National Clothesline

Other Fabricare conventions by the California Cleaners Association have seen greater attendance numbers, but few have generated such an enthusiastic reaction from its participants.

Many drycleaners who made the trek to the Long Beach Convention Center in late August were there out of necessity more than passing interest. A concern about the future was thick in the air.

While approximately 100 exhibitors offered the latest technological triumphs of the industry, visiting cleaners walked the aisles looking for better ways to make their businesses more efficient, profitable and secure despite the uncertainty of recent times.

Information of every kind was high in demand, and not just from the booths containing cleaning machinery, products and services. The knowledge inherent in the weekend’s educational seminars also proved to be of utmost importance.

Most of them focussed on ways attendees could keep operating costs down, whether through strategic lease negotiation, adhering to regulations, avoiding damaging garments or maintaining equipment to fortify the value of high-dollar investments.

In fact, it was the last topic that provided the biggest buzz during the weekend. On Saturday morning, Joven Lactaoen of Joven’s Sales and Services, Norm Korey of Wyatt-Bennett Equipment Co. and Jason Lee of Sankomatic worked together to offer a highly informative and entertaining session on “What to Do Before Calling a Mechanic.”

According to Korey, it is costly for both the cleaner and the equipment manufacturer if a mechanic is sent to a plant to diagnose problems, especially minor ones.

However, a cleaner with a volt-meter, a basic set of tools, and rudimentary handyman skills can handle about 75 percent of problems over the phone with the machinery manufacturer.

“I’d like to stress the importance of one thing: lint,” he added. “Keep the machines clean. Lint can be the biggest problem in keeping the air cylinders operating within the air ducts of the cleaning machine. If you can control the lint and cleanliness of the machine, then you are way ahead.”

Lactaoen had a few seemingly obvious but often overlooked tips for the audience, as well.

“The best thing is, really, if you can, to look for the manual and find the exact parts and get the manufacturer’s part number and give that information to us.”

Other pointers involved cell phones. Leaving a cell number for contact is the wisest move because it allows cleaners to be more mobile and accessible during call-backs. Also, cleaners can take pictures with their cell phone cameras and text them to the manufacturer representative for a visual aide.

While equipment breaking down is frustrating, Lee stressed the need for cleaners to avoid breakdowns of their own.

“If you have a problem with your machine, don’t be angry, please,” he said. “If you yell at your machine or say a bad word, the machine listens. It will cause trouble many, many times in the future.”

Instead, cleaners should calm down and gather their wits so they can properly assess the situation. Many times, cleaners read their error codes after they call in initially and end up fixing the problem before their call is returned.

“Let’s save time,” Lee suggested. “Actually, the phone call costs us money — and not only phone calls, but time is money for us. We hope to serve more people in a short time.”

After the three men concluded their presentations, the seminar session broke from the traditional format. Lee remained in the lecture hall to speak to Korean cleaners on the topic of machinery maintenance while Lactaoen and Korey led several dozen attendees down to the exhibit floor before it was officially open to the public for the day.

Using the machinery on display, the two men were able to illustrate some of their maintenance recommendations first-hand as the captive onlookers paid close attention to the details.

The devil, after all, is in the details, and that is precisely what cleaners must scrutinize on their leases, according to Kelly Kelleher of Kelleher Equipment. Her presentation on “Lease Negotiation” had kicked off Saturday’s seminars earlier in the morning.

“What you should attempt to do is make your lease as desirable in 15 years as the day you signed it, because what you did or did not sign in your lease can potentially hurt you in the future,” she said.

Kelleher emphasized the importance of drycleaners looking out for their own needs first.

“Most drycleaning tenants are small mom-and-pop tenants, and if they are dealing with big corporations — there is a level of trust when they are told things verbally and they don’t realize they need things in writing,” she added. “Then, down the road they either try to sell their business or they try to exercise their option, and they find themselves in trouble.”

Cleaners have enough trouble just dealing with the tough economy, but there is at least one nice ripple effect from that: leasing companies no longer hold all of the cards during the negotiation process.

“The landlords in the past few years have been selling high, so they’ve been playing highball and they’ve been winning,” Kelleher said. “They didn’t care. They had other tenants lined up. Now, they’ve been dropping like flies so something has to give somewhere.”

