Dry spell for cleaners drags on
Sales have sunk along with need to wear formal clothes
With spring come signs that the coronavirus pandemic is ebbing.
Baseball games are returning. So are proms and live events.
And the state announced updated guidance for high school and college graduation ceremonies on Monday, offering the faint outlines of a return to normalcy.
Dry cleaners are watching with cautious optimism. Yet they’re still hanging on by a thread.
“All I need is one shirt set three times a week,” a customer recently told Dave Bezjian, owner of Handy Dandy Drive-in Cleaners in Delmar. “So I Zoom in pajamas.”
Business at Handy Dandy, which Bezjian’s family has
“There are no events. No weddings, funerals, programs or any type of gatherings where people would dress up at all. Maybe it won’t be back to pre-pandemic for years.”
— Allen Patanian, owner, Rainbow Cleaners in Troy
run since 1925, has plummeted, dropping an estimated 70 percent and cutting the number of days the shop is open to just three a week.
“We need the guy who comes in with a suit and five shirts per week,” Bezjian said.
A half-dozen dry cleaners in the Capital Region had similar stories, from the shuttering of the court system decimating their business from lawyers to pharmaceutical sales representatives making sales calls in hospital scrubs.
Within the first week of the pandemic’s onset last March, business plummeted 89 percent at Best Cleaners.
The Schenectady-based chain laid off 73 people the first week and ultimately closed four of its nine stores.
“It has been relatively stable since September,” said Catherine Mccann, co-owner. “But we’re still 50 to 55 percent down.”
As the pandemic set in, the workin-pajamas model saw dry cleaners go dark, downsizing operations, slashing hours and wondering if the pandemic would deliver an existential blow to their industry.
“There are no events,” said Allen Patanian, owner of Rainbow Cleaners in Troy. “No weddings, funerals, programs or any type of gatherings where people would dress up at all. Maybe it won’t be back to prepandemic for years.”
Spring is typically a busy season for the dry cleaning industry, with people packing up their winter clothes and diving into events.
Yet, despite signs of life, recovery remains sluggish.
“It’s very, very very slow,” said Anna, owner of European Tailoring and Alterations in downtown Albany, who declined to give her last name. “We’re waiting for everyone to be back.”
Bezjian said the return of state workers is critical for survival.
“If people aren’t going back to work, our business is dead,” Bezjian said. “Just look at the highway in the morning.”
Like other sectors battered by shutdowns, the pandemic has accelerated innovation in the industry, with companies hustling to expand revenue sources and broaden their offerings, including offering pickup and delivery.
They’ve also pivoted to emphasizing different services to the workfrom-home crowd that they’ve always provided but seldom promoted, including sanitizing comforters and bedding and laundry services, options they hope will appeal to time-strapped parents trying to balance home-schooling their kids with household chores.
Companies like Best Cleaners have invested heavily in technological improvements, including using text messaging to communicate with customers.
Tailors are also seeing an increase in alterations for those who’ve packed on the pandemic pounds.
“We’ve made it through the polyester era and the housing recession,” said Dawn Hargrove-avery, a spokesperson for the National Cleaners Association. “How did we do that? We reinvented ourselves.”
But balancing innovation and existing services can be a difficult needle to thread.
The evaporation of business has resulted in the tailor at Crown Cleaners in East Greenbush no longer maintaining an in-house presence.
Yet while reduced, the demand is still there, and customers may take their business elsewhere if they can’t immediately obtain that same level of previous service, said owner Chirag Patel.
“It’s a very hard situation to maintain,” Patel said.
The true scope of damage to the industry won’t be fully known until eviction safeguards expire, Hargrove-avery said.
Some studies show the U.S. will lose 1 of 6 dry cleaners nationwide over the next 18 months, she said.
“Even if people brought in two or three pieces to be cleaned, it can save a dry cleaner.”
Executive Cleaners in Albany is among the businesses that renegotiated agreements with their landlord.
“The simple truth is that it’s brutal,” said owner Michael Kaprielian. “We’re trying to be hopeful.”
Best Cleaners is optimistic about recovery and has hired back 23 laid-off employees.
But they’re still trying to fill positions, and Mccann suspects the series of federal stimulus packages have played a role.
“It does hurt small businesses when they pay people to stay home,” Mccann said.
Kaprielian wondered if the workfrom-home model would become the new normal.
While shirt laundry has started to creep back, the family-run business hasn’t seen a comparable increase in dry cleaning.
“The next 12 months is where the rubber meets the road,” Kaprielian said. “Will dry cleaners go the way of the haberdasher? Good luck finding a bowler hat someplace.”