THUNDER BAY — Workers are on site preparing for the full opening of Quality Cleaners on Simpson Street.
The former location of Direct Cabinets will fill the personal dry-cleaning void left by Supreme Cleaners, which ceased that portion of its Thunder Bay operations in August 2022.
“As far as I know, dry cleaning is an essential service, right?” stated partner Gogul Nalainathan on Thursday. “We need [a] dry cleaner, certain clothing cannot be washed. We looked at it, and [saw] the news article that said ‘Hey, there's no dry cleaner in town, and everyone wants one.’ So we jumped on it.”
Dry cleaning clothing involves using a solvent on clothing and not water, which is utilized in regular laundry.
Staffing shortages and hiring challenges were among the reasons why Supreme Cleaners, which was in business for over 80 years, were unable to meet current production demands.
There are commercial services for hotels, motels and mines, but there have been calls for personal dry cleaning.
Nalainathan noted that they will have open doors on July 31.
“[We want to] address the concerns of our customers who immediately need their clothing done,” he said. “We’re going to take your clothing [and] ship it down to [the Quality Cleaners location] in Sault Ste Marie. [There] it will get cleaned by the latest and greatest technology, and then we're going to bring it back. We’re expecting a five-to-seven day turnover for [this process].”
The brick-and-mortar location of Quality Cleaner is looking to open in September with Nalainathan noting that the equipment is coming from Italy.
The facility will also have a cleaning solvent that won’t be seen anywhere else.
“Green Earth is an environmentally friendly solvent, directly solvent. It is silicon based, fully natural and produced by Tide. We’ve signed on with them and have exclusive rights [to use it] in Northern Ontario.”
Numerous dry-cleaning businesses saw a decline in business during the COVID-19 pandemic, as more people worked from home rather than in office environments.
