RAVE FabriCARE'S True Quality Cleaning Blog

Fine garment care: It’s not solely about the dry cleaning machine or solvent

Dry cleaners are quick to tell you all about their “great” dry cleaning machine and their “great” dry cleaning solvent or fluid.

The implication is that true quality cleaning is all about machines and solvents or fluids.

That’s a false and misleading premise.

Truth is, true quality garment care is the result of the integration of the right dry cleaning machines and right solvents or fluids into a garment care process that involves an entire chain of specific tasks. Independent of the process, the dry cleaning machine and the solvent or fluid are worthless.

In this post, I explain why it’s important to understand your dry cleaner’s process instead of focusing solely on the brand of the dry cleaning machine or the generic type of solvent or fluid used.

Dark colored shirts: Launder & machine press or dry clean & hand iron?

In this post, we explain why you should never allow your dry cleaner to launder and machine press your dark colored cotton shirts. We also explain why dark colored cotton shirts should always be dry cleaned in a very gentle dry cleaning fluid and then hand ironed.

We illustrate our position by showing you pictures of some dark colored Prada shirts that were laundered and machine pressed. We then present the results that we achieved by dry cleaning these same shirts in a very gentle dry cleaning fluid and then hand ironing them.

RAVE FabriCARE: The best online resource for cleaning questions

Derek Guy writes one of the best blogs on men’s clothing (DieWorkWear.com). So much so, that the readers of PermanentStyle.com, a blog that receives up to 500,000 page views a month, voted the Die Work Wear blog Best Media for 2017. The Best Media category includes newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs and Instagram accounts — worldwide.

In a recent post, Derek Guy states the following:

The blessing and curse of the internet is that anyone can put up information. That’s why online guides on how to clean clothes are often so spotty – recycled wives tales and anecdotal evidence are thrown around to justify some cleaning method. Often times, you don’t know who’s writing the guide and how they know what they know.

He then proceeds to name RAVE FabriCARE’s website as the “Best Online Resource For Cleaning Questions.”

If you’re looking for answers to your questions about garment care, we invite you to explore our Position Papers, White Papers and Ebooks.

How to select a quality dry cleaner: The old standards don’t cut it anymore

In the past, consumers chose their dry cleaner on the basis of convenience, price and some vague verbal reassurances from the manager or customer service representative that the cleaner was, indeed, a “quality dry cleaner.”

In this age of hyperbolic claims, there has to be a better way. And there is.

In this post, I suggest that a far better approach is to

(1) review a checklist of specific, written practices — practices that, when viewed as a cohesive whole, constitutes true quality cleaning,

(2) compare those specific, written practices to the practices of any other dry cleaner you’re considering, and

(3) hold the dry cleaner accountable for meeting your expectations based on those specific, written practices.

The notion of airing out your dry cleaned garments & household textiles is absurd

You’ve heard the “advice” countless times before: air out your dry cleaned garments and household textiles before bringing them into your home.

In this post, I’ll tell you why that conventional notion makes no sense whatsoever and what you can do to avoid the prospect of having to air out your garments and household textiles.

New players are always promising to revolutionize the dry cleaning industry

Every new entrant into the dry cleaning market place will enthusiastically tell you all about their plans to “revolutionize” the industry. 

They’re always full of “new” ideas that, they believe, will turn the dry cleaning business on it’s proverbial head and generate wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

More specifically, they’ll tell you that they’ve developed a “new concept” — a better mouse trap. And that everything will be “different” and “better”.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll soon recognize that most of these “new” ideas have been around for quite a while and that there’s nothing new to be found.

Fact is, the only thing “new” about their concept is the glitzy marketing package that surrounds the very ordinary product they deliver.

In this post, I use Procter & Gamble’s franchised operation, Tide Dry Cleaners, to illustrate my point.

Tell your dry cleaner to remove their glued on or heat sealed barcodes

Many dry cleaners glue or heat seal barcodes on your fine garments and household textiles.

When you ask dry cleaners why they glue or heat seal barcodes on your fine garments and household textiles, they’ll tell you that they do so in order to “track your items through their production system”.

That’s the pronounced reason or spin. The real reasons are different.

So the critical question is this: What should you do if you discovered that your dry cleaner glued or heat sealed a barcode onto any of your garments or household textiles?

The overwhelming majority of dry cleaning customers probably couldn’t care less. All they want is a “cleaned and pressed” garment or household textile at the cheapest possible price.

Other customers — particularly those with a large investment in their fine garments and household textiles — may frown upon this practice. For those individuals, what are your options?

In this blog post, I prescribe a course of action and, if that fails, an alternative approach.

Why would you allow your dry cleaner to destroy your buttons and other hardware?

You’ve invested in your fine garments.

Amongst other things, you believe that your buttons, logos, zipper pulls, buckles and the like are integral to the look of your garments.

In this blog post, I examine the need for your dry cleaner to protect your buttons and other hardware — even if that means removing your buttons and other hardware prior to cleaning and replacing your buttons and other hardware after cleaning.

Yes, I do understand that your dry cleaner told you that they “protect” your buttons and other hardware.

But do they?

If that were the case, why are some of the buttons and other hardware (logos, zipper pulls, buckles, etc.) on your fine garments scratched, chipped, cracked or otherwise damaged?

And, if that’s the case, why do you permit your dry cleaner to get away with damaging the buttons and other hardware on your fine garments?