Pressing for success: art of dry cleaning is big business at Regal.Pressing for success: Art of dry cleaning dry cleaning, process of cleaning fabrics without water. Special solvents and soaps are used so as not to harm fabrics and dyes that will not withstand the effects of ordinary soap and water. Dry cleaning began in France about the middle of the 19th cent. is big business at Regal Boasting 80 employees, a 25-terminal computer network and dry cleaning and laundry machines costing up to $70,000 apiece a·piece adv. To or for each one; each: There is enough bread for everyone to have two slices apiece. [Middle English a pece : a, a; see a , Regal Cleaners in Burbank just might be one of the busiest laundries in the country. Milton Chortkoff started his career at age six, pushing a laundry cart for his father. After a lifelong career in the clothes cleaning business, Chortkoff, 61, and his nephew, Michael Shader, 31, bought the Regal Cleaners plant. At the time, the cleaners did $20,000 worth of business a month. Now the plant brings in $200,000 a month. Chortkoff and Shader attribute their success to high-tech equipment and an eye toward detail. "I have two girls who do nothing all day but touch up shirts," Shader said. Before the shirts are touched up, however, they pass through a machine called a Fujicar, which presses first the collar and cuffs, then the sleeves and lastly the body of more than 200 shirts an hour. "This is what's going to make us what we really are," boasted Shader, who noted that the machines have yet to gain popularity in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . Unlike many neighborhood dry cleaners, which give customers paper receipts and file orders by hand, Regal Cleaners is computerized computerized adapted for analysis, storage and retrieval on a computer. computerized axial tomography see computed tomography. . First-time customers are given credit cards with an identification number to present each time they come in. Then, each transaction is completed using an employee identification number. Cash controls are "extremely, extremely tight," Shader said. Still, a shirt costs $1.40 to launder Launder To move illegally acquired cash through financial systems so that it appears to be legally acquired. - more than some simpler operations. The plant processes 20,000 garments a week, which might seem like a lot to keep track of. "We misplace mis·place tr.v. mis·placed, mis·plac·ing, mis·plac·es 1. a. To put into a wrong place: misplace punctuation in a sentence. b. things temporarily, but we never lose things," he said. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion