Joint industries conference

Reaping the benefits of an industry partnership

1 May 2011



The Joint Industries conference, organised by The Guild of Cleaners and Launderers and the Textile Services Association, highlighted the close collaboration in representing the laundry and drycleaning industries of the future. Tony Vince reports


The laundry and drycleaning industries face a challenging time and in doing so will have the benefit of close collaboration between the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers (a training body) and Textile Services Association (the trade association).

The two have had a combined secretariat since 2007 and this agreement has now been renewed for a further three years.

TSA chief executive Murray Simpson told the conference, held in March, that the collaboration has developed steadily over the past nine years and produces a well-supported annual conferences for both the UK and Scotland but he stressed that collaboration was not the same as a merger and both would continue their work with and for the laundry and drycleaning industries.

Underlining the close ties, the Guild is introducing its Guild Plus membership package, which will allow Guild members to enjoy a range of additional services negotiated for them by the TSA.

Guild president Adrian Redgate described the package as the next level in the organisation’s membership. In addition to the established Guild benefits, Guild Plus members will be able to use a customer conciliation service; enjoy preferential credit and debit card rates; have unlimited access to legal, business, employment, tax and PAYE advice; receive industry-specific insurance cover and receive “red alert “ email warnings of problem garments.

The audience was familiar with the rule that under the Solvent Emissions Directive, which is implemented by local councils, drycleaners require a permit to operate.

The conference heard that Defra (the government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has revised its guidance on drycleaning practice as part of a broader six-year review to update Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) process guidance (PG) notes.

The main change is the inclusion of an allowance for ecofilters when drycleanerscalculate the solvent content of the still residue, which must be included in the monthly solvent total. The still cleaning correction factor for a still with ecofilters is 35%, for rake-out 15% and pump out 50%.

Mike Etkind, head of local authority pollution control at Defra, said that local authorities would be expected to use the new figure as soon as was reasonably practicable.

He also stressed that local authorities will be able to impose a £50 penalty on drycleaners that delay their application for a permit to operate with effect from 1 April this year. This late payment charge will apply when the invoice remains unpaid eight weeks from the date of issue.

Eoghan Daly of consultants GHK spoke about research being carried out on behalf of Defra. The aim is to explore how environmental regulation impacts on micro-businesses and how future legislation can be designed in a way that minimises the burden for small businesses.

Daly said his team had collected responses from drycleaners on the SED and regulation and that a micro-business report will be ready for publication in May.

This year’s conference also featured developments in solvents. Murray Simpson pointed out that the joint conference had always sought to highlight such developments and so this year it featured explanations of Rynex-3E and Solvon K4.

Christoph Richter of Kreussler, a leading manufacturer of detergents, bleaching, disinfecting and finishing agents for the textile service industry, explained that the company had introduced the System K4 to the European market at Expo Detergo 2010.

With the first machine about to be installed in the UK through Alex Reid, Kreussler’s distributor, Richter said the conference presented an ideal opportunity to introduce the system to a British audience.

Kreussler’s System K4 is an environmentally-friendly system that has the same cleaning properties as perc. At its heart is SolvonK4, which is described by the company as a non-toxic, biodegradable organic solvent that is non-hazardous according to current European regulations.

According to Richter the solvent is (butoxymethoxy)butane – more commonly called dibutoxymethane.

Solvon K4 is halogen-free and has a KB Value (KBV) of 75 – exceeding that of hydrocarbons (KBV of 25) and cyclosiloxane D5 (KBV of 13). The company says that

Solvon K4 is the only bipolar organic solvent available in textile care, so making it effective against fats, oils and resins and water-soluble soiling.

System K4 includes a dedicated detergent called Clip 4, a brushing agent Prenett K4 and a water- and stain-repellent, Vinoy K4.

Kreussler has formed a partnership with the Bologna-based FMB Group – the company behind the Union, Realstar and Firbimatic brands – to develop ready-to-use machines.

System K4 has been undergoing field tests in Europe and the USA since autumn 2009.

Richter revealed that America’s Best Cleaners (ABC) had announced in February that some affiliates have completed conversions to Kreussler’s

System K4 and will now begin to process consumer clothing using this solvent system.

He added that feedback so far has been positive, with perc users surprised by the cleaning performance on water-soluble soil, while businesses already using HCS technology or other halogen-free alternative solvents remarked favourably about cleaning performance and the ecological advantages.

The system also provides lower energy expenditure for distillation and drying, as well as cost savings in the disposal of distillation residues. The solvent has also passed toxicological, dermatological and mutagenic testing without incident.

Rynex Technologies in partnership with Equinox Chemicals of Albany, Georgia, has established a European operation to launch its Rynex 3E to an wider market

The European operation is headed by Marty Brucato, an American and long-serving member of the drycleaning industry, currently living in Paris.

Brucato told the conference that Rynex 3E has been developed jointly with Equinox and is an environmentally-friendly solvent that has been designed to replace the three main options – perc, hydrocarbon and silicone solvents. It is based on P-Series glycol ether chemistry and is described as a “unique” blend of 100% biodegradable ingredients.

Brucato explained that Rynex 3E is a special propylene glycol that is designed to “carry” a certain percentage of moisture.

