Taking shirts, not customers, to the cleaners

The Great Recession drove many dry cleaners' customers back to their basement Maytags, but one Greenbelt franchise company has continued to expand.

Bart Casiello, who owns three ZIPS Dry Cleaners locations and plans to open two more in Baltimore, has been successful while others in the industry have been forced to cut hours, workers or both. Casiello, 45, is ZIPS' largest franchisee and has worked in the dry cleaning business since 1996, when his original Laurel store was still called Dry Clean Depot.

"I initially didn't want to get into this business, since my father owned a gas station and I knew what retail was like," Casiello said. "Now I enjoy being a dry cleaner. When the system is running fully, I'm amazed at what we're able to do."

The ZIPS chain has cleaned 100 million garments since going the franchise route in 2006, he said. Casiello's stores in Laurel, Marlow Heights and Lanham have cleaned 13 million of them.

"Our sales are up," he said. "A lot more people are giving us a shot when they used to go to the high-end stores. Our price is so low that we're really competing with the washing machine."

ZIPS charges $1.99 to dry clean any garment within a 9-to-5 workday.

"This generation — nobody wants to iron. We're not a luxury at our price point," Casiello said.

Casiello is among 14 owners who each hold an equal stake in the company. The group came together in about 2002 to form ZIPS and eventually became a franchiser after customers kept asking if they could open their own ZIPS store. There are 28 ZIPS stores, including the newest in Silver Spring, which opened in December. The average store makes $1.4 million in annual revenues, said Andy Cucchiara, vice president of franchise operations for ZIPS.

ZIPS' business model is based on volume, Cucchiara said. The key is keeping the cost of supplies at about 7 percent and trying to cap on labor costs. Each store has its own cleaning plant in the back, he said.

"The dry cleaning industry is sucking wind, but ZIPS is expanding," Casiello said.

Nationally, industry revenues fell 1.7 percent in 2010 to $9.6 billion from 2009, according to market researcher IBIS World.

Performance has shrunk, and price-based competition will continue, IBIS World wrote.

George Betts of Beltsville has been using ZIPS for a year, although he switched from a College Park location to Casiello's in Laurel.

"It's a good business compared to what others are charging," Betts said.

Casiello also views his occupation as a chance to make a difference and change the industry by replicating the ZIPS model across the country.

"No [dry-cleaning] franchiser has ever made it long term," he said.

He has also brought his previous careers into the mix. He used his experience in video production to create the videos shown in all ZIPS stores that explain dry cleaning and provide tips for caring for dry-cleaned items.

"[Casiello] is a very level-headed guy. ... He brings a calming influence," Cucchiara said. "From a franchise operations point, that's the biggest thing I can count on. It speaks loudly in a group of 14."

Casiello lives in Riva and has three children with his wife, Theresa. He enjoys photography, including taking candid shots of his family and friends and setting the pictures to music for slideshows.

"My mother taught me to ‘never cry over anything that can't cry over you,'" he said. "We invest so much of our time and energy into ‘things' that in the end have very little or no value. If we invest that same energy in our relationship with God and our families, we would find that everything else will fall into place."

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