United Kingdom
It is good to see that the national mainstream press has finally taken up the problems of the textile care industry and in this special case the dry cleaner / wet cleaner. On Sunday, July 19, the Sunday Times published an article by Liam Kelly, her business consultant, who recorded the experiences of three leading dry cleaning companies since the pandemic broke out.
Julian Stone, founder of the American Dry Cleaning Company with 42 branches in London, compared the sight of empty streets as he drove through the capital and visited his shops to a "ghost town" and said it had scenes from Danny Boyles' apocalyptic horror film evoked 28 days later.
He said to Kelly: "Dry cleaning is driven by conviviality, eating out, international travel, parties – all of this has come to a standstill." He finds it "difficult to be optimistic".
He explained that textile cleaners are particularly badly affected because city workers who are on the go do not have to professionally wash and iron five shirts a week and how “couples and families no longer go to restaurants, large family birthday parties, weddings, Ascot, Wimbledon or other social summer events – all valuable sources of income for the more than 4,000 British cleaning companies – have also hit the market. "
Although chemical cleaners were classified as an essential service and were therefore allowed to remain open during the ban, many, including Stone, reported being closed and taking vacation pay under the government's Job Retention Scheme, Kelly said.
Stone said to LCNi, “We were closed in mid-March and reopened on June 1st. We are currently only open 25 hours a week, compared to 70 last year. Without going to work, parties, restaurants, or international travel, the service we offer has fallen off a cliff. The difficulty at the moment is to juggle how many colleagues should be brought back from vacation with such a low turnover compared to last year.
“The biggest challenge was getting our landlords back on the floor with their rent expectations. It was like they were on a trip to Mars and had just landed on Earth and asked for full rent. Most of our landlords, say 70%, have started to wake up and smell the coffee. They made housing arrangements under the government's code of conduct for commercial real estate by providing rent waivers and rent reductions for six people for a nine-month period. Interestingly, the larger landlords like pension funds have no interest in discussing rent cuts or deferrals. We just have to wait and see how it works.
“Another challenge is to convince your bank that you have no business and that you need a large CBIL to survive the economic tsunami. That also required a lot of persuasion. "
Still, he said, "We'll stop. The best thing is to be a soldier, to offer your customers excellent quality and service, and to abide by your business principles. "
Meanwhile, Adrian Redgate in Nottingham kept the National Dry Cleaners open throughout the curfew to help the older customers who use his laundry service. He told The SundayTimes that sales decreased 90% between April and June as few people brought winter coats and blankets for cleaning. "Even if you ran a business badly, you wouldn't lose all of your customers so quickly," he said. "Until people get back to work regularly, it will be difficult for us to work again," he said.
And it's not much happier for national high street chain Johnson Cleaners *, where owner James Timpson told The Sunday Times that dry cleaning sales have halved and that "there is nothing we can do but offer really good service." – and to keep our nerves ".
LCNi then caught up with James Timpson for further comments and said, “The sales are terrible. Awful. A 50% drop and that hurts in a high cost, low margin business. However, we are confident that the situation will improve over time. “Regarding whether customers' dependence on dry cleaning will change in the future due to learned behaviors during locking and moving to home work, he said that demand is driven by a mix of work and social issues, and a lot may depend on whether the office workers are back at full time or maybe just two or three days a week. “But social events should come back to normal and there will be many weddings next year, if not immediately. "
Feedback from independent retailers at national level seems to indicate that compared to April to July last year, only 10 to 15% of the business is done, although there may be regional differences. Some companies reported a small increase when the block was lifted, but sales have now decreased again. Overall, it's not encouraging. However, some cleaners do hotel work. So if the hotels manage to open successfully, there is hope.
With job losses in all industries increasing and vacations ending, which is likely to lead to more layoffs and falling incomes, and uncertainty about when businesses of all kinds will be fully staffed in city centers, cleaners are reliant on volume to survive, to be, very worried. Concern has also been expressed that customers will find ways to clean lockdown clothes that will eliminate the need to visit the cleaners. And to top it off, cleaners also have to grapple with the unchecked inventory on the rails, as customers prioritize other payments.
* In addition to other services such as key cutting and shoe repairs, the Timpson brand also offers dry cleaning, which is however carried out separately by Johnson Cleaners. Johnson Service Group sold its dry cleaning retail business to Timpson Group in 2017 for £ 8.25m. See http://www.laundryandcleaningnews.com/news/newsjsg-sells-drycleaning-business-to-timpson-for-825m-5712103/
