After Bloomberg described the powerful impact generated by the work from home during the pandemic on the North American drycleaning sector, now the European press is tackling the same topic, from the perspective of the German PTC entrepreneurs.
The German newspaper Wirtschafts Woche dedicated an extended material interviewing several owners of well-established Professional Textile Care companies. In the context in which the new work-from-home economy is likely to remain as a long-term trend, the pressure on the PTC companies to adapt to the new context by generating new business models and new customer segments is higher than never.
After the first Corona wave, during restrictions’ easing in May, things seemed to recover in a significant manner. Office workers brought business clothes, and cleaned upper class clothes were also in demand at home and the hotels sent their guests’ clothes again. But in the second wave, the businesses were heavily affected again. According to the publication, out of 20 hotels that are normally among the customers of Goldstück-Textilpflege Dortmund, 17 are closed. The remaining three take just a tenth of the normal amount to wash. Even private customers, who normally bring shirts and suits, blouses and costumes, only stopped by sparingly. Instead of cleaning 600 shirts, he now only cleans half of them on good days. according to Mr. Daniel Moniri Awal, the owner of Textilpflege Dortmund.
From the Industrial Textile Services side, according to Mr. Rolf Slickers (Managing Director of Servitex) the situation deriving from the second Corona wave is even more serious. At the companies’ partner laundries, the drop in sales is currently between 75 and 90 percent. Servitex GmbH is a company operating in the hospitality sector, that managed to overcome regional boundaries and limited radius of regional medium-size companies by connecting them with its partners that act all over Germany.