Is Dry Cleaning a Scam? with the Father-Son Duo Behind Jeeves

22:58You know, I embrace Saks ideas where my dad was like, you know, why are we doing this? You know, we should be doing it the old way. My dad was an amazing dry cleaner. He was an amazing person who can get stains out of just about anything. But he wasn't, unfortunately, wasn't the best business person. You probably learned your craft from him, too. I learned every aspect of the dry cleaning business through him. I mean, when I was at that company with them, I did everything. You know, I pressed, I cleaned the clothes, I ran the machines. When the boiler broke, I was in the boiler room, 115 degrees, trying to get the boiler back up and running again.

23:35There wasn't anything that I didn't do. And that's the same ethos that we have now when we hire staff. It's like, you come to work for us. I'm not going to ask you to do anything that I won't do or Zach won't do. And there's nothing that we won't do. I think it's beautiful, you guys' relationship. And I saw when I went to the office, I saw you had all these post-it notes, not just from your dad, but from everybody who works in the facility. Just like, it was very sweet. I'll show an image of that. But there's a lot of love, it seems. There is. In your business. In the pandemic, you guys lost like 85 % of your business, right?

24:07because no one needed to dry clean. No one was going out. No, it was like a light switch. So everybody left, they all fled Manhattan like, you know, rats from a sinking ship. Especially in the luxury space. Exactly. And then who's going out? No one was going out. So we were like twiddling our thumbs. And then you had this idea, Zach. Yeah, I really wanted to provide correct information because I was starting to see a lot of misinformation about clearing for your clothes, removing stains to kind of become like Wikipedia of stain removal. We made very basic with my sister. How-to guides, get a tomato sauce stain out, get a blood stain out, no voiceover on YouTube.

24:44It was not received well. But luckily, that's when short-form vertical content was starting to take off, specifically TikTok, which TikTok loves new creators. Did you set out to become an influencer in this world, like dry cleaning clothing? Did you know that would happen or you were just trying to create a resource? No, I think I had very low aspirations. Again, all of this was rooted in back to how do we help the business get out of this? How do we naturally market ourselves to become a resource in the community, but also people's first subconscious thought of what do I do with this or who do I call?

25:17So my goal was to become known enough that large editorial spaces would call upon us and then link our website for natural SEO and backlinking to really help the business. Thank you guys for sharing some of the personal journey with us. Maybe it's appropriate because you see so much of the intimate lives of people. We do. Wedding dresses are frequent and that, you know, those are things that people may want to pass on to their next generation in their family. And that day is incredibly emotional and important for so many folks. I think that's a very common and kind of basic one. But, you know, sentimental vintage pieces of an heirloom that's been in the family for a century.

25:57It just requires a lot of patience and doing it the right way. Do people literally send in their like underwears and bra? Not to us. You can't? right? No, we've gotten some. We have a piece now from Agent Provocateur that we're restoring beadwork on, and then we're going to have to take care of it afterwards. Anything you could possibly think of that people wear, I've cleaned and taken care of. Do people dry clean socks? Yes. We just had a client who sent in a bag of their cashmere socks, and we have a new person who's doing some of the work for us, and she was asking about, is this correct? Yeah, it is correct.

26:33And do you charge per sock or a pair? We charge by the pair. By the pair. How much is it to dry clean cashmere socks? How expensive. You know what? You're stumping me. I think, believe it's$15 a pair to clean cashmere socks. But, you know, I don't push the buttons that often with pricing at this point. You know, we have six people who take care of that, who actually enter all the work into the system because we're very detailed about what we do and how we track clothing. Right. Over and above what most people do. So let's step back for a second and explain what Jeeves is, because Jeeves is not just in New York.

27:07There's Jeeves New York, there's Jeeves in London. We're heavy in Middle East and in Southeast Asia and Asia. Zach and I are the owners of the license for New York. We don't have association with the other Jeeves brands. And it's a franchise, a very loose franchise. There aren't a lot of protocols like you would get with you on the McDonald's franchise. We're kind of loose to do what we need to do as long as we uphold the quality standards. Why did you want the Jeeves brand? It's luxury, it conveys luxury. You know what? I get this. The story is when I was working my family business in Gramercy Park when we first started doing pickup and delivery because we didn't do it originally.

