Just as salesmen have gone from carrying only oxfords in the past to the present selling of multi-colored golf shirts, industrial launderers find themselves in a much different place today than they were decades ago. Over the years, with increased automation in industrial jobs, as well as the declining amount of heavy-soil factory work in this country, the industrial launderers and uniform rental companies have had to shift perspective and find new ways to work within the uniform industry. MADE TO MEASURE takes a look at how industrial laundering continues to change and evolve.
“A large uniform sales operation is about five times easier to operate than the rental business because it’s one way,” explains Bill Kartsonis, president of Superior Style Work Wear, a company that does both. “Somebody buys a product, you deliver it and, barring any defects, you are done. Whereas in rental, you have to go there the next week, pick up dirty uniforms, deliver clean ones and account for the losses.”
In terms of uniforms, one of the benefits to the customer, but a headache for the rental company, is turnover. If Joe the ex-employee wore medium shirts and 30/30 pants, the rental company has to buy a uniform for the new hire, Harry, with a 36-inch waist and large shirt. “You’ve got to make sure you have all the uniforms back from Joe,” continues Kartsonis, “inventory them, inspect them and store them somewhere so that hopefully you can re-rent them down the road.” But it doesn’t end there, of course. For Harry the new employee, the rental company has to supply a company emblem, name tag and more. Says Kartsonis, “For every set of garments the company rents out, they might own three sets.”
Ken Koepper, the director of communications and information services for the Uniform and Textile Services Assocation (UTSA) echoes this point. “Employee turnover is a major economic consideration in rental. When an employee turns over, it’s generally the laundry’s problem under a rental contract, but the user’s problem when they’ve bought the garments outright.” Koepper thinks rental laundries will continue to grow, not only because of the unavoidable turnover issues, but also because of the pragmatic concerns of maintaining a large program. “If you are the owner of a business, chances are tracking the clothes is one function you’d rather not undertake yourself, but instead, a task you would outsource—particularly if there is a large number of uniform wearers in your employ.”
Many restaurants, interestingly, utilize both rented and purchased uniforms. This is because back-of-the-house uniforms often get very soiled and really need to be industrially laundered, while the garments worn by servers aren’t heavily soiled.
According to Kartsonis, 20 years ago restaurants would rent chef pants, whereas now the employee will purchase his or her own pants, or the restaurant will purchase them. “The biggest change to hit the hospitality industry in the last decade has been the emergence of casual wear.”
The casualization of the workplace has been nothing short of a revolution for the uniform industry, and industrial laundries have felt it as much as any other side of the business. Koepper wonders if casualization was an across-the-board good thing. “The argument that it’s a benefit says that it’s absolutely great for these industrial launderers because they are accustomed to providing apparel only for the dirty jobs.”
The personnel in the cleanest jobs were wearing the more formal attire but are now going casual. Theoretically, these casual uniforms are more in line with what an industrial launderer has provided historically. Therefore, it could be argued that it’s good for the industrial laundry industry because it’s been providing more casual-looking garments for a very long time.
Acknowledging the give-and-take between comfort and ease of maintenance, Koepper looks at the other side as well. “The possible negative of the casual trend for industrial laundry—and all uniforms—is the lack of uniformity. We are still using that word, ‘uniform,’ and there’s a reason. Not only do we want people to look good and neat and clean, but to look to some degree, the same.”
In an ideal world for the renter, every uniformed employee would wear the same clothes and would be the same size. But this is not the world we inhabit, and it’s all a question of fitting the best system into existing workplaces.
Given that uniform rental and industrial laundering have been in business for some 70 years, one might think that it too would have been swept up by the exponential advancements in technology, but it is essentially the same as it was the day it was invented. “The chemistry itself probably hasn’t changed very much,” says Koepper. “There have been some changes, such as the ability to wash at lower temperatures and bleaches moving away from chlorine, but for the most part, it’s the same. The difference is that the chemical cleaners are coming in a liquid form now, rather than a powder, and being automatically injected rather than put in by hand.”
Kartsonis reports that Superior Styles Work Wear, which handles linens as well as chef uniforms, aprons and other apparel, has a 98 percent customer retention rate. “Customers count on us to be as reliable as a utility, to be there on a regular basis.” This kind of sentiment reveals a double-edged sword; whereas on one hand it explains the loyalty of a renter’s customer base, it also explains why it is so difficult to get new business. How does a rental laundry seek out new accounts as well as remain competitive? “We get calls often enough,” recounts Kartsonis, “where somebody is dissatisfied with their service, but finds he can’t go with a new service until the end of the contract.” The fact remains that the industry has gone to requiring customers to enter into multi-year rental agreements, and therefore not all customers are able to change laundries at any given point in time.
Bob Hammer, retired uniform retailer, offers the insight that most commercial laundries have a direct sales force now, whereas they didn’t 15 years ago. “This change took place because they were losing business to the independent merchant.” The bottom line is that the market has changed in a way that nobody could have anticipated. Hammer remembers, “Two decades ago, who bought aprons like they do now? I could count in a bushel basket the number of aprons I sold in a year. And by 1995, I probably sold a couple hundred thousand.”
It is this kind of unpredictability that will keep laundries on their toes working with their customers in the present but with an eye on the future.
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