Cameo Cleaners & Arthur Copeland

Archive for the ‘Dry Cleaner Manhattan’ Category

LABOR DAY?! ALREADY!?

Where did the summer go? Whether you are packing your bags this evening for the last weekend of the season, or planning to stay around the city for a relaxing three day weekend I am certain there is one thing that has crossed your mind…

“How am I supposed to wear all of this white and linen in three days before I am forced to retire it to the back of my closet.”

It has been a well established fashion faux pas to wear white after Labor Day. However, fashion expert Charla Krupp challenges this and suggest that those who prefer to keep white in their wardrobe through the fall and winter do so in appropriate materials. While creams and winter whites can be a stunning look on anyone prancing around in linen pants and sheer cotton dresses will earn you some well deserved looks on the street this fall.

For these whites that require storage I would strongly recommend cleaning them before to prevent permanent stains and moth damage. Many clear liquid stains are not visible to the naked eye, however after being put under the bed or in the back of the closet for 9 months that stain will have oxidized and your favorite white dress will be a thing of the past.

Moths are attracted to food, oil, and perfumes so if any of these are lingering on your garments before storage you are risking moth damage to your wardrobe.

To prevent both of these wardrobe maladies from happening simply drop your summer clothes of with the staff at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park or Arthur Copeland Cleansers who will be more than happy to care for your whites. AFter being cleaned in the exclusive ECO2 Cleanse system your clothes will not only be whiter, but they will be safeguarded for storage and ready for summer 2011.

Give us a call today either at 212.677.3949 for Cameo Cleaners of 516.295.2198

I was reading the on-line version of the NY Times this morning and ran across this article about incredibly poor customer service at a men’s boutique.

Years ago I remember dropping into a number of trendy clothing boutiques in downtown NYC, walking in and getting the distinct feeling that my money was wanted. Sales staff would glare, and begrudgingly assist me is not a recipe for spending money.

The state of customer service at dry cleaning shops is not much better. Every few months I walk around NYC and drop into dry cleaning establishments and ask questions. I tell the counter people that I am new to the neighborhood and see how they react.

Customer service is not a priority at the dry cleaning shops that I visited in NYC. Hardly a welcome was offered when I entered, basic questions about service couldn’t be answered and when I asked for prices at one shop, and only got a pointed finger directing me to a taped list on the wall.

At my shops, Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park and Arthur Copeland Cleansers customer service is a priority. My staff are not “counter people”, they are client service representatives, and they advise my clients on the best way to take care of their wardrobes.

My CSR staff are highly trained and can walk a client through any of our many services. Your wardrobe is expensive, it needs proper care and with that care you may need advice.

Don’t settle for a dry cleaning firm that can’t answer questions about garment care, great customer service is waiting for you at my shops.

If you need a great dry cleaner Manhattan or a great dry cleaner Long Island, give my shops a call. We have been selected as one of America’s Best Cleaners for the last three years in a row and City Spur listed us as the best dry cleaner in New York City.

I am the third generation in my family to own dry cleaning firms. My grandfather immigrated from Italy and opened a tailor shop to which he added dry cleaning in the 1950′s. My father owned and operated dry cleaning businesses in the NYC metro area for over 50 years.

I got involved with the family business after graduating college with a degree in Fine Arts. The plan was to stay and help my father for 2 years; that was 25 years ago.

The reason I am telling you all this is because dry cleaning has not changed all that much in the last 60 years. Yes, the process is much environmentally cleaner now and the amount of solvent used is just a fraction of what we used to use, but the solvents used now are very similar to what was used 60 years ago.

I walked to Grand Central Station on Friday and counted 7 dry cleaning shops that had signs that touted either “Green Cleaning” or “Organic Cleaning”. Do the customers of these dry cleaners know that they are being mislead?

All of these dry cleaning shops still use a petroleum based dry cleaning solvent to clean their client’s clothes. The “Organic Solvent” that they use is just a reformulation of the same dry cleaning solvent my father used 50 years ago. (Yes it is chemically organic, but gasoline is also chemically organic.)

The fact of the matter is that there is only two methods of cleaning clothes which does not use harmful chemicals; wet-cleaning (water and biodegradable detergents) and liquid carbon dioxide cleaning.

I have just signed a contract to purchase a new liquid carbon dioxide dry cleaning system and it should be up and running in October. I am calling my CO2 process, Eco2-Cleanse. The company which makes this technology is Solvair.

I also have the capability of wet-cleaning about 40% of my client’s clothes right now.

It is my hope that in the next two years to be able to remove ALL petrochemicals from my production facility, and be able to say that I competly chemical free.

Thanks for listening, Jerry Pozniak.

Jerry Pozniak is the owner and operator of some of the finest dry cleaning firms in the NYC metro area. Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park and Arthur Copeland Cleansers were both selected as America’s Best Cleaners for the last three years in a row.

Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park has also been selected as the best dry cleaner Manhattan by City Spur.

Is is possible to offer quality chemical free dry cleaning in New York City? In mid October, at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park I will..

And this is not “Green Washing“, or so called “organic” dry cleaning that is as organic as gasoline.

I am installing a dry cleaning system which removes all of the petrochemicals from the process and uses food grade, liquid carbon dioxide. This CO2 process is Eco2Cleanse and the technology is manufactured by Solvair.

In the last 25 years that I have been in dry cleaning, this is the first innovation that I have seen which will change how all clothes are dry cleaned in the future.

The benefits of Eco2Cleanse are:

• No Petrochemicals.
• Does not add to greenhouse gases or smog formation.
• Superior stain removal.
• Clean, bright odor free clothes. Whites stay white.
• Prevents stains from setting because the process is cold.
• Clothes last longer.
• Less risk in the cleaning process.

I am very excited to see this change and it is my hope to be able to remove all chemicals from my production facility in the next two years.

Right now Eco2Cleanse will be an option that you can request when you have your clothes cleaned by Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park. If you have any questions about the Eco2Cleanse please send me an email, Jerry@CameoCleaners.com.

Thanks for listening.

Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park has been selected as one of America’s Best Cleaners for the last three years in a row and listed as the best dry cleaner Manhattan by City Spur.

Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park production facilty will be the only “plant” in New York State with the carbon dioxide method of cleaning. I want to give my clients a truly healthy way of dry cleaning their clothes.

Every Friday I am going to post a “garment of the week” which I will comment about. This may entail the complexity of cleaning the piece, the lack of serviceability (cannot be cleaned as labeled), a difficult stain removal or a really well constructed garment.

For the first “garment of the week” we have a costume from the Metropolitan Opera House,  as we are in the process of cleaning the entire wardrobe from “The Damnation of Faust”.

This leather jacket worn by the principal male lead is a challenge because of the construction as well as the artificial aging added by the “paint shop”.

This garment was cleaned “by hand” by my head cleaning technician Michael White. The “aged” effect was well as the detailed construction did not allow us to use any other method.

We were able to remove the makeup from the collar as well as deodorize the jacket for the next performance with any harm to the aged detail or faux fur trim.