Oldest Area Dry Cleaners Provide Service, No Perc

Ken Sanders bought Ozark Cleaners and Laundry in Fayetteville a year ago from Greg Hays. The business was founded in 1935 and had been owned by the Hays family since 1961.

Sanders based his decision to buy Ozark Cleaners largely on demographics.

In Northwest Arkansas, there was one dry cleaner for every 6,200 residents. In Little Rock, it’s one dry cleaner for every 2,900 residents.

“You can’t make a living at that rate,” he said of the Little Rock numbers. “Northwest Arkansas is about saturated now, and there are still people putting them in.”

Sanders didn’t know why Little Rock had so many more dry cleaners than Northwest Arkansas.

Sanders said the dry cleaning business boomed nationwide in the late 1970s and through the ’80s after articles came out in newspapers saying many dry cleaners had become millionaires

“People built them like there was no tomorrow,” Sanders said.

Most dry cleaning stores do between $150,000 and $1 million in annual revenue, Sanders said, adding that each of his locations would fall in the mid-range.

Sanders worked for Tyson Foods Inc. managing processing plants in Alabama and Mississippi. Sanders decided he was tired of moving his family around every few years, so he left the company in 1999 and opened a Comet Cleaners in Arkadelphia. Afterwards, he opened a Comet Cleaners in Hot Springs and a Hometown Cleaners in Hope.

Buying Ozark Cleaners gave Sanders the opportunity to move to Northwest Arkansas, where he plans to eventually open an Ozark Cleaners in Bentonville.

Sanders said his stores use petroleum as a cleaner instead of perchlorethylene, which is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency and considered a carcinogen by the state of California. With perchlorethylene, dry cleaners have to be careful about disposal of chemicals and filters after use. Many discount cleaners use perchlorethylene.

“The cleaner that’s in petroleum is real close to the natural oils that are in cotton,” Sanders said.

Petroleum is more gentle on clothing than perchlorethylene, he said.

“It’s half the strength on your clothes,” Sanders said. “It’s not nearly as aggressive.”

Kenneth Ash agrees with Sanders on the use of petroleum instead of perchlorethylene.

Ash is co-owner and president of Model Laundry & Dry Cleaners in Rogers, which was founded in 1928. He bought half of the company in 1951. His business partner is Gertrude Cobb Swift.

Model’s main business is cleaning uniforms and linens from restaurants and hotels. The company also does family dry cleaning and laundry. Model has drop-off locations in Bentonville, Centerton and Lowell.

Back in the 1950s, Model had 120 employees and did the laundry for every major hospital in the area, “all the way to Joplin,” Ash said.

Now, Model has 64 employees and its annual revenue is about $1 million, he said.

During the past 54 years, Ash has had to change with the times to keep Model profitable. He said that means changing equipment about every five years.

But at the age of 71, Ash said it’s about time for him to retire.

“It’s been real good to me,” he said of the business. “It’s getting kind of hard now to fight the big guys who come in from out of state and cut their prices to force the little guys out.”