Eye on Small Business: Rye Ridge Cleaners, Rye Brook

A lady’s thong in the pocket of a married man’s suit jacket or a tiny bag of cocaine in the pocket of a suit dropped by a customer for his son? It’s all in a day’s work for Seth Friedman, the owner of Rye Ridge Cleaners. As well as a master dry cleaner, he’s also a master of tact. “We discreetly toss the said items and say nothing,” he said.

Since purchasing the dry cleaning business in 1993, Friedman and his wife, Robin, have continued Rye Ridge Cleaners’ 40-year tradition of providing high quality service for customers throughout the area.

Friedman learned the principles of dry cleaning at the National Association of Dry Cleaners, the premiere Northeast school for training professionals in the industry. To stay up to date with current fashion trends and dry cleaning methods, he is a member of the National Cleaning Association, which provides ongoing classes in garment care. (Friedman pointed out how high-tech fabrics, mostly various types of polyesters and nylons, are becoming ubiquitous and present new challenges to cleaning.)

All dry cleaning is done on the premises. In September 2023, Friedman installed a brand-new dry-cleaning machine that uses Sensene, an alcohol-based solution that is biodegradable and nontoxic, certified by the Organic Fabric Manufacturers Association. He said it is “leaps and bounds ahead of anything else,” including perchlorethylene, (or “perch”), the standard solution the vast majority of cleaners have used for the last 75 years.

With a background in environmental education and committed to greener cleaning, Friedman said he was the first in Westchester County to offer reusable green Garmento laundry bags to replace single-use plastic covers. He also encourages his customers to return hangers for reuse.

Covid devastated the dry-cleaning business, he told Westfair Business Journal. He mentioned a recent NPR report about how the pandemic had upended the dry-cleaning business in the United States, with as many as 40% of dry cleaners failing, and said he knew of six cleaners within one mile of his store that had gone under. The years 2020 and 2021 were the worst he has had in the years he has owned Rye Ridge Cleaners and he only survived, he said, “because of some loyal customers, being able to suffer a lot of pain and rethinking everything I do in business, along with receiving federal loans.”

In an ongoing effort to give back, the community-minded Freidman said that customers can sign up to have Rye Ridge Cleaners give 5% of the value of their dry cleaning to their favorite charitable organizations and religious institutions. Beneficiaries include churches, synagogues and high school bands.

Dry cleaning is, by Friedman’s reckoning, “a fairly easy business to enter.” It doesn’t take a lot of capital to set up or even purchase a store, he said, but it does require a willingness to work hard. “An absentee owner will not cut it.”

His wife works part-time, mainly helping on the day he does deliveries. He has a presser who has been with him for 20 years – “a wonderful employee and wonderful family man” – and a seamstress who has worked for him for 30 years.

“I am of the firm belief I am successful if I hire the right people and treat them right,” he said, adding, “my employees make Rye Ridge Cleaners excellent.”