Constant communication with clients, complete highly technological equipment, the ability to read market transformations real time. These are the strong points of a company run by the Maule family.
Over fifty years, this dry-cleaning laundry based in Trento has become an undisputable and excellent artisan business
Communicate, invest, get updated.
The quality of a highly professional service is realised through these three verbs. Looking at fifty years of the company history of Pulicenter Maule, a dry-cleaning laundry that operates in their two shops near the Old Town of Trento, let us proceed in order. The family business was founded by Giuseppe in 1967, Andrea
Maule’s father, who became the owner of the business in 2007.
Communicate – “Nowodays, – Andrea Maule says – this needs to be done daily. We are dealing with a completely different types of clients.
We do not receive the regular weekly bags with garments to wash as it used to be when families and single household members would bring us their clothes on weekly basis. Today, clients come to the shop without any regular frequency and only when they need to clean a specific single garment. Therefore we need to be prepared to treat synthetic clothes, full of zippers and other accessories that require rigorous treatment procedures”.
A dry-cleaner’s figure becomes more of a dry-cleaner-consultant, ready to prevent problems from arising or to pay attention to details, as it happened in case of a crease on a silk blouse that was brought to the laundry. “If we had not noticed it in time – Andrea Maule explains – the defect could have been believed to result from dry-cleaning.
Just for the clarity, it is very important that the clients know what the tag attached to their garment says.
It is crucial to understand garments, ways of cleaning and risks linked to it. The tag, as a matter of fact, shows the right washing procedure to adopt, the right temperature and treatments”.
Invest – Competing with such a vast and differentiated market, the Pulicenter Maule’s equipment guarantees the best dry-cleaning results as well as traditional washing in water, wet cleaning method, professional services for upholsterers and shop owners and professional carpets cleaning. “We provide all these services on our own, without outsourcing anything” Andrea Maule says. It means that in order to be able to meet all these various requests, the business needs to be equipped with adequate specific machines. “Our exemplary purchase is definitely Catinet, a machine provided by Lavasecco 1 Ora – the owner tells us – which has turned out to be crucial for carpets washing. The requests for professional carpets washing have been significantly increasing”. What we can add, is that keeping the “artisan” nature of the business alive is equally important as it implies the manual, priceless aspect of work.
“Nothing competes with our hands when it comes to ironing a crease or beat the feather cover so that it takes the right shape” confirms Andrea Maule, who relies on his mom Franca and one of his employees, Fiorella when it comes down to this type of manual work.
Get updated – “The quality is obviously guaranteed at a certain price, adequate and coherent to the effort we make to provide quality – clarifies Andrea Maule. – Otherwise, medium-high clients with precise needs would not rely on us”. In order to satisfy all the requests, we need to be constantly updated. It means, e.g. eliminating the leather cleaning as a consequence of what suggested by the market, and provide ourselves with the crucial knowhow for cleaning commonly used garments today such as parka and waterproof jackets with fur lining.
All the garments arriving to Pulicenter to be dry-cleaned are first controlled in terms of what is indicated on tags. When letter P appears, they will be treated with PERC, while F stands for aliphatic hydrocarbon solvents.
Informing, investing and updating, today the Pulicenter Maule benefits from a certain market recovery as far as dry-cleaning businesses go.
“We are growing in the market where many competitors are gone due to the crisis” comments Andrea Maule. But this is, as we all know, an obligatory way of quality.
by Stefano Ferrio
Detergo Magazine January 2018
