National Clothesline

Shaffer Dry Cleaning & Laundry was awarded “Van of the Year” at the Methods for Management international conference in San Diego, CA.

A panel of independent judges evaluated the vans and chose the one they believed told the company’s story in the most effective way.

“It is a great honor to win this award among our top peers in the industry,” said owner Bake Shaffer.

“Our brand is about caring for our customers and caring for the environment,” Shaffer added. “Not only have we been perc-free for over ten years, now our vans get 28 mpg instead of 13 mpg for conventional vans.”

Attended by many top drycleaning business owners throughout the United States and Canada, the conference was designed to give attendees the tools to design the future of their business to meet their organizational goals.

The Shaffers also received recognition for their marketing plan aimed at supporting new ways to meet the challenges and opportunities of today’s rapidly changing business environment.

The Shaffer family has been serving the Tucson community since 1969 and has nine locations in the area.

Methods for Management selects participants based on the motivation of owners to improve upon their success. Groups of eight to ten non-competing drycleaning business owners meet on a quarterly basis to discuss all areas of their business.

The conference is held every two years to give all the groups an opportunity to meet and address current topics.

More information is available at www.mfmi.com and www.shafferdrycleaining.com.

The Hanger Network, creator of EcoHangers that are made from 100-percent recycled and recyclable paperboard, has entered a partnership with GreenEarth Cleaning in which GreenEarth’s message, “Better for you, better for your clothes, and better for the environment,” will be branded on all EcoHangers used at participating drycleaners.

“We see this partnership as a win-win situation for everyone involved,” said Bob Kantor, CEO of The Hanger Network. “This is a tangible way to reaffirm Green-Earth’s critically important message, and to deliver it to consumers in an impacting way. In fact, The Hanger Network goes hand-in-hand with GreenEarth, not only because our earth-friendly products are so compatible but also for the eco value-added marketing tool we offer.”

“GreenEarth has long worked to offer a truly sustainable solution for drycleaners,” said Tim Maxwell, president of GreenEarth. “This is one more step in our journey.”

The recyclable eco-hangers, available through Cleaners Supply, provide an alternative to wire hangers and plastic hangers. They are manufactured in multiple factories in the United States.

The Hanger Network also provides a way for companies to advertise on its EcoHangers. Among the advertisers are fashion designer Joseph Abboud, Nivea, L’Oreal, Revlon, Van Heusen, PSE&G, The Hershey Co., and Staples. Drycleaning offers an attractive medium to advertisers because it reaches adult consumers, Kantor said. More information is available by visiting www.hangernetwork.com.

Advertising-supported EcoHangers are available free to cleaners in certain markets. Information is available from Cleaners Supply, (800) 568-7768 or at www.cleanerssupply.com/freehangers.

Non-advertisng-supported hangers are available for purchase through Cleaners Supply.

HMC Solutions has reached agreements with Allied Conveyors Ltd. and Railex Corporation to produce custom overhead conveyors for HMC.

The conveyors will be used as a component in HMC’s automated systems. Based in North Little Rock, Arkansas, HMC Solutions is the designer and producer of Fetch! — The Anytime Cleaning Retriever and ADAC Automated Drycleaning Assembly Conveyor.

“We utilize an overhead conveyor as a large component of each of our systems,” said Tony Cassady, CEO of HMC Solutions. “We now have two suppliers who will partner with us to provide conveyors not only designed to meet the requirements of both systems, but that will also offer several advantages over anything else available on the market.”

HMC Solutions will customize Railex conveyors for use with its standard ADAC systems. Cassady said the flexibility of the Railex conveyors is a major benefit.

“In the past, to adjust the height of our conveyors we had to special order the length of the legs, but with Railex conveyors, we can adjust the height very easily,” Cassady says. “So if we need to put a conveyor under a stairwell or under low-hanging duct work, it’s as easy as moving bolts. Having that level of flexibility is important.”

