Clemens Uniform Rental named borough Business of the Month
Company chose to stay in town following devastating 2016 fire
The April winner of Lansdale’s Business of the Month award is one that chose to make a big bet on Lansdale after a devastating fire two years ago.
“As I stood along West Fifth Street on the evening of June 15, 2016, watching events unfold, it was clear that things were going to change in a big way for our April 2016 Business of the Month,” said Borough Council President Denton Burnell.
“The flames and smoke that were coming from the home of Clemens Uniform Rental, located at 811 West Fifth St., would take days to bring fully under control. Taking stock of the impact would take many more weeks and months, and ultimately would take a total of 15 months to rebuild, literally, from its ashes the new facility that stands in place of the original,” he said.
The business now known as Clemens Uniform Rental was established in 1963 by Paul and Kathryn Clemens, as a coin-operated laundry facility in Lansdale’s Hillcrest Shopping Center, according to Burnell.
Over time, the company grew to offer fullservice dry cleaning,
and in 1986 the company began to offer uniform rentals, at the rear of their Clemens Cleaners storefront on Main Street. Two years later, according to Burnell, Clemens Uniform Rental moved to a new facility on Fifth Street, and that facility was expanded to add new services four times by the time of the 2016 fire.
“Clemens began to offer embroidery, silk screening, and first aid service, in addition to the excellent uniform supply service they were built on,” Burnell said.
“All of these services are still offered today, managed
by two of Paul and Kathryn’s children: Janet oversees the dry cleaning and financial departments, and Randy is general manager of the uniform, linen, and first aid business,” he said.
As he showed slides of the old location, and the upgrades after the 2016 fire, Burnell described for council and the public how the rebuilt facility now features what looks at first glance like an “overwhelming jumble of rails, and tracks, and industrial scale machinery, (but) is in reality a finely tuned and complex system.”
Each piece of clothing rented by Clemens now has a radio frequency ID tag sewn in, which allows machinery to use electromagnetic fields to automatically
find and track any piece of clothing in their facility.
“This technology allows Clemens Uniforms, for example, to quickly identify the presence of specific individual articles of clothing, in a batch of hundreds of unsorted items, via one compete scan of a large bin,” Burnell said.
Tight tracking of each individual item allows the company to process more than 20,000 pounds of clothing per day, while still making sure one specific suit or shirt makes it to the proper place at the proper time, he said.
Randy Clemens accepted the award on behalf of the company, and said he knew as early as 4 a.m. the morning of the fire that the company would rebuild, but had no idea where or how until after a meeting with borough officials, council members, and the heads of the town’s water, sewer, and code departments.
“Everybody was at that meeting, and I basically said ‘We’re willing to rebuild here, with your help,’ and everybody agreed that they would do anything that they could to help us. And they all did,” Clemens said.
New sewer and water lines were installed to connect to the facility, and Clemens thanked in particular John Ernst, who then led the Code department and is now borough manager, and construction project manager Chris Kunkel for
leading the effort.
“We are very happy with the facility we have, and we’re very, very happy that we could stay in Lansdale,” Clemens said.
“The facility now was built with 25 percent additional capacity from what we had before. We have 50 employees right now, in the facility; 13 of those are Lansdale residents, and we have the capacity that we can add additional equipment for another 25 percent increase from there. So thanks again for all that you’ve done for us,” he said.
Burnell said the company’s willingness to stay in town, and to work with staff to provide a new facility for dozens of local employees,
were worthy of the monthly award.
“This resilience, in the face of those catastrophes I mentioned earlier, and their decision and desire to double down on Lansdale, is one of the main reasons I was inspired to learn more about their operation, and ultimately to recognize them here this evening,” Burnell said.
“I’m sure you will agree, they are fully worthy of that recognition,” he said.