Over half a year ago, Ray Kroner realized that he wanted to commemorate the fact
that his family-owned Kroner Dry Cleaners was approaching the age of 70.
As a third-generation owner, he was proud of the company’s long history in Cheviot, OH, but he was more concerned about its immediate
future.
“I started looking at the signs of the times and seeing the newspaper stories in
the business section,” he recalled. “I could see that we were heading for some lean times, and I thought we needed
something to stir the pot and maybe do some marketing. Of course, you don’t want to spend a lot of money on marketing.”
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“We started in the Depression,” he noted. “Here we are at close to a recession at this milestone of our business, so I
thought I’d draw some attention to us. I made up this ten-foot PVC laundry hanger. I’ve got a couple of connections with the local newspaper and some of the
magazines in town and everybody says, ‘If you want to do any marketing, you need a hook.’ So, I thought: how would a ten-foot hanger be for a hook?”
As it turned out, it was quite a big hook. The unique billboard weighs only
about 15 lbs and it did not even take long to make. Ray added a banner with the
company’s logo and its years of operation (1939-2009) and the words: “Hanging Around for 70 Years.”
It soon became a conversational piece for everybody who passed it, and it lead
to quite a bit of publicity, so much so that Ray said his friends have joked
with him that they are tired of looking at his face in the paper.
“It’s almost comical how much attention it’s gotten,” he laughed.
When he hosted an open house for customers and friends at a nearby tavern to
officially honor the 70th anniversary of the cleaners, 225 people attended.
“So, from a celebratory perspective, it was a success,” he said. “From a marketing perspective, I’ll have to let you know in six months.”
When Ray’s grandparents, Alma and Lou Kroner, Sr., opened Cheviot Cleaners and Tailors,
the first day’s volume was alarmingly low: it consisted of a single pair of pants.
Ray’s grandfather had originally launched the cleaners after losing his home and
livelihood during the Great Depression.
“My grandfather was a vest maker. Back in the 1920s, there would be the vest
division, the sportscoat division and the trousers division — and each group would make their product and then they would pull together and
sell it through one company, which was Hamilton Tailors,” Ray noted. “With the onset of the Depression, there was obviously a conservation of
textiles. So, they really struggled.”
At the age of 40, Ray’s grandfather was faced with the prospect of mastering a new profession. That
first day of business was definitely slow, but the Kroner family persevered.
Four years later, Ray’s father, Lou, Jr., returned home from the Navy and joined the family venture.
“Grandpa had a good business sense. He was just in a poor time of life,” Ray said. “Then, my dad came in 1943. He had a real community sense. Back then, probably a
little bit more than now, people were very community-oriented in your immediate
area.”
One of the first things Lou, Jr., did was to change the company’s name to Kroner’s Dry Cleaners.
“My dad saw the power of putting your name on a product,” Ray said. “The name recognition helped grow things.”
In 1945, the family moved the plant down the street to its present location.
Then, in 1948, they purchased their first actual cleaning machine even though
the cleaners was almost a decade old by that time.
“Back in the 1930s, there were wholesale cleaners and if you were a cleaner you
had a press shop, so they’d come by and take the cleaning and then bring it back to you. You would press
it,” Ray explained. “So, basically, cleaners were press shops back then, and then individual machines
started making their way into the market in the 1940s.”
Over the years, the company’s growth has forced the Kroner family to expand numerous times. Its lone
location now includes over 20 employees and about 4,000 sq. ft.
“We’ve added on five times,” Ray said. “We’re in what was a strip of four businesses. In the past 15 years, I’ve taken over three of them. Dad took over one of them in his time, so now we’ve got the span of four businesses, and we’ve also done an addition on the back to handle growth.”
One of the biggest contributing factors to the company’s success has been its pickup and delivery routes, which date back to Kroner’s beginnings.
“Grandpa did his deliveries out of the back of a Plymouth,” Ray noted. “When dad came in, I think he started taking it a little more seriously and put
our name on the side of the truck.”
It was an effective strategy. These days, routes comprise about 55% of the
business’s volume. Kroner’s runs three delivery vehicles five days a week, covering all of western
Cincinnati. It keeps a steady stream of work coming in, which is exactly how
Ray prefers it.
“There’s a part of me that thinks if it can go up too fast, it can do down too fast,” he said. “It grows steady. Maybe that’s my German conservative roots, but we never want to bite off more than we can
chew.”
Ray was the second youngest of eight children, and he is the only one following
in his father’s footsteps at Kroner’s today.
There was a time, however, when too many footsteps were all competing with a
chance to go to the plant and get away from home.
“We all swept floors, pressed pants and waited on customers,” Ray recalled. “Actually, we lived in a small home so it paid off because my older brothers who
were in high school — we were still these little rugrats — would come here and sit in the office and study because there was too much
noise at home.”
By the time Ray graduated from high school, he had already logged numerous hours
at the company. Still, he liked the idea of working in the drycleaning business
because he felt it would keep his “short attention span” occupied.
“I’ve always enjoyed it because I can be a customer representative and a
maintenance man and a troubleshooter,” he explained. “You cover a lot of different areas. You wear a lot of hats, which I enjoy. The
thought of doing one thing every day, whether it’s sitting at a desk or whatever, would probably drive me nuts.”
The city of Cheviot boasts a modest population of about 10,000 residents.
Despite the small town atmosphere, Kroner’s always seems to stay ahead of the curve.
They have offered delivery routes since the beginning, and the company was quick
to upgrade to computers in the 1980s, long before such actions became more
widespread.
Also, thanks to Ray’s brother who works in graphic design, the company created a web site before it
became fashionable.
According to Ray, he never worries too much about trying out new things in
business; he doesn’t see the point in second-guessing yourself.
“You never really think about it,” he said. “You just follow your instincts and hope like hell they’re good.”
Sometimes, it’s wiser to rely on more than instincts, though. When his daughters. Jenny and
Emily, stopped helping out at the counter after they graduated from high school
and college, Ray had to turn to his wife, Christine, for help.
She is a Current World Events teacher at a local all-girls high school, so he
utilizes her position as a resource to finding more good employees.
“She is in charge of finding my next counter girl. The interview is done before
they get here,” he laughed. “It works out great. I’ve got five high school kids that work and I always get them incrementally in
age. So, even when they go to college, I’ve always got a rotation of intelligent young women working for me.”
About 45 years ago, Ray’s father came up with a unique way to honor kids in Cheviot and the local
community: the Outstanding Young Citizen’s program. It began in 1964 and the family is quite proud of its longstanding
tradition.
“Basically, it was a way for junior high students in our surrounding areas to be
recognized for just being good citizens,” Ray explained. “You see everybody getting awards for being a great athlete or for being a great
student and getting A’s. He thought that there was a lot of people out there who maybe aren’t the star athlete or the star student but they’re good citizens. So, he started the program.” It became an annual event, and Lou, Jr. even served as the its Master of
Ceremonies for the first 25 years.
“He has stepped away from it, but they’ve continued,” Ray added. “The schools saw the value in it. The kids seem receptive to it, so — I think for the last ten years now — I’ve jumped into it and now I’m doing the emceeing for the event now.”
Each school in the region selects two or three recipients who are honored, along
with the faculty, so the community can celebrate their service to the
community.
“It’s kind of a little push for kids to let them know that they are on the right
track,” Ray said. “My dad saw a need for it back then, and now it’s fun to see it grow and stay alive.”
