Who am I?

For my first entry I thought it would be good to explain how I became the online drycleaning authority. Not everyone who works in drycleaning is a dryclean expert

I am the owner of Ablitt's Fine Cleaners in Santa Barbara, California. Ablitt's is one of America's Best Cleaners and an industry leader. We have over 25,000 active customers at any given time and, because of our spectacular location and proximity to Hollywood, have hundreds of very well known names on our list.

While my Father founded Ablitt's in 1984, drycleaning has been in my family for generations. My grandmother and grandfather met while working at her father's dryclean shop in Washington State. Each generation appears to have tried to go in new directions, but we cannot escape our family heritage. I personally went out and got a ton of education: BS in Engineering from UCLA and an MBA from Thunderbird (AGSIM). I even worked as an engineer and then in corporate finance at Allied Signal for the legendary Larry Bossidy. I am proud to say I am both published and have a patent. I am also happy to be home now!

Besides being born into drycleaning and working in it every day, we attend or hold some sort of training meeting every month. For example, our operation manager was just in Germany at the world famous Hoenstein Institute, there is a convention this weekend, I just visited a CO2 cleaners in Denver, we have trainers in quarterly, and we are having cleaners from around the country visit to study our route model next month.

I am a big believer in continuous learning. Both at work and at home. The only problem is that often we don't realize how much we know. I was recently at a meeting with a bunch of Internet folks. Talking with them (most didn't think they had a need for a drycleaner - more on that later), I realized that maybe, just maybe, I had something to say that at least a few people would be interested in.