With Dry Cleaning You Should Get What You Pay For

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Michael Miller

Atlanta, GA, United States

After 12 years as a manager and owner of my families dry cleaners, I went into sales as a manufacturers rep calling on cleaners in 10 states over the last 17 years. I estimate I have been in over 1500 different dry cleaning operations during this time and a blog seemed like the perfect way to share ideas, observations and insights with others in the industry. This gives me the opportunity to give back to the industry that has supported my family and I over the years. Dry Cleaner's Blog http://www.thedrycleanersblog.com

Quite often I wonder if the dry cleaning consumer knows what quality dry cleaning is. It would
often appear that dry cleaning is thought of as being generic, that all dry cleaners are the same.
This is very understandable as there has been erosion in the quality of dry cleaning over the last
couple decades and often you must go to several different cleaners before you find a quality
dry cleaner, this can give the consumer the perception that dry cleaning is generic. There was
a time that the dry cleaner was a trained individual that understood the intricacies of garment
care and strived to perfect his skills through training and education and there are still dry
cleaners that work at being the best, just not as many. As far as being generic, nothing could be
further from the truth

Should you expect the best possible quality from your dry cleaner?

That all depends. First, it is not feasible to expect all dry cleaners to do the highest quality of
dry cleaning. For example, a discount cleaner cannot afford to put the time and cost into a
garment that the high priced couture cleaners can.

Dry cleaning is a very labor intensive service. Much time and expensive is needed in order to
restore garments to like new condition and like new condition is what you should expect from
the full price cleaners. The ultimate goal of a full price dry cleaner should be to restore your
garments to like new condition.

On the lower end of the pricing structure are the discount cleaners. These cleaners are offering
a very low price and the consumer should not expect the full amount of effort to be put into
these garments like the full price cleaners do. Often stains will not be pre-treated, cleaning
cycles will be shortened and pressing may be nothing more than just steaming the wrinkles out
of the garment. Again, you should not expect much more than this.

Then there are couture cleaners. These guys should be the best of the best. These cleaners
are used to handling the most expensive garments, historical pieces, garments made by fashion
designers, etc. Everything from the quality of dry cleaning to the entire customer experience
should be extraordinary and again, you should expect it to be priced accordingly.

When it comes to dry cleaning, you should expect to get what you pay for and in return,
expect to pay for what you get.

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