Not too many people have the words “Born to Clean” in their e-mail address, but then again, few can claim to be a third-generation
drycleaner who has worked in the industry all of his life and owns a plant that
has been around for longer than a century.
Of course, all of the those details can be used to accurately describe Bruce
Barish, who owns Ernest Winzer Cleaners, considered to be “Broadway’s Master Cleaners” for approximately a century.
The company can trace its roots all the way back to 1908 when original owner
Ernest Winzer first opened the doors to the public.
“He was basically a cleaner for Broadway and he also did dyeing, as there was a
lot of dyeing being done back then,” Bruce explained.
“We actually just went to a costume celebration of the women wardrobe people of
Broadway that was celebrating women and 100 years of Broadway. They included
us, obviously,” he added.
The exhibit, which is called “Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance,” began last November and will continue until May 2 at the New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
Not too surprisingly, Ernest Winzer Cleaners was sent a lot of old Broadway
costumes to be cleaned, free of charge, for the display.
“They originally sent the stuff to us to press everything out,” Bruce recalled. “A lot of the stuff, though, when we got it, we were horrified.”
Working on fragile, historical pieces can bring a lot of pressure with it, but
Bruce believes the trick is to be on the same page as the customer and know
exactly what they want.
That was a lesson Bruce learned firsthand a while back when Christie’s Auction House sent him a collectible Star Trek jumpsuit from one of the
franchise’s films.
“The boots were actually built into it,” Bruce laughed. “One of the things I noticed was that the zipper was broken. We tried to get a
hold of them. We had to get it done by the next day. I decided there was no way
I was going to give it back with a broken zipper. They finally called us two
minutes before we were going to deliver it and they were horrified that we were
going to put a different zipper in it because then it would have lost its value
if it didn’t have the original zipper in it. So, we swapped it back out and put it back.
But it didn’t make sense to me.”
One of the odd things about working on so many Broadway costumes is that things
don’t often make sense. In many cases, the cleaner is NOT supposed to remove the
stains, for example.
“Some of the stains that are on the clothes sometimes, obviously, are supposed to
be there. It’s part of the show,” Bruce said. “We try not to do anything without physically talking to the people because we
know sometimes they are funny about things. There are times we will get
costumes where they’ve let the hem down. But, they’ve let the hem down because they were going to put it on a different actor.”
Clear communication with customers is just one of many important lessons the
family has learned over the years, ever since Bruce’s grandfather, Al Steinhorn, first bought Ernest Winzer in 1952. Prior to
becoming a drycleaner, he had successfully owned laundries but wisely opted to
change direction at the right time.
“In the 1950s is when people really started getting home washers. They became a
little more popular,” Bruce noted.
“So, his business was going down and he looked elsewhere and stumbled upon this
place and ended up buying it.”
By the time Bruce’s grandfather had taken over ownership of Ernest Winzer, the company had long
cemented its reputation as a Broadway cleaner, but there would soon be other
frontiers to explore.
“My grandfather definitely got into high end retail, pickup and delivery and
doing work for department stores and designers, things like that,” Bruce noted.
In terms of location, not much has changed in Ernest Winzer’s history. The store only moved once and that was just across the street in 1950
to make room for the Major Deegan Expressway.
Even though the plant has been in the same place for almost 60 years now, there
have been a lot of modifications and expansions to keep up with the growth of
the business.
The building now holds 15,000 square feet spread over two floors and the family’s delivery vehicles can pull up to either floor, which is handy since Bruce
estimates that only one percent of their work comes from foot traffic.
“There’s no counter here,” he said. “The people who live here aren’t necessarily our clientele. It’s a different demographic. We also get stuff shipped to us from all over the
world.”
Bruce’s father, Miles Barish, continued the family tradition in the 1960s, adding his
own successful touches to the business.
“My father was very involved in the front office by 1970, building the business
up,” Bruce said. “One of the things that he brought to the table was leather and suede cleaning on
a wholesale basis for other cleaners.”
As for Bruce, he first came in to help when he was eight. As soon as he was old
enough to drive, he began taking the minimum amount of classes at high school
so he could be dismissed early and work alongside his father.
One of Bruce’s earliest memories of working around the plant translated into some great
advice from his father. After completing an assigned task one day, Bruce
proudly declared he was finished.
“My father told me, and I never forgot this: ‘You will never be done here. Don’t ever say you’re done. Say: what’s next?’ And, it’s actually true even to this day,” Bruce said. “What’s on my desk, whatever’s going on, you just have to manage it and know when you can leave it for
tomorrow.”
Knowing there is always something else that needs to be done is part of what
keeps Bruce coming in before, and leaving after, the rest of his employees, but
it doesn’t bother him. Such a work ethic has long been a staple of the family.
“My grandfather died when I was young,” he said. “Basically, he had to retire at 72 because he was losing his sight, so I really
didn’t get to see him work. But, from what I’ve heard, he would basically come to work at whatever time he rolled over in the
morning, even if it was one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning.”
That tradition did not stop when Bruce’s father married into the family business.
“My father, for basically as long as I can remember, was probably always here at
about 6 a.m.” he added. “He was not home for dinner. He was not at our Little League games. The only way
I saw him was to come to work.”
The nature of so much Broadway work usually leads to a lot of hard work and some
crazy schedules in order to meet the quick turn-around demand.
“When my drivers pick up a show, it’s not like it’s every night,” Bruce pointed out. “Some shows only clean stuff once a week or twice a week. We have the Radio City
Christmas Show for the run of a little more than eight weeks, but the craziness
really hits in November and December. When you get into December, I think they
do as many as 12 shows a day.”
Around that time, things can seem a bit surreal at the plant which then contains
literally hundreds of Santa suits and thousands of other costumes.
“We basically pick the stuff up after the last show,” Bruce continued. “The driver gets it back here around midnight.
“Depending on how much stuff there is, we may be here until two o’clock in the morning to get it done because it needs to be back by lunchtime the
next day.”
These days, there are a lot more smaller productions with a higher abundance of
street clothes, but Broadway still hosts its share of big extravaganzas with
elaborate costumes posing interesting challenges.
“We have done every Disney production that has come through, basically,” he said. “Some of it I’ve probably taken for granted because I’ve seen wilder stuff than anybody else sees.”
At any given time, Ernest Winzer handles anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of all
Broadway productions, and there are often two- to three dozen productions going
on at one time.
A recent trend Bruce has been able to observe is that Broadway has slowly scaled
back on its number of big productions.
“If you go back ten years ago, you might have had maybe five or six really big
productions,” Bruce said. “The last couple of years, during the same time frame you may be looking at three
productions. This year, it may be two productions. It’s definitely dwindled somewhat.”
No matter how many large Broadway productions his company ends up handling at
one time, the pressure always remains high.
“We don’t have contracts with the shows,” Bruce explained. “We only have one contract and it’s written in such a way that if they ever wanted to break the contract, they
could break it immediately.”
That means Ernest Winzer has to perform virtually error-free on a nightly basis,
much like the performers who don the costumes they clean.
Fortunately, Bruce knows his company is getting rave reviews from the production
companies because, if they were not very satisfied, they would not keep coming
back for more.
