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business.
Steve was standing by the business end of a new, revolutionary, state-of-the-art cleaning
machine with all the environmentally
friendly whistles and bells recently. It's a new dry cleaning machine that's touted as being the epitome of cleaning machines and it's the only one of it's kind in this area.
He was explaining all the advantages of the new Shopstar 358 Fifth Generation dry cleaning machine made by Multimatic Corp. of Northvale, N.J.
It's all enclosed and keeps the cleaning solvent in a closed system. It has a microprocessor that sets the time to the exact second and then some. There's never an odor of cleaning solvent when the clothes are finished and
delivered. He was talking about seeing the machine on display in a trade show in Baltimore a year or so ago and got interested.
"At 72, I figured_ why go into this? I should think about retiring and taking it easy," he said, opening the door to the shiny machine and looking inside like a youngster checking on a long-awaited gift, say a new bicycle, to make sure it's still there and not something that is imagined.
Steve then started talking about his customers and the business. He wanted to quit and take it easy, but then he started thinking about all the loyal customers he had over the years. The people who have been with him since he started-people who have grown old with the friendly service of Friendly Dry Cleaners.
Many of these loyal and longtime customers are getting up in years and can't drive and get around as they once did.
"They said, 'we were with you when you need, now we need you," Steve said. "I just didn't want to let our customers down."
Friendly Dry Cleaners still has pickup and delivery service, the same as when the business started more than four decades ago. Service, he said goes along with business success and survival.
Today, the business has seven employees and Steve and Helen are still part of the daily operation.
Things are a little different today than when Friendly Dry Cleaners opened for business.
Clothing that is brought in to be cleaned is tracked by computers. More technology is used in the operation, but there are some things that never changed.
"Our customers are our friends," he said. Most of the customers are regulars and know Steve and Helen and the other employees at the cleaners.
Steve is quick to say that the business is servicing third and fourth generation customers.
He laughs when he talks about getting baby clothes to be cleaned from a parent whose own baby clothes were cleaned by his shop.
For a business to survive for 44 years something must have been done right early and the owners must have continued doing it right over the years.
He didn't really say it in so many words, but it's more than cleaning clothes that's the success.
It's service and living up to the name of the business. It's the little things such as replacing buttons and doing small repairs without asking and without charging.
It's also keeping up with the times.
In the old days, cleaners used carbon tetra-chloride, a poisonous material, as the dry-cleaning agent. It was dangerous for those who worked with it and dangerous to the environment.
"When I started 44 years ago, it was an all manual operation," Steve said.
The new cleaning machine is a testament to the advances that have been made over
the years. While the new machine isn't any faster, it's far better, Steve said. "There's no odor on the clothes. Clothes smell fresh and there's no trace of a chemical odor," he said.
That's the customer side of the operation. That's the important side too, he said.
On the technical side, the new machine is totally enclosed and nothing vented into the environment. The new machine is computer operated to the point that the internal computer selects the proper cleaning temperature and the proper drying temperature and the proper deodorizing time for any material that is loaded into the machine.
Taking technology even another step further, the microprocessor in the machine is "talking to itself" on a regular
basis making system checks. It has a self-diagnosis feature and if everything isn't just as it should be, the machine shuts itself off.
"This is the trend for the cleaning industry," Steve said.
Jack Ditkowich, vice president of Multimatic, said the machine installed at Friendly Cleaners is "the latest state-of-the-art," and completely safe, meeting all state and federal environment regulations, even
stringent European environment standards. He said the cleaning chamber has to be completely free of the cleaning solvent, perchloroethylene, before the door can be opened.
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