National Clothesline

Every day, it seems cleaners have to deal with more and more — more regulations, more competition, more operating costs — and yet, the only thing they really want more of is customers.

During the Clean Show in New Orleans, the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute offered a trio of seminars designed to help plant owners attract new business — be it through online marketing, pickup and delivery routes or impressive credentials that generate a positive reputation.

The latter method was featured in an educational program called “AOE Helped Build My Business, And It Can Help Build Yours” presented by Dave Beatty, Martin Young and Dave Silliman, three cleaners who have been a part of the Award of Excellence program since its inception at the 2005 Clean Show in Orlando.

Since then, AOE has grown to include 300 facilities in its ranks. The program was originally designed to give the industry’s best operators a way to differentiate themselves in the eyes of consumers.

Kicking off the discussion on the subject was Martin Young, owner of Young Cleaners in North Carolina and also a past president of the North Carolina Association of Launderers and Cleaners.

“Many cleaners have chosen to market themselves by coupon, price and speed, but you need to differentiate yourself,” he stressed. “A customer needs to have a reason to choose you.”

For Young, the Award of Excellence has helped propagate publicity for his plant by making it stand out from the competition.

“AOE is something you’ve got to earn. You can’t buy it,” he said. “You’re given a swatch and you have to get out six stains. You are given towels where you have to do a cleaning performance test. And, you have to do these things repeatedly each year.”

Passing the program’s requirements takes a lot of time, effort and passion, according to Young, but that is precisely the point. Not every cleaner can make the final cut.

“You’re doing more than the typical cleaner,” he explained. “The program tells the customer and the prospective customer what they can expect from you.”

“Reliable stain removal is difficult to find in today’s market because so many people have chosen not to do the training,” Young added. “Anyone can match your price. Anyone can match your fast processing. But, not everyone can earn the Award of Excellence.”

For Dave Beatty of Murrysville Cleaners in Pennsylvania, achieving AOE status has helped transform his business into a much better cleaners.

Beatty, who has been in the industry for almost a quarter of a century, was immediately supportive of the idea. He liked that it gave the industry an official seal of quality to display on the front window to indicate which plants can be labeled as one of the “good cleaners.”

However, once he earned his AOE status, Beatty found himself compelled to increase the overall standards of his company even more.

“Every day you make a tremendous amount of decisions on things like if you’re going to rerun something, or if you’re going to respot something... is the pressing on that good enough?” he said.

Inevitably, the question he asks himself whenever faced with a tough decision is: “What would an Award of Excellence cleaner do?”

At the end of a long, hard day, sometimes it’s tempting just to run a garment through in a hurry and be done with it, but Beatty said that simply doesn’t happen anymore.

Now, everybody in the plant constantly feels they have to live up to higher reputation.

“It’s had a whole change on our business, and the employees started buying in on that change,” he said. “Before, we would probably have just put a garment through and say, ‘Aw well, that’s good enough. That’s the best we can do. They’re only paying this...’ You make some kind of excuse to rationalize your decision. When you use the Award of Excellence as your guide, it really transforms your whole business. It really makes you want to be good.”

When AOE cleaners differentiate themselves and exemplify superior standards, customers take notice and voice their approval, which was one of the reasons DLI President Dave Silliman chose to be on the board that helped create the AOE program.

“I was instrumental in developing the program and very instrumental especially in the customer service principles,” he said.

Silliman, a third-generation cleaner who owns Uptowne Drycleaning in Arizona, revealed that most people who inquire about the program are specifically concerned with its money-back guarantee.

Since his plant opened in 1975, Silliman has offered such a guarantee and believes it is essential to fostering trust with customers.

“I have never had to give anybody their money back but the fact that it is on my wall relieves some of the people who come into my store,” he said.

“The money-back guarantee does not mean ‘satisfaction guaranteed’,” he added. “As we all know, there are some people who are just not satisfiable. What it means is, if you’re not happy with my work, I’ll return your money. It’s that simple.”

Silliman also stressed that achieving AOE status and putting a poster on your wall is not going to be enough to bring in droves of new customers.

“You have to get the word out in your marketing program,” he noted. “It is a tremendous tool if you use it properly.”

