Spotless Efforts
Appearance Plus hopes programs keep it looking better
than competitors
By: Karen Bells
Cincinnati Business Courier, May 27, 2005
When it comes to keeping Tri-Stater’s clothes
looking good, Appearance Plus Cleaners is thinking
outside the basket.
The dry cleaning company, founded in 1984, has stepped
up efforts in the past years to come up with creative
programs and policies that help it stand out in a
crowded industry. There are more than 30,000 dry
cleaning businesses in the United States, according
to the International Fabricare Institute.
The new efforts are an outgrowth of a focus for the
past three years on deciding “exactly who we
wanted to be,” said CEO Jon Lindy.
“This industry has been going in two directions:
low-end, with customers looking for price only, and
high-end
focus on quality,” said Lindy, who’s
been with Appearance Plus for 18 years.
Lindy – whose company has its cleaning plant,
headquarters and a retail store in Anderson Township,
as well as retail sites downtown and in Hyde Park— decided
that competing in price alone wasn’t a smart
strategy. Instead, he prefers to pursue customers
whose priorities are quality, service and convenience.
That doesn’t mean Appearance Plus goes after
only high-income people, he said, or only certain
neighborhoods. Instead, it focuses on building relationships
with customers and potential customers.
And its roster of programs is helping, said Angie
Miller, marketing coordinator. For example, Appearance
Plus is running the second year of its Dapper Diploma
program. Graduating high school and college students
can bring in a copy of their diploma or other proof
of graduation and have their interview suit dry-cleaned
free.
As with all of the cleaner’s programs, this
one is designed to expose the company to new people
who could become lifelong customers, said Miller.
For the company’s Big Interview program, any
person who is job hunting can bring in an ad or Web
site posting for a job opening and have their interview
suit cleaned at no charge.
While the programs cost Appearance Plus in labor,
they more than pay for themselves by securing new
customers, Lindy said. The Cincinnati Night on the
Town program offers free cleaning of a suit or special
occasion dress for people who buy tickets for any
event at the Aronoff Center for the Performing Arts
or Music Hall.
The Big Night on the Town program started last fall
after Appearance Plus’ public relations agency,
Justice & Young, approached the Cincinnati Arts
Association about doing some sort of co-marketing,
said Van Ackerman, director of marketing and public
relations for the CAA, which manages the Aronoff
and Music Hall.
“We put a coupon insert into the envelope
for every ticket we do, whether by phone, walk-up,
Internet
sale, or will-call window, “ said Ackerman. “Anything
we do through our box office for our venues gets
the coupon.”
The coupon is good for cleaning of the special occasion
outfit up to $12. Ackerman didn’t know how
many his staff had given out since the program began,
but he said they go through at a least a quarter-million
event tickets per year.
This is the first time the CAA has done any type
of co-promotion discount such as this, he said, and
he considers it a hit – not just for the added
value it gives his ticket buyers, but also because
it reinforces the notion that coming to an event
at Aronoff or Music Hall is a special occasion that
is great to dress up for.
“Coming downtown is very special still
to a lot of people,” he said. “One of the things
they played off of is that.”
For Susan McDonald, division leader-healthcare/retail
at Justice & Young, one of the reasons the agency
enjoys working with Appearance Plus is its openness
to trying new programs.
“We have a lot of opportunities to do creative
things that hadn’t been done—grass roots type
of programs and good community relations,” McDonald
said.
Some of the community relations programs have included
collecting, cleaning and distributing hundreds of
blankets to homeless people and winter coats to low-income
children; cleaning American flags at no cost at any
time of the year; and offering discounts to military
personnel.
Justice & Young, which took on public relations
duties for Appearance Plus about a year ago, also
just finished rolling out a revamped Web site for
its client (www.appearanceplus.com) that features
helpful articles on job-hunting, how to dress for
an interview, and other related topics, as well as
coupons and special offers. Customers can sign up
for a monthly e-mail push that includes the same
information, she said.
In addition to the new programs, Appearance Plus
has policies in place to keep customers loyal, said
Miller. With “100 percent buttons,” for
example, the cleaner repairs or replaces for free
all loose or missing buttons on every garment that
comes in. It might seem like a small thing, she said,
but customers notice the extra effort.
The dry cleaner is stepping up its focus on its pickup-delivery
routes, said CEO Lindy. While it has had routes— which
give doorstep service for dry cleaning and home-laundry
loads—for about 10 years, it recently added
two routes in West Chester. The new routes are “going
gangbusters,” said Miller, running full-time
all day, five days per week.
The service, she said, is offered by some large chain
cleaners but sets Appearance Plus apart in the mom-and-pop
and locally owned market. Even with the home routes,
the cleaners tries to be a little different. Regular
customers of the company get three months of the
home service free when they’re on maternity
leave. And on the Saturday before Mother’s
Day, the route drivers in West Chester handed out
flowers to the mothers they visited.
And the company recently started offering carpet
cleaning services, because clients were asking for
it. And it will keep on changing and growing, Miller
said, to keep its customers loyal.
“We base a lot of our decisions on what
customers want and we encourage feedback constantly,” she
said.
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Contact:
Jeff Drum, Account Executive
Justice & Young Advertising and Public Relations
513.388.4700 x3012
jdrum@jypublicrelations.com
