“Why do you cost so much?”
Last week, I received this letter from a customer:
Dear Madam or Sir,
I just picked up my dry cleaning (7 shirts) from your Orchard store and to my AMAZEMENT it cost $53.01!! I am completely shocked. I cannot imagine why your prices are so high when other places charge $1.50 a shirt. That would have been 10 dollars… far less than your charges. I will not be returning to your store and I will definitely let my friends and family know about your ridiculous prices.
Sincerely, (name withheld)
In my response to this customer, I explained one of the six shirts, a 100% cotton button-down, was processed in the executive shirt laundry at $2.84. This is our lowest price service. The other five shirts were either made of 100% silk or 100% rayon. Both of these are specialty fibers and require extreme care to prevent shrinkage and fading. We hand-finished these to preserve a like-new appearance and charged accordingly. The blouse might deserve a second look. If this is a basic button down style and at least a size 10 we could have processed it through the executive shirt laundry for $2.84. In that case, we owe this customer a credit. I am not aware of any competitor charging as low as $1.50 for laundered shirts. Even “bang and hang” discounter charges a flat rate of $2 per garment, pre-paid, with no guarantees.
However, this person’s letter touches on larger things going on in the dry cleaning industry.
Over the past few years, there’s been increasing differentiation between local dry cleaners. Some, like Westco, are trying to stake out the middle of the road, trying to offer the most service for the least price. Others, especially some long-established local cleaners, are trying to offer the least service for the least price. Clothesline Cleaners has responded too and we have moved up to the premium category, offering the most service for the most price. That’s where we see our niche and no one can match it in our service area.
Like so many other things in life, you get what you pay for. People trust us with their clothing, which in some cases could be thousands of dollars for a custom suit or dress. It may be a wedding dress that is really irreplaceable. If that gets damaged while in our care, we purchase a replacement or do the best that is humanly possible. We don’t reimburse for the current estimated value of the garment. We do whatever is necessary to set things right and replace the garment. That’s a form of insurance and we have to build it into our cost structure.
We offer pickup and delivery, automated 24-hour pickup and dropoff and attention to detail in all aspects of what we do. We send our employees regularly for training. We have invested tens of thousands of dollars in computer automation to ensure garments are processed, tracked, sorted and delivered promptly and without errors or lost items. We have more staff to attend to details, like pressing each shirt collar, spot removal and careful sorting before washing. All this costs more money, but it results in fewer mishaps, a higher overall level of fabric care and customers who are very pleased with the appearance of their clothing.
With the discount cleaners, there’s no guarantee. Someone who is charging $2 per item, flat rate, simply doesn’t have the resources to pay for your $200 designer jeans if they come out damaged. At the same time, they aren’t doing a whole lot to provide any special handling the garment requires. It’s a completely different system than ours. Very little care or concern goes into the cleaning and finishing of those items, there’s a lot of steam tunnel work, very little hand finishing and no guarantees. The fact that you pay up front tells you you’re going to take what you get.
The middle-of-the-road cleaners are the ones struggling to create a market. Because of the economy, everyone is price-conscious. Discount cleaners are doing fairly well as consumers are trying to spend less, abandoning the mid-market cleaners. But before long, someone is going to become dissatisfied with a discount cleaner, sending that customer back to a more expensive cleaner.
We know who we are, we know who are customers are, we know our capabilities and their value and we are not shy about charging for it. Given our level of service and commitment, we are actually pretty competitive with the mid-level cleaners. If you are looking for premium service and unmatched commitment to customer satisfaction and quality, we are your dry cleaner.
Tags: Clothesline Cleaners, cost, economy
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