Railex Corp., located in Queens, NY, has been a manufacturer of garment handling equipment since 1954.

Allied Conveyors will produce a custom conveyor to be used primarily with the Fetch! system, and optionally with the ADAC system. The conveyor design is based on Allied’s All-Flex Monoveyor enclosed track conveyor system.

Advantages include configuration flexibility (so it can be configured to follow almost any path to fit space and layout requirements), a high level of safety (due to an enclosed track and no exposed sprockets that can create pinch points), longer life and less maintenance (due to an enclosed track and greater load bearing characteristics), and a cleaner environment for garments (due to dust shields mounted between the garments and the conveyor track).

The conveyors are also designed to provide tighter positioning control, especially on larger conveyor layouts, which is important in providing accurate automation of the conveyor’s movement.

“The Allied All-Flex conveyor will allow us to offer more configuration options with ADAC whenever tight space requirements may not accommodate our standard Railex conveyor,” Cassady said. “The Allied All-Flex conveyor is more configurable to fit in odd spaces as well as all of their other advantages. These features may not be important to most ADAC customers, but we now have options for those customers who do need them.”

In addition to standard conveyor systems, Allied Conveyor engineers custom material handling equipment for many applications. Based in Pickering, Ontario, Allied is the largest Canadian-owned manufacturer of conveyors and has been in business since 1958.

Fetch! is an automated 24/7 kiosk that allows a drycleaner’s customers to drop-off and pick-up garments 24 hours a day. It is used both in stand-alone, unmanned drop stores and in staffed stores to provide customers with after-hours access to their clothes.

Features include the ability for customers to return finished orders that they’re not satisfied with, a function that automatically removes items from the kiosk if a customer forgets to take any portion of an order, and the ability of the system to handle larger-than-normal sized items.

ADAC is an automated drycleaning assembly conveyor that lets drycleaners reduce the labor and space required for assembly while eliminating human errors and improving the quality and accuracy of their finished orders. Each ADAC can typically assemble up to 2,500 items in an eight-hour shift using just one operator and requires only 60 to 80 square feet of floor space, depending on size and volume requirements.

For more information, contact Tony Cassady at HMC Solutions, (501) 255-0498, or e-mail tcassady@hmcsolutions. The company’s web site is www.hmcsolutions.com.

MBH Rope Ties has expanded its web site at www.rope-ties.com to include a video clip of the company’s rope-ties working in an actual plant. The site also tells why drycleaners and wholesale shirt laundries have updated to the MBH Rope-Tie System and gives seven of the major benefits the product provides for its users.

The site also includes directions for proper use, answers to frequently asked questions, descriptions of accessories and what users say about the product.

Wascomat Laundry Equipment has appointed Stefan Meir as vice president of on-premise laundry and national accounts. His role is to develop a structured OPL sales and marketing program to increase Wascomat dealers’ OPL sales and overall national account presence.

For the past seven years, he worked in sales for two laundry equipment distributors. He is based in Wascomat’s New York office.

Dan Goldman, Wascomat’s national sales manager, said that Meir fits with Wascomat with his sharp organizational skills and capacity for work. ”He brings a great deal to the table,” staid Goldman. “His experience in working on both the manufacturing and distribution ends of our business is a great benefit to Wascomat and our OPL dealers.”

Howard Herman, president of Wascomat, added, “We’re very happy to have him back at Wascomat. He is already making great strides and our dealers and customers are excited to be working with him.”

Meir can be reached at (800) 645-2204 ext. 121 or by e-mail at smeir@wascomat.com.

Leonard Automatics has moved to a new facility in Denver, NC, which includes production, parts inventory and the business offices.

The new shipping address is Leonard Automatics, Inc., 5894 Balsom Ridge Rd. Denver, NC 28037. The mailing address remains Leonard Automatics, Inc., PO Box 501, Denver, NC 28037.

Telephone and fax numbers are unchanged.