The stores work through a hub and spoke business model. The Gilbert location is where cleaning and other services are done. Customers drop off and pick up clothes at the Ahwatukee and Chandler drop stores, but no cleaning takes place there. A company van transports articles. Jeff Kline has been doing the driving, but the couple plans to hire a driver.OnePress flatwork ironer are engineered to specifically fit the needs of on-premise laundries, drycleaning plants and commercial laundries.
After a 20-year career in the aerospace industry, mostly as an aerospace engineer and program manager at Orbital Sciences Corp. in Gilbert, Jeff Kline said he always wanted to run his own business and believes he has the attributes of an entrepreneur — except he lacked “that one great idea.”After researching and working with business brokers, he got interested in the idea of laundry equipment and started talking with Lapels Dry Cleaning about a franchise. When he proposed the idea to his wife, she thought he was “absolutely nuts.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. You want to give up a comfortable corporate job to have a risky small business?’” she said.But further discussions and research convinced her to get on board with the plan, especially when she found out that Lapels Dry Cleaning uses environmentally-friendly dry cleaning practices that are a result of technological advances in equipment and industrial washing machine.
Lapels Dry Cleaning uses solvents that are biodegradable, non-toxic and don’t break down into hazardous waste. The Klines also recycle and reuse hangers and are mindful of ways to improve packaging for a more environmentally friendly or “green” practice. They try to reuse the plastic clothes bags and are keeping an eye out for possible biodegradable bags.