27:48So I was the first driver because we couldn't afford a driver. So I was driving the truck and I always knew about Jeeves. And we had a client who was right across the street from the Jeeves location. At that time, it was on 65th Street between Madison and Park. And I would sit there and say, that's the brand that I want to own. They are the best. They are the number one. They are luxury. They are that. And then, you know, in the early 2000s, I was able to acquire the brand. Very good. So it was something I was aspirational for. In anything that I've done, I've always wanted to be the best at it.

28:17And I'm competitive when it comes to things like that. And do you remember that when you're - I didn't know that story. You didn't know that story? I've never heard that story. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I used to park right in front of Jeeves because that was where the legal parking was. And it was on, you know, 65th Street. And yeah, we actually still have clients who live in that townhouse, different people. Oh, wow. Same townhouse. The other day, I went to a really fancy wedding, and I was getting my dress fitted. And it was not my own wedding, sadly for my mother. But it was a wedding, nonetheless.

28:47And I was getting a dress fitted, and my tailor said, oh, you've got to take this to Jeeves after. If you're going to take it to get cleaned, it's got to come to Jeeves. I'm going to show it to you later. But Jeeves has a front store in Manhattan. Right. We're on 93rd and Madison. And then there's this massive kind of workshop and facility where all the magic happens over in Brooklyn. And it ends in the kind of roller coaster that we all see when we go in to pick up our dry cleaning. If you go in to pick up your dry cleaning, because in New York a lot of times it just shows up in your apartment.

29:22It does, yeah. a total black box. But there's that roller coaster that has everyone's names, and that's where it ends up back in the store. So I want to spend a little bit of time of what happens in the wonderland of your warehouse, but also how nothing gets lost. How many items do you take in a year? We process about a little over 100 ,000 pieces a year. And I'd say 90 % of our businesses pick up and delivery. So really quickly through the process, our drivers would pick up your work in our Jeeves branded bags. The inspection team is going to open that bag, make sure it belongs to you, open up your account, and then start logging all that in.

30:01So what the piece is, brown t-shirt, we'll take a picture, we'll note any stains or maybe damages that need to be repaired. And then we close pin a nylon tag, which can survive really any type of cleaning process. with all that information. So the only time we would ever lose something if that tag comes off, but then we can do a very easy search with having that picture and the information of it. It goes through all of the cleaning, pressing, inspection, packaging, that tag comes off. Then we put that invoice that we're all pretty familiar with on the packaging. And then it goes on that, you know, magic carpet ride conveyor.

30:38And then it's dispatched based on if someone wants to pick it up in our store or delivered back from one of our delivery drivers. All right. So how many items do you lose a year? Our rate of loss is minimal in the grand scheme of things. I think last year we may have misdelivered, I think, two garments out of 100 ,000. And I think of the two garments that we misdelivered, we were able to locate one of the two. But, you know, we strive for perfection. No one's perfect. And dealing with that many garments is always going to be something that goes awry. But I think that we have so many checks and balances over and above because we do take a photo of every garment that comes in.

31:19We do use a barcode system. Our drivers also scan every order upon delivery, so we kind of geo-reference where it's going. Is that barcode system, like sometimes you get back clothes and they have that barcode still on it. You guys' does not. We take tags off. We hard barcode or heat seal a very limited amount of garments for tracking. For example, men's shirts, because there are so many that are very similar. Right. So we could be, at any given time, laundering 20 white Tom Ford shirts. Oh, wow. And if the tag falls off, we want to know definitively that this Tom Ford shirt is going to this gentleman and not that gentleman.

31:57Are the men in New York getting basic, you think, if this is a volume of Tom Ford shirts? I picked a brand out of, you know, we do a lot of Tom Ford shirts. We do a lot of Ascot Chang shirts. I mean, clients aren't sending us, you know, the lower level brands because of our price point also. But you do also get some Zara and some H &M type stuff, right? We do. And that's where our curiosity really always needs to be perked up. That's where we have to say, you know, this is what it's going to cost. Be comfortable with that. And that's up to them. That's not for us to dictate who's using our service.

