After being the president and owner of Bibbentuckers The Dry Cleaner for only ten months, John Palms received the bad news that the company’s flagship location in Dallas had caught fire.
The five-alarm flare-up occurred this past January. Fortunately, all 30
employees at the plant escaped injury.
At the time, John was returning from a family trip to Virginia and Washington,
DC, when he learned that a faulty light bulb and ballast had decimated the
5,000 sq. ft. facility.
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It was not the kind of baptism by fire he expected to face when he and other
investors opted to undergo a joint business venture in drycleaning.
John predominantly spent the first 23 years of his career in the high-tech
industry, not the typical background for a successful drycleaning owner. Yet,
he recognized the potential.
“I believe this industry has a tremendous amount of opportunity,” he said. “It’s got a lot of inefficiencies. There’s just starting to be some good technology that has been brought into the
industry.”
One eye-opening technology for John was point-of-sale computer systems. He
believes that the company’s SPOT systems completely saved them during the aftermath of the blaze.
“The fire occurred on Friday evening,” he said. “That next Monday/Tuesday we were e-mailing our customers their drycleaning
receipts out of SPOT so that they could complete an online insurance claim form
to get their checks. The first check was cut seven days after the fire.
Customers were blown away.”
Within weeks, Bibbentuckers set up two trailers out front so customers could
continue to drop off and pick up garments to be cleaned at the other two
locations.
“Our sales are probably only off about 10 percent of last year, which is amazing
because that store was 40 percent of our volume,” John added.
While the volume numbers have fallen slightly, customer loyalty has remained
surprisingly steady.
“Literally, 99% — I could say 100% but nobody would believe me — of our customers accepted their claim check and said that they would continue
doing business with us.”
Inspired by a pair of entrepreneurial grandfathers, John was bit by the business
bug at an early age.
“My grandfather on my mother’s side started a retail business back in the late 1940s/early 1950s in
Charleston and it’s still thriving,” John noted. “My other grandfather came over in the 1950s to settle in Clearwater, FL. He
owned the Five Palms Apartments there. When I was younger, I used to love to
hear them talk about how they started their businesses and all the
challenges... I would just soak it in every time I would visit with them.”
During the summer of his sophomore year of high school in Decatur, GA, John rode
his bike to three different jobs. Prior to that, he had started a yard cleaning
service, a gutter cleaning service, and a shoe shine service.
“I kind of understood the value of a dollar early on,” he laughed.
John also followed in the footsteps of his father, who was a full professor and
chairman of the Physics Department at Emory University. He also served as
university president for Georgia State University and the University of South
Carolina.
John earned an MBA in Finance and Marketing in 1988 from Emory. Before that, he
graduated with a BS in Business Administration in 1981 at The Citadel, where he
earned a football scholarship as a walk-on athlete his sophomore year.
“I originally walked on as a quarterback, but there were about six quarterbacks
in front of me and there were only three or four fullbacks in front of me,” he recalled. “So, I decided to go the route of least resistance.”
John ended up blocking for Heisman Trophy candidate Lyvonia “Stump” Mitchell, who later played in the NFL for the St. Louis Cardinals alongside
Ottis Anderson.
Early in his career, John became interested in computers, which translated to
jobs in just about every field — sales, marketing, operations and management.
He worked for companies such as Rockwell International and Hewlett-Packard. At
one point, he owned ROI Interactive, which was later bought publicly by
Popmail. No matter where he worked during that period of his life, John always
noticed one common denominator.
“In the high-tech industry, you had to work very, very swiftly,” he pointed out. “It was always a race, so you always had to move quickly.”
In 2003, he tried his hand in manufacturing as the vice president of sales and
marketing for EMI Industries in Florida. Unfortunately, his family lived in Dallas so John turned to a good friend, Kip Sowden, to discuss starting
a joint business venture there.
Kip and John met in the late 1990s. Their kids attended the same school and
participated together in the Park Cities YMCA. The two men coached the YMCA
kids’ football team together, including an undefeated season where they won the
league championship.
“Kip and I sat on his patio many an evening and maybe we’re smoking a cigar and having a glass of wine or something, talking about
business,” John recalled.
By March of 2007, both men decided to invest in Bibbentuckers, believing it
subscribed to a strong and profitable business model because of its positive
status as a high end cleaner. From the very first day, John has been hatching
big plans for the company.
Having a background well-steeped in other industries has caused John to consider
employing a few creative ideas. One such idea John has come up with is a “garment cycle notification” feature on the company’s SPOT point-of-sale computers.
“A shirt typically has a life cycle of about 40 washings, or cleanings,” he said. “One of the things that can help with claims and setting expectation is that the
customer needs to be aware — probably between 30 and 40 cycles — that they ought to start looking to replace the garment. Don’t blame your cleaner because you are starting to see some fraying and thinning
of the fabric when it’s really from how old the garment is.”
When the garment reaches the magic number of cycles, Bibbentuckers will send out
a notification e-mail to the customer, along with a coupon for a discount off
the brand or retailer of the garment. John believes such a gesture could
greatly improve the relationship between cleaner and retailer and manufacturer.
Another fun idea came when Bibbentuckers decided to go green. Lot of cleaners
make such proclamations, but few make it a big media event on St. Patrick’s Day. Customers loved it.
“Our vision is for all of our stores to eventually be solar-powered,” John pointed out. “We’re in discussions with architects about that on maybe the next store or two.”
Some day, John envisions that Bibbentuckers will become a national high-end
drycleaning chain. With that in mind, he plans to mold the company now to be as
environmentally responsive as possible for the future.
That means doing a lot more than recycling hangers and cutting down on costly
and unnecessary packaging materials.
“I’m in discussions with an electric truck manufacturer so we can take all of our
trucks from diesel and petroleum to electric,” he added. “I can tell you, 99 percent of my competitors aren’t even thinking about electric trucks right now. I found an organization in the
UK (United Kingdom). They’re just coming over here in the states and taking over a Ford plant on the West
Coast.”
In order to try to keep his ideas on the cutting edge, John often researches
exemplary practices and technologies in an effort to improve his company as
much as possible.
“We may not find the answers to our challenges as we scale in our own industry,” he said. “We may have to look outside the industry. Why can’t we use x-ray technology to make sure we identify every possible spot or stain
in a garment when it comes through our system? Stuff like that. Why do we have
constraints in our manufacturing process? What slows us down?”
For now, the only thing that has seemed to slow down Bibbentuckers was the
costly store fire back in January.
It has been over seven months since the loss, but Bibbentuckers recently
reopened the Dallas location.
In fact, they rebuilt it on the same spot, albeit with an upgraded design to be
more efficient.
The company also managed to keep every employee (they have about 130 altogether)
during the ordeal by having them transfer temporarily to the other two stores.
“The employees, just like the customers, have been phenomenal,” John said.
He is the first to admit that all the ideas in the world could ultimately fail
if the wrong people are trying to implement them.
“Everybody can have the same technology. Everybody can find the same locations,
the same supplies, try to choose the same branding, but it’s all going to be about people,” he said. “I think we’ve got the right bus and we’re going in the right direction. It’s now about getting the right people on that bus.”
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