was a great experiment.”
“Now, at Puritan, we’re very
high end, high service and high price,” he added.
“You know what the danger is? It’s getting caught
in the middle. So, if you define yourself as a discounter, a
one price or a dollar cleaner, then you stick to your guns and
play that game correctly. If you do, you will be very
profitable. If you’re a high end company who offers sales
and services seven days a week, that’s a good market
niche. But, if you’re a high end cleaner who tries to
discount, or a discounter whose offering too many services,
that’s where you get into trouble.”
Back when Gary first signed on full time,
the company was less than half its current size, but he
won’t take credit for the growth since. He attributes the
company’s ongoing success to good fortune and pure
teamwork from his employees.
The staff includes a lot of industry
“all-stars” such as Barbara Lewis, a past winner of
the Tailwind Manager of the Year award.
“She and Don Desrosiers worked
really hard to get the Tailwind System in and I think she runs
it as well as anybody in the country,” Gary said.
“We get about 28 pieces per operator hour company-wide in
our laundry.”
Gary is very proud of his employees, and,
truth be told, he’d rather talk about them than himself.
“Norman Way {a CED} is one of our
new recruits who came to us from Safety Kleen, Co.” he
added. “Richard Cunningham is president of our CRDN
restoration division. He’s done a fantastic job of
growing our company. Jerry Dickson is our production manager.
He’s been with us a long time.”
While Gary often is recognized in the
community for his role as Puritan president, he strongly
believes the credit belongs to everybody else.
“Those people are always behind the
scenes working hard,” he explained. “They are the
ones getting us all the glory and doing all of the quality
work. They are the ones who are pushing us forward and
it’s just fun to be riding along with them.”
As far as “glory” goes, not
too many cleaners have received as many distinctions and honors
as Puritan. The dictionary notes that puritans are people who
“practice a more rigorous or professedly moral
code.” The name really is quite appropriate.
The company was a member of Varsity
International for over 20 years before the prestigious group
disbanded. Currently, they have qualified as an IFI Award of
Excellence member, and they have been voted in a local
“Best Dry Cleaner” poll as the best plant in
Richmond for 18 straight years.
Puritan has also won a multitude of
awards for its unflagging support of Richmond and its
surrounding communities. Recently, the company received a
Ukrops Community Service Award, and they were also named
“Distinguished Retailer of the Year” by the
100-year-old Retail Merchants Association.
The community support all started about
19 years ago when the company started its first Coats for Kids
drive.
“I thought this is a great way to
get us some recognition for our company,” Gary recalled.
“That quickly turned into kind of a labor of love. Once
you start giving the coats away, you get absorbed with the
community aspect of it. Now, we really can’t do without
it. We just enjoy it so much.”
These days, Puritan collects and cleans
over 15,000 coats a year. This year, the company will surpass
the mark of 200,000 total coats cleaned.
Another program that Puritan sponsored
was “The Great Bears Project,” which collects
stuffed bears so police, fire and rescue squads can give them
to children who have experienced a traumatic incident. Puritan
collected over 7,000 a year, and, in fact, was too successful
to keep doing the program as the community now has a stockpiled
surplus of stuffed animals.
When Puritan dropped the Great Bears
program, they decided to replace it with 10,000 Meals for Kids.
“We’re in our third year now.
In our first year, we collected 35,000 meals,” Gary said.
“I think the second year we collected maybe
40,000.”
The Central Virginia Foodbank was so
impressed with Puritan’s efforts that they have already
inducted the company into its Foods & Funds Hall of Fame.
The list does not stop there, either.
Gary has received a Recycler of the Year Award from the
Virginia Recycling Association for recycling over 70,000
hangers a month.
Yet another community program that
Puritan promotes is the Cinderella Project, which gathers,
cleans and distributes prom dresses to hundreds of girls every
Spring. Overall, it’s a lot of work, but Gary is just
glad that his employees have enough spirit to make each of the
programs successful.
“At the beginning, I kind of work
on them and get them going, then they take on a life of their
own and I just sit back and accept a lot of credit,” he
laughed. “But, it’s really all of our staff doing
it. It’s embarrassing for me, really, because it’s
our team that does all of the work. They’re so anxious to
give.”
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