Background
A History of the Garment Maintenance Industry
In the first half of this century, a thriving commercial laundry industry conveniently picked up, processed, and delivered tons of laundry to millions of households. The reason it thrived is that home-based laundering was a tedious chore (i.e., boil water, scrub on the board, drain and refill wash and rinse water, hang clothes on the line; iron, etc.). However, with the introduction of the automatic home washer and dryer in the early 1950s, and wash-n-wear fabric in the 1960s, consumer demand for commercial laundering died. The dry cleaning industry -- a remnant and subset of the old Commercial Laundry industry -- processes the dressier types of garments that are either too difficult or time consuming for people to wash or press themselves.
Dry cleaners are in trouble, too. Perhaps the industry's biggest problem is simply that people don't "dress up" like they used to. Even when they do, however, garments are increasingly becoming easier to maintain. Compounding these trends, stagnant industry productivity keeps prices high, profits and wages low, and working conditions uncomfortable. Yet further woe: dry cleaners now contend with expensive environmental costs as perchloroethylene, the major dry cleaning solvent, has been deemed environmentally unsound.
The graph below shows a recent history of United States dry cleaning revenue in constant (1983) dollars. Of particular note is the horrific drop from 1967 to 1977 reflecting the introduction of wash-n-wear polyester clothing.
The rebound in the late 1980s, however, is likely deceptive; resulting from a switch in government accounting to include shirt laundering revenue which was formerly tallied with the Commercial Laundry industry.
Measured in today's dollars, United States based dry cleaning is approximately a $5 billion industry. Although the trade exists in many parts of the world, universally its problems are the same. In summary, similar to the demise of commercial laundering, without significant change, future demand for dry cleaning seems destined to decline.
Garment Care's Efforts to Fix Economic and Environmental Problems
Having adopted a statement from Harvard professor and author, Theodore Levitt, the overriding mission of Garment Care is "to get and keep customers." Importantly, since consumer demand for dry cleaning will likely decline in the future, the first step Garment Care took to succeed in its mission was to refuse to identify itself exclusively as "a dry cleaner."
Whether textiles require laundering or dry cleaning, Garment Care management wants consumers to consider it for all their fabricare needs. Even its name was chosen so as not to pigeonhole itself.
According to economists James McGuigan and Charles Moyer, decision makers in all types of situations are faced with a common set of problems: Identify the alternative means of achieving given objectives, then select the alternative that accomplishes the objective in the most efficient manner.
Applying that statement to the decision: HOW BEST TO GET CLOTHES CLEANED, Garment Care noted that commercial laundries first began to decline when consumers determined they were less efficient than automatic home washers and dryers. Logically, therefore, in order to get and keep customers in any significant way, Garment Care reasoned it must make its service even more efficient than cleaning clothes at home.
In order to do that, two things seemed necessary:
- A new system to clean and process all clothing and linens at low cost
- A new system to enhance convenient pickup and delivery to consumers.
Furthermore, a survey taken in 1992 strongly confirmed that -- given these changes -- the consumer market would be ripe!
In February 1993, David Porter, President of Garment Care, asked his home-town neighbor, the United States Department of Energy's Kansas City Plant, for some help.
The Kansas City Plant and Its Joint Project with Garment Care, Inc.
For many years, the mission of the Department of Energy's Kansas City Plant has been related to the manufacturing of non-nuclear components for weapons systems. In order to carry out that mission, it has developed a full array of mechanical, electromechanical, and electronic products manufacturing processes. Furthermore, it has gained an extensive knowledge of advanced prototyping and manufacturing process development.
Since the 1980s, a principal goal at the Plant has been to eliminate the need for chlorinated and fluorinated solvents used to clean weapon components. Using many innovative methods and cleaning solutions, the usage of these two solvent families was reduced from a total of approximately 820,000 pounds in 1988 to near three per cent of that in 1995. Through the Department of Energy's Technology Transfer Program, the Kansas City Plant has extended its knowledge of manufacturing and solvent elimination to many in private industry.
Kansas City Plant researchers George Bohnert and Tom Hand joined David Porter in preliminary investigations and concluded that development of an economic and environmentally sound commercial garment maintenance process should be feasible. To that end, the Garment Care and Kansas City Plant Team jointly pursued funding to begin this Phase One research.
Date created: 3/6/96