At Life Cleaners, a 65-year-old family business in Yonkers, owner and President Ross Bodin innovates and automates to keep up with his corporate clients and keep their business.
“The way I”™m looking at it is, look at what happened to the banks,” said Bodin, who 17 years ago bought from his father the dry-cleaning business started by his Russian immigrant grandfather in Yonkers. “If a bank didn”™t have 24-hour ATM service, would you still be in business? We”™re in a different world now. What worked one day I don”™t think is working for a business these days.”
Bodin said his third-generation business does about $1 million in annual revenue. In addition to its retail trade at stores in Yonkers and Dobbs Ferry, the company is a wholesaler for about 25 dry-cleaning shops, with four service routes that range from Riverdale in the Bronx and across Westchester County to Rockland County and Stamford, Conn.
Blue Chip Cleaners, a division of Life Cleaners acquired by Bodin in 2003, operates company stores and pickup and delivery dry-cleaning services at some of the large corporations in Westchester, including Kraft Foods Inc. in Tarrytown, Swiss Re America Holding Corp. in Armonk and PepsiCo Inc. in Purchase. As PepsiCo, an award-winning national leader in energy-saving initiatives, increasingly has gone “green” in its operations and facilities, so too has Bodin in his business.
“Last year, PepsiCo had come to me to be more environmentally friendly” at the Life Cleaners dry-cleaning store at the company”™s Purchase headquarters, he said. “They had suggested I go to biodegradable bags. I said I can do better than that.”
The Columbia Business School graduate introduced a two-in-one nylon bag that serves as a laundry bag for drop-off customers and unfolds for use as a garment bag when clothes are returned from the 5,000-square-foot Life Cleaners plant at 300 Nepperhan Ave. It eliminates the waste of plastic wrappings in which garments usually leave dry-cleaning stores.
Last December, Bodin opened at his PepsiCo location what he said is a first for Westchester County: a fully automated dry-cleaning kiosk. The twice-daily pickup and delivery service operates around the clock and has brought Bodin more customers using the kiosk after normal business hours.
It has also cut down the dry cleaner”™s energy costs for lights, air conditioning and refrigeration at the site. The former store there “ate up a lot more energy,” Bodin said. The Life Cleaners employee who operated the PepsiCo store has been transferred to the Yonkers plant.
Bodin this month opened a larger two-story kiosk with a 300-order capacity at a ShopRite supermarket in Vail”™s Gate in Orange County. He said that is the region”™s first fully automated kiosk to operate in a grocery store.
Bodin said the kiosk purchases, build-outs and installations represent a $75,000 to $100,000 investment.
“The PepsiCo store was doing very well, but if I don”™t offer the latest-greatest or don”™t look to provide for them, there”™s always someone else who can do what I do,” he said.
