Quality Cleaners, located at 969 Main Street in the heart of Millis, has been a mainstay in town for decades. Quay Vuong bought the business in spring of 2017 and has grown to love the community as much as the community loves his service.
Drop-off is easy. When customers bring in their clothes, the team affixes a tiny bar-code sticker to each garment in an inconspicuous place. The team tracks each item during its stay and assembles it along with all of the other items in the customer’s order for pickup. Customers even get an automated text letting them know that their items are ready. Technology is key at Quality Cleaners.
After the drop-off, the team sorts the garments. Those to be dry cleaned go in one spot, items to be hand washed go in another, and so on. Even “bleeders”—usually the pieces of clothing that are red—are separated. Rush jobs and items that can wait a few extra days get their own spots, too.
Quay and his team look to the garment’s care tag for the initial sort. “I don’t like to go rogue,” he says. But sometimes consumers remove the tags—or, as Quay has found a few times, sometimes the care tags are incorrect—and that’s where experience kicks in. Knowing how fabrics react to his machines, his additives, and his processes is another reason why customers trust their items with Quay and his team.
Dry cleaning isn’t done dry—clothes are soaked in a solvent instead of in water. It’s the best way to get rid of oils, plus some garments can be harmed by cleaning them water. At Quality Cleaners, the days of using perchloroethylene—“perc”—for dry cleaning are long gone. Instead, Quay uses hydrocarbon, a leading-edge additive that’s safe, good for delicate items, and excellent at removing oils and stains. However, it also increases the need for pre-spotting—treating spots and stains before the cleaning.
Quay has a dozen or so bottles of pre-cleaning stain removal formulations to treat even the harshest of stains—we’re talking things difficult stains like salad oil, grease, and tar.
“Take a coffee stain,” Quay says. “There can be several components in that one stain: coffee, a sugar, a dairy product. Many off-the-shelf spot removers can’t handle those stains.”
Other items are wet cleaned—washed in detergents, additives, and specialized machinery. Still others, most notably button-down shirts, are destined for the laundry. And some garments are washed individually by hand with specialized additives and a lot of care and time.
Some of the machines at Quality Cleaners are among the best in the business. Quay says that his BÖWE M26 dry cleaner machine is “the Rolls Royce of dry cleaning machines,” and he loves his Sankosha presses.
So, why bring your clothes to a cleaner, when much of the work could be done at home if one has the time and the desire? Take ironing. It’s a relatively simple task—you haul out the board, plug in the iron, select a heat setting, and iron away. But it can take forever, and some items are too big to iron at home (plus it’s really hard to get that snappy pants crease like the dry cleaner provides).
Instead of ironing at home, one can take advantage of Quality Cleaners’ experience, equipment, and technique. They use a press system with a slight vacuum in the ironing board that keeps the garment from moving. Quay and his team know when to apply steam, when to apply heat, and when to let the garment cool (that’s how they get that snappy pants crease!)
Quay works constantly to improve his business’s efficiency. For example, existing customers can drop off their items in about thirty seconds, saving them a few minutes with each visit. He also took a hard look at all of the store’s functions and relocated some to decrease time spent going from station to station. He’s tweaked some of his formulations, like enzyme ingesters, to lessen the physical impact on garments and extend their life.
Back to that question: why bring your clothes to Quality Cleaners?
Because they’re dedicated, they innovate, they save you time, and they can extend the life of your garments. Plus, your clothes will look way better than after you do them yourself.
Quality Cleaners is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. They offer free pickup and delivery and also provide alterations. Give them a call at (508) 376-9100, or visit them at www.qualitycleanersmillis.com.
Issue Date:
October, 2018
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