Dry Cleaners - think you have to wait for people to go back to work to increase sales? Think again.

Looking for ways to increase business and differentiate your dry cleaning store from others in your community? Here’s an idea that you can initiate in its simplest form or take it up a couple of notches.

Simplest
Become a collection site for clothing donations. Pick a day or week and extend an invitation to the community to drop off clothing for donations. For each pound of clothing, offer a dollar amount off the contributors’ next dry cleaning or offer a straight percentage discount. Identify a not-for-profit partner that needs and will distribute the clothing and may even help in the collection.

Amp it up
Perhaps you’ve heard of the term upcycle which means taking used items and re-creating them into new and exciting pieces of fashion. You can capitalize on the popularity of this trend to create a new revenue stream by selling upcycled items created from selected clothing you collected. There are two ways to do this. The first is to use the talents of your on-site tailor if they are creative and open to the project. If not, you can reach out to local designers and designer want-to-be’s to select items and return the transformed items to sell in your shop. You can share in the revenue with your tailor or the local designer so everyone wins.

Take lots of before and after photos and use social media to promote. You might even get the not-for-profit to whom you donated the bulk of the clothing to promote this as well.

By offering upcycled items for sale on a regular basis you give people another reason to visit your store even while the demand for dry cleaning is down. Regardless of the impact of the pandemic or any other event that may cause business to drop, having a new revenue stream and a unique component to your business will provide ongoing insurance against downturns

Until next time remember,
You can do this!
Angel