Some of the things cleaners should try to ask for include: at least a 15-year lease or a ten-year lease with a five-year option; the exclusive right to operate their cleaning business and its ancillary services in the shopping center owned by the landlord; and an anchor contingency that allows the cleaner to pay only half rent until the anchor business opens or a right to cancel the lease in case the anchor business never opens at all.

Landlords may not want to make concessions on the lease, but they will like having an empty space in their lot even less.

“I ask for everything, even if I think there is no way in heck I’m going to get that,” she noted. “I like the bulldog approach. Just keep asking and asking until you wear them down.”

If lease negotiations fail to wear cleaners down, then legislative issues just might do the trick. On Sunday morning, CCA Lobbyist Mike Belote was on hand to discuss a few regulatory issues that loom on the horizon for the industry.

One potential problem for California cleaners is that state lawmakers can’t reach an accord to approve the state budget, which missed the constitutional deadline months ago.

“California is one of three states in the country that requires a 2/3 vote to adopt the budget,” he said.

Elected statewide republicans and democrats are currently divided on how to address a $15 billion hole in the budget. A combination of spending cuts and more taxes might be the only solution, but so far both sides are stalemated on the matter.

According to Belote, that is a problem for cleaners because it brings up the issue of broadening the base of sales tax to include local services such as lawn maintenance, beauty salons and drycleaning.

“Are you going to send your drycleaning to Nevada? Probably not,” he noted. “Our fight will be: OK. If you’re going to broaden the sales tax to include services, it ought to be fair. Don’t just target the low-hanging fruit, the businesses that cannot leave.”

Another pending legal issue has to do with employee meal-and-rest. The law requires employers to provide employees who work more than five hours a day with 30 minutes of an unpaid, uninterrupted meal period. So, employees are not even supposed to answer a company phone call during that break.

There has been significant debate over what the word “provide” really means in terms of the law.

“Labor has taken the position for years that the requirement to provide means you must be sure that the employees did no work and actually took the meal period,” Belote explained. “If you can’t prove that they took an uninterrupted 30 minutes, you are liable for one hour each day that you can’t prove that.”

In order to protect themselves from legal liability, employers have been advised to deny employees skipping lunch so they can leave early for a doctor’s appointment or one of their kid’s soccer games.

“You must force them to take the meal period,” Belote added.

Such an action could help California cleaners avoid any lawsuits pertaining to the issue.

Most cleaners are no strangers to legal liability to begin with. After all, they deal daily with the complex conundrum of care labels on garments, which was the subject of the final seminar on Sunday.

“What is covered by the care label rule?” asked DLI Garment Analyst Chris Allsbrooks.

“All garments or wearing apparel sold to be worn in the United States. Any garment that you decide to put on besides your underwear and your socks, basically, is covered by the care label rule.”

Garment manufacturers are the ones responsible for care labels, which must provide a warning using words or the appropriate symbols.

“Your care label has to give you one method of care. So, it has to tell you to wash, or to dryclean, or not to do either one,” she explained.

If drycleaners follow the care label and the garment sustains damage, who is at fault?

“The manufacturer,” she stated. “However, the professional cleaner will find a way to work it out with the customer so that everybody is mutually satisfied.”

Allsbrooks emphasized that providing excellent customer service should be the bottom-line goal. According to her research, cleaners lose a staggering 68 percent of their customers due to attitude indifference at the counter.

“Today’s customers like to feel that they are... special, important, getting a good value,” she stressed. “They like to feel that they are number one. No matter what they bring in, all customers are important.”

Customers expect a lot for their money, so cleaning clothes effectively and providing friendly service are the bare minimum cleaners must do. They should also offer perks, such as monetary discounts, free minor mending and repairs, toys and candy for kids and even treats for pets.

Any extra value for their drycleaning dollar will be welcomely received by consumers and keep them coming back for more. Just to be safe, though, Allsbrooks noted the importance of asking if the customer was happy when their transaction was completed. Such feedback is priceless.

“If a customer leaves your store unhappy, you didn’t do your job,” she said. “Are they going to come back? Maybe, maybe not. The way the industry is going right now, we don’t need any ‘maybe nots’ because of the way that we act in our