A new client stopped by yesterday.
He brought in about 20 shirts in various stages of staining,
yellowing and disrepair. The shirts included Borelli's, Brioni's,
Lorenzini's and Zegna's, and custom and made-to-measure shirts from
3 or 4 state-side shirt makers.
He started the conversation by telling me all about his prior -
mostly negative - experiences with dry cleaners in New York, New
Jersey and Arizona, and summarized his complaint thus: Why can't
cleaners get my shirts clean? And why don't my shirts last more
than a couple of years?
I asked him how many hours he had available and whether he
wanted the Cliff Notes version or the
more detailed version.
Seeing that he was short on time we settled on the short
version. After a few minutes of explanation, his eyes started to
glaze over and I knew I had to come up with an alternative to that
narrative. So I asked the client to hang on one minute while I
disappeared into the plant to retrieve a few of my personal shirts
that just happened to have been completed the day before.
That demonstration worked far better than any explanation I
could have provided.
So I thought that you might want
to see some of the shirts that I showed him.
Please note these are my own shirts that were custom made for me
by David's Shirts (Rockefeller Center, New York City) in 1986 and
1987 - that's almost 25 years ago!
Who says that shirts can't be properly cleaned. And that shirts
can't last?
How can I help you?