National Clothesline

No cleaner could come away from the Texcare show sponsored by the Neighborhood Cleaners Association without some knowledge or equipment to help run a better business.

Speakers covered topics ranging from effective methods for getting positive publicity, the nuts and bolts of lease negotiation and how to deal with problem garments and the customers who bring them in for cleaning. In a special session the day before the show opened Jason Loeb, owner of Sudsies.com in south Florida, led a full-day seminar and workshop on how to build a pick-up and delivery business and successful brand.

Loeb shared his proven recipe for success, revealing how he combined branding, marketing and web site tools to grow his coin laundry and drycleaning operation from nothing into a multi-million dollar delivery enterprise with 10 pick-up and delivery trucks on the road six-days-a-week.

The pre-show session drew more than 80 attendees. Over the course of the weekend, another 2,600 exhibitors and cleaners passed through the turnstiles at the Meadowlands Convention and Exhibition Center in Secaucus, NJ. More than 100 companies set up displays of equipment and products in the hall for the Oct. 20-21 show.

The opening session on Saturday morning featured Kirsten Whitten of GT Graphics and Marketing who shared with cleaners an insider ’s knowledge on getting publicity. She was followed by Kelly Kelleher of Kelleher Equipment Co. who used her vast experience in negotiating leases for drycleaners to give advice on what to watch for and ask for when hammering out terms of a business lease with a landlord.

Whitten began by explaining that there is a difference between advertising and publicity. You pay for ads, she said. Publicity is free. But getting that free publicity requires understanding the tricks of the trade.

A press release should follow a specific structure, she said, starting off with the company name, logo and contact information. Then comes a headline that sums up the information contained in the release.

Since a press release is not likely to be published in its entirety, the crucial information should be contained in the first paragraph. That first paragraph needs to answer the questions who, what, how, when, where and why.

The following paragraphs can flesh out the details. A final paragraph should contain basic descriptive information about the company — how you would answer someone who asked you to describe your business in 50 words or less.

While the form of the press release is important, you need something to talk about for the content. Whitten suggested that a company ’s community involvement – sponsorship of sports teams, coat drives or read-to-ride programs are worthy topics.

Also, if your company wins an award or achieves some other type of professional recognition, be sure to let local newspapers and television stations know about it.

When it comes to negotiating a lease, cleaners are at an inherent disadvantage. Landlords are well practiced in the art of leases — it is their bread and butter — while an individual cleaner faces lease negotiation relatively few times in his business life. But Kelly Kelleher has been on the drycleaner ’s side of the negotiating table many times and thus could give cleaners insights into what they should do when the time comes to enter into a lease.

“Correct negotiation protects you while you are there and when you sell,” she said.

For starters, she advised cleaners to have at least a 10 year lease with a five year option.

“A longer term gives you the capability to better sell your store in the future,” she said. “It is very difficult to sell your store if you have only a three-year lease.”

For a drycleaner, one of the most important clauses in a lease concerns hazardous waste. A lease should require the landlord to give at least 48 hours notice of any ground testing on the premises. The lease should also stipulate that the landlord will provide copies of any ground test results.

If contamination is discovered, make sure the lease does not require using the landlord ’s environmental firm for clean up and that any clean up will be done to meet state agency levels.

If leasing space for a new store, ask the landlord for a period of “free rent” at the beginning of the lease. All landlords have this built in to their costs, Kelleher said, and if you don ’t ask for it and get it, you will be paying rent while the new store is under construction.

“Small tenants are the ones that make money for landlords,” she said. “They don’t want their tenant’s business to fail.”