This ability ensures that both solvent-soluble soil (grease, fat and wax) and water-soluble soils and stains are effectively removed in the same bath. The company claims it has virtually no toxicity and is not mutagenic, bio-accumulative, persistent or dangerous to aquatic species. Rynex 3E has been tested at several independent European laboratories and is said to clean as well as perc while meeting EU regulations on non-flammability.

In her presentation entitled “Hidden profits” Pam Turbert of Prestige-121-Training examined the potential for drycleaning businesses to develop and market additional services. She explained that providing several services in one location can increase revenue and give a business a competitive advantage over other local drycleaners.

Drycleaning businesses can benefit from modern marketing techniques, using resources such as social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and by developing their own websites.

In developing the “competitive edge”, she stressed it was important for a cleaner to see the business from a customer’s priorities – convenience, information, customer service, value for money and care. First impressions are very important and encouraging staff to smile will help to build a good image.

She set out some of the options open to cleaners. Seasonal sales opportunities could include promotions for curtains and rugs in spring, duvets in summer and overcoats in autumn.

Collection and delivery services, shirt laundering and finishing, wedding gown cleaning and garment alterations and repairs can all add to profits, said Turbert.

Extra business may also result from hiring out equipment such as ultrasonic blind cleaning systems and from offering specialist services like leather and suede, curtain cleaning, duvets and fire and flood restoration work.

Steve Anderton of the Laundry Technology Centre looked at minimising laundry costs. He outlined the aims and objectives of a modern commercial laundry. The main aim of all laundries is to restore all textiles entrusted to their care to the standard required by the customer, profitably.

Launderers accepted goods with a wide range of soiling. Increasingly they were purchasing the textiles themselves and hiring them out to the user. However, if the textiles are permitted to become excessively soiled, there is a risk of both chemical and/or physical damage taking place.

His colleague Richard Neale of Drycleaning Technology Centre looked at useful standards that can help the drycleaner. He described several problems faced by cleaners, the standard method of test and suggested the correct responses to give to a customer where a problem could not be resolved.

For BS EN ISO 105-D02 Textiles – Test for colour fastness Part D02, Neale explained that the standard test is to simulate rubbing of a coloured fabric with a piece of white cotton soaked in drycleaning solvent. A suitable response could be: “When we checked the colourfastness of this fabric by simulating the method given in BS EN ISO 105-D0, we observed a great deal of loose dye being released from the material. We therefore query whether the colourfastness of this fabric batch has been properly checked by the manufacturer.”

Geoff Burch sells the right attitude

The importance of recruiting front-line staff for both their attitude and skill was a strong theme in an entertaining keynote address by author, presenter and business expert Geoff Burch.

Burch told the audience of his expulsion from school for being a disruptive influence. "Where do you go from there?" he asked. "Alcoholism? Drug abuse? Living in the street, sleeping in a cardboard box?" He jokingly suggested that when you have no pride or morals left, there's only one place left to go: into sales.

It's a line of business that suited his dog-eat-dog temperament, he said. "The biggest thrill I get is selling things to people who don't want them – the client that says: “No, leave me alone. Go away. Please stop”.

He advised the audience to treat every difficult pitch like a “wild boar hunt” in which “you've lost an eye and some teeth and an ear's been ripped off, but this thing that lies dead at your feet.” Once you've achieved that, he said, “you don’t want to go to Farmer Higgins’s piggery and start beating the piglets to death, you want the customer that comes roaring from the shrubbery with the entrails of the last salesman on his tusks.”

Very few people still possess the innate skills necessary for this kind of selling, he suggested. The fashionable alternative, “relationship selling” is a decidedly woolly concept. Burch had advised one senior salesman who didn't want to pitch anything to a key client because, he “didn’t want to spoil the relationship”.

It is time to return to the basic business skills of selling things to people, said Burch, “creating value for the customer, valuing the customers and getting the people that work for us to be ambassadors and not assassins.”

One of the fundamental problems in British business, Burch argued, is settling for being satisfactory when we should be trying to be remarkable.

Too often we strive to "just scrabble over the line of c**p". Below this line, customers are indifferent. Just above it, they're satisfied but what we really need is for customers to be loyal advocates who send others our way, said Burch. “Have you got your customers for life or are they just doing business with you because they can't be bothered to do business anywhere else?

Burch argued that it is front-line staff who have the most important role to play in both earning loyalty and generating sales. The aim should be to recruit these people for both attitude and skill. Make it clear what is expected of them.

Most importantly, teach them basic sales skills, no matter what their job description may be. In practical terms, this means doing more than stating the obvious when they're dealing with customers. For example, instead of simply stating that an item is in stock, staff should be encouraged to ask leading questions such as “which colour would they prefer? Would they like the item held for later collection? When would it be convenient to come and pick it up?

"You cannot have bits of the business that don't work with each other,” he said. Customer value is created with the entire experience. He provided another example in the form of a garden centre where he held training sessions with every member of staff including the "shrub boys," the lowest-skilled workers who restocked the greenhouses.

By learning simple cross-selling techniques – for example, showing customers where they could also find canes and plant food if they asked for tomato seeds – everyone on the front line made a significant contribution to sales. This intention to sell should come instinctively to front-line staff, though Burch said that this attitude was perhaps more instinctive in America than here in the UK.




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