Starting A Dry Cleaning Business

Startup Journal:

It’s not an easy business for a start-up, asserts Jon Meijer, vice president of membership for the International Fabricare Institute, based in Silver Spring, Md., the leading trade group for dry-cleaners. These business owners cope with long hours and slim margins. People don’t wear fancy dry-clean-only clothes as much as they did in decades past, which has hurt sales. Moreover, there are about 32,000 dry-cleaners in the U.S., he points out. “There’s too much competition,” he says. “It’s that simple.”

For a college student, the capital outlay may be a significant barrier to entry. A start-up dry-cleaner should plan for about $150,000 in initial capital, he says, just for the machinery, not including real estate.

Still, for the best shoe man in town, one who instinctively understands good service, there is more than one way to clean a shirt, especially if you start small. Successful start-up dry-cleaners today must have a niche, says Mr. Meijer. Some pursue, for example, environmentally sound cleaning practices, eschewing the solvent perchloroethelene, used in the “perc” process that gives your dry-cleaned clothes that particular smell. (Mr. Meijer says that efficient new machinery has reduced the use of solvents such as “perc” by about 70% over the past decade.)

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