For Silliman, that means using the AOE logo prominently in all of his advertising as well as on all of his delivery vehicles, walls, windows and propped up by a stand behind the counter.

In fact, it was that persistent use of publicity materials that helped him land a coveted account with the Arizona Diamondbacks organization.

“Really, you need every opportunity you have to separate yourself from your competition,” he concluded.

Separating one’s business from the rest was also on the mind of Friday’s speaker James Peuster when he took the microphone. Although, he’d be the first to admit he’s seen some cleaners attempt the strategy less successfully.

He offered up an example of a plant slogan he once encountered that read: “All Drycleaners Suck. We Suck the Least.”

Peuster, one of the industry’s leading consultants, was on hand to help cleaners tap into more revenue during his session on “Picking Up Customers = Picking Up Profits.”

According to Peuster, one of the best ways to differentiate your plant from others is to offer free pickup and delivery service.

In order to be successful at building and maintaining routes, cleaners need to make sure they must have a strategic marketing plan that includes conversions and face-to-face sales.

It also takes a 100-percent commitment and the right mindset. According to Peuster, routes are a proven, effective way to add sales, but they require careful cultivation.

“You need to keep adding customers, adding water to that bucket,” he explained. “And what’s great about it is if you overfill the bucket, what do you do? You get a second bucket, which means you add a second van.”

The best way to fill up the buckets is with the personal touch that comes with face-to-face sales.

“Face-to-face can overcome their objections. It can solve the procrastination problem, the concerns and all that,” he emphasized.

In terms of verbal skills in his route salesmen, Peuster only asks that they be comfortable by being themselves.

He also pointed out that other route marketing techniques such as door hangers, direct mail, bag drop, radio and billboard can still be used, but they are merely an adjunct to door-to-door sales.

Breaking down the statistics, Peuster revealed that not only do door-to-door sales have the highest success rate — costing an average of $30 to $130 per new customer — they also boast the highest retention rate, ranging between 68 to 77 percent.

Without face-to-face interaction, other methods usually retain between 25 to 40 percent. Peuster believes it’s best to play the percentages.

“You cannot afford to gamble your future based on hope,” he said.

As for the drycleaning industry’s future, he foresees trouble in the next three years. Those without routes will see a steady decline in sales, he noted, adding: “If you don’t put your customers on a route, your competition will.”

Following Peuster’s presentation, Daniel McCrory offered up another axiom for cleaners: “If you build it, they will come.”

McCrory, director of internet marketing and website development for The Golomb Group, believes that drycleaning customers are relying more and more on new ways to find a cleaner, forsaking the old methods of stumbling upon them on the side of the road or in the Yellow Pages.

“Today, they are much more likely to use the convenience of the internet via search engines like Google, Yahoo and a little more recently, Bing.com, which is formerly MSN.com, to find out who you are and where you are,” he said.

McCrory also pointed out that websites are often overlooked as a means of advertising.

“This is the easiest way to convince potential customers to get in the car, drive to your store and ultimately lock in to your business.”

Having a site offers a multitude of advantages: it can host advertising offers that can be made and changed in a matter of minutes; it presents a crisp, clean image of your business; it can bring in customers outside of your immediate marketing area; and customers or potential customers can click on specific information they are seeking 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Of course, the websites must be professionally designed in order to be most effective.

A good website is one that is easy to find and navigate, user friendly and simple and catchy. It should provide relative content and quality information and give visitors a reason to keep coming back.

“A good site will not only bring you into the present, but it will help you have a presence in the future,” he said.

McCrory also noted that promoting a website is absolutely essential and relatively inexpensive.

Cleaners can jump higher up in search engine rankings if they optimize their site’s content and HTML coding in a process known as search engine optimization (SEO).

A more traditional marketing method of driving traffic to your site is through online paid ads.

Regardless of which method is preferred, however, cleaners confused by technical internet-speak should not let it be an obstacle preventing them from building a website.

Many companies, including The Golomb Group, can be hired to do the heavy lifting for an affordable price. The most important thing to remember is to have one built as soon as possible.

“As far as rankings on search engines, the sooner you have a website, the higher your ranking will be on the search engine when somebody does a search for a local drycleaner in your area,” he said.