Staying afloat until the tide comes in
When he was president, John F. Kennedy often said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” In other words, general economic prosperity benefits all. It is a saying that
has become part of the popular lexicon, and few would deny its essential truth.
But if it is true, then the converse must apply. The low tide of a struggling
economy brings everybody down. It may leave you stranded on a sandbar, maybe
even sending your boat to the bottom.
In this ebbing tide of an economy, how will you stay afloat? You can drop
anchor, stay in familiar waters and hope for the best. After all, the tide that
goes out eventually comes back in. Perhaps you can toss some dead weight
overboard to keep from running aground. As a strategy that could work as long
as the tide begins to rise before the last thing left on the boat is you, the
captain. Unfortunately, the ebb and flow of economic tides are not as
predictable as those of the sea. How low will it go? When will it start to rise
again? Who knows?
Maybe it’s wise to chart a different course. Find a way to put more water under your
boat. For drycleaners, sales revenue is that water. At the recent Drycleaning
and Laundry Institute seminar, we heard a number of ideas for pumping up that
revenue. Cleaners looking for ways to counter the trend of declining piece
counts and, in some cases, vanishing customers have come up with many
approaches. Growing the customer base by adding routes is one way. Increasing
marketing efforts to draw a bigger share of one’s market area is another. Diversifying into new areas such as fire restoration
has helped many cleaners. Adopting new technologies that increase productivity,
or in some cases making better use of the technology already on hand, will send
more dollars to the bottom line. For many cleaners who reported a sales
increase last year in a recent DLI survey, the key was an increase in prices.
Yup, it was that simple.
Yes, the tide will rise again, but you must keep your boat afloat if you want to
be around to benefit from it.
Don’t get “taken to the legislators”
Whoever said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” was probably never a drycleaner. Just Google the resilient old phrase “taken to the cleaners” and you will discover some 559,000 links, most of which have nothing to do with
the actual drycleaning industry. Instead, they are references used to describe
how somebody was viciously lied to or cheated from.
It does not seem to matter what many cleaners do to improve their image, the
negative perception continues to rear its head. In fact, even on rare occasions
when cleaners receive a healthy dose of nationwide sympathy, it often comes
back to haunt them later on. Case in point: remember the District of Columbia
judge who sued the cleaners for $54 million last year for losing his pants? The
case certainly ended badly for all parties involved, but for a brief time,
drycleaners were subjected to much less public derision and scorn. After all,
who couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for small business owners who were sued for more
than they could possibly make in several lifetimes, all because of a simple
misunderstanding?
However, not everybody saw the story in that light. In fact, drycleaners in
Maryland nearly suffered because of it. They were almost made fiscally
responsible for lost or damage clothing due to legislation introduced by
Delegate Barbara A. Robinson, who admitted she was partially inspired by the
$54 million lawsuit. H.B. 776 particularly alarmed cleaners because it never
took into account factors such as who was actually responsible for the damage,
depreciation value of the clothing, and how long the garments were left at a
plant. Fortunately for the industry, H.B. 776 was killed in a lopsided vote.
Perhaps public sympathy was still on the side of drycleaners, but more likely,
it was the unified effort of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Cleaners, the
Korean Drycleaners Associations of Maryland and Greater Washington and many
others whose efforts swayed delegates to oppose the bill. Such a concerted
effort might be a sign of an ongoing trend. In recent years, cleaners have
started becoming more adept at banding together to fight on their own behalf.
Cleaners can build on such successes and prove even more effective in the
future in stemming the flooding tide of unnecessary regulations. If cleaners
continue to work better together, perhaps a new positivity can eventually
prevail over resilient old phrases.
