A relatively new client was at Cameo Cleaners last month with a problem. She had in her Bergdorf Goodman shopping bag what used to be a beautiful Hermes silk top.

She was upset, visibly upset. She had just walked over from the brand spanking new dry cleaner 2 blocks away. She confessed that she had brought her blouse to the new cleaner because, “they were on my way to work.” The blouse was a shadow of what it used to be.

The Hermes top was a textured silk, evoking light delicate petals of a peony in shades of charcoal and black. The top no longer fit my client, it was too large, the silk petals misshapen and haphazard. The luster of the silk was no longer there.

She handed me a letter written by the manager of the cleaner who had mishandled the cleaning of the blouse. It was filled with words such as, “manufactures fault”, “mislabeled” and “unserviceable”. All word that you don’t want to hear when you pick up your blouse at the dry cleaner. The word “sorry” never appeared in the letter.

After examination I knew what went wrong. The other dry cleaner had steamed out the blouse causing the texture silk to become flat. That’s why the blouse was too large and the petals misshapen. It also appeared that they had “washed” in an attempt to  save the blouse.

There was no way of fixing this for her as it was too far gone. I told her that I would send it to my garment analysis lab for an independent opinion. The results concurred with my opinion.

This type of business person gives all dry cleaners a bad name. Instead of solving the problem for his client, he gave the problem back to the client. He lost an opportunity to create a “customer for life”, now she’s my client, and she has sent 3 friends to me,

In my company if we have an issue with a garment and feel that it’s the fault of the maker, we solve the problem with the maker. We never ask our client to do our work.

As Coco Chanel once said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

My staff and I run a garment care companies that are different, and I hope my clients feel that we are irreplaceable.

Thanks for listening. Jerry Pozniak

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