Due to increasing woman participation in the professional workforce more and more women are needing dry cleaning and laundry services and don’t want to have to pay more to get the same service.

It’s a Man’s World….Or at Least it Used to be…

Although the dry cleaning industry can trace it’s heritage to as early as the 1600′s dry cleaning didn’t come to prominence as an industry until the early 1900′s with the advent of steam powered dry cleaning presses.

At the time the business industry was dominated predominately by men with most women being content to living a life of watching the kids and “taking care of their man” who was often the sole bread winner so it made sense for dry cleaner equipment manufacturers to cater to their target markets-target market, which was men.

The first laundry presses ever made were built with men in mind and because the shirt sizes and cuts didn’t vary greatly most shirt presses were built with the medium to large sized man in mind (most “shirt bucks” are still made to press a med to large sized mans shirt).

Speed is Huge Factor Affecting Dry Cleaning

In the dry cleaning industry speed is a huge factor that cleaners have to take into account. A lot of dry cleaners have next day and even one day service and the faster you can finish clothes ultimately determines the volume you can handle and the money you can make.

Because they manufacture the laundry presses with men in mind in order to press a woman’s shirt you have to deviate from the same pressing style as a man’s shirt and thus the process takes three times what it takes to press a mans shirt.

How Austin Cleaners is Different

The real issue in regards to pressing ladies shirts is the size of the shirt and not really the gender of the shirt owner. For instance if you have a shirt that is a ladies large and it will fit on our normal shirt press then we only charge the customer for the normal price it costs to launder a mans shirt.

The only time Sir Austin charges a little more is if the shirt is so small (or the cut is prohibitive) that it can not fit on the normal laundry press and it takes more time to press the shirt through an alternative method.

Sir Austin wants his lady customers and friends (and trust me he has LOTS of “lady friends”) to know that he will never charge them more simply because they are women. He will only charge more if it costs us more to press a shirt thus being as as fair to all parties as possible!