32:30When I send in clothes, my clothes are like intermingling with other people's clothes. Yeah, they are. They're not being cleaned separately. Yeah. We separate things very similar to laundry, so lights and darks and weight of clothes and how long things will take to dry. Right. So we wouldn't be cleaning like a black silk blouse with a dark load of down coats. It's, you know, completely contrary. And the barcode system, is that like a Dewey Decimal system? Like is there some, like, you remember the Dewey Decimal system in libraries? Yeah, for library books. Is there some meaning to like the numbers in your code?

33:01No, it's just a random number that's then assigned. So once the barcode is scanned, all the information that we entered about that garment. So if we entered your beautiful blouse, we would note that it's blue. It's from my friend's company, Florida Mall, my friend Jennifer's company. Thank you. Yeah, we would say it's a blue cotton blouse with black lace trim. We'd have an image of it. So, for example, if that barcoded tag had come off in cleaning, that we could make sure that it goes back to you. Okay. And do you worry about bedbugs? This is a, I mean, maybe not because you're dealing with rich people's clothes, but I don't know.

33:32Are there bed bugs a thing? In New York, I'm very scared of bed bugs always. They're a thing in New York, but usually if a person does have a bed bug problem, they're going to be incredibly anxious about it and telling us beforehand. I do appreciate how honest a lot of folks are with, hey, this is not the most savory stain, just giving you a heads up. But it's not uncomfortable for us. Everything happens, and we've seen everything, and that's okay. Sometimes people don't come in to pick up their clothes, right? They just leave them. They do. Yeah. We don't have a whole lot of that in our company because of most of our business.

34:06Like Zach said, 90 % of what we do is pick up and delivery. But we do have clothes at the shop that people occasionally will not pick up. What is the largest volume of clothes that someone wouldn't pick up? We have like a$3 ,000 order of clothes from a client who's using us on a regular basis who just kind of disappeared off the planet. You got ghosted. We got ghosted, yeah, basically with a big order of clothes. And that happened a couple of times. We've had a few orders. That one, her clothes are really good, but we'll donate them. We had some order. Somebody dropped off a lot of clothes, and we put it under the client's name who he'd given us, and it turned out not to be that client.

34:43But no one ever claimed them, and it was a lot of clothes. I don't know how that one ever happened. That was crazy. And what are the ethics, like when someone leaves behind$3 ,000 of clothes? And sorry, it's not$3 ,000 of clothes. It's probably like tens of thousands of clothes. For that order, it was probably tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes. I mean, legally, New York State allows us to donate clothing after six months. We go over and above. For that client, we emailed, we texted, we sent letters, physical letters, snail mail, and nothing. If you ever actually get ghosted, you should not do any of those things.

35:14They say, don't even text. Don't send letters. I just want to make—I really wanted her to pick up her clothes. I mean, they seem like nice clothes. They were nice clothes. Do you want to donate them to a podcaster? not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to, you have to donate them to... To a charity. So we'll probably use, you know, housing. We always donate to Housing Works. Hang tight for a second. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Fandango. People say fans are too distracted these days. But the truth is, when a great movie hits the screen, you show up. You stay glued, invested, part of the story.

35:49And without fans like you, there'd be no cinema magic, no shared moments. So head to Fandango.com to get tickets, stream, or rent or buy top movies and series. Fandango loves fans. So let's talk a little bit about stains, and what stains and what doesn't. Because when we went in to see you, Zach, you showed us this thing called, like, you were doing these patch tested, almost, like white cloth with 12 different color splotches on it. And then you had a wall full of them and something called a spectrometer. You got it. Spectrometer? Yeah. Explain what a spectrometer is. Sounds like it's going to go like examine my mouth or something.

36:31Yeah, it's a little device. The one I have is on the inexpensive side, but it works really well for what I need. But there are some extremely advanced ones that the bigger labs use. And it measures color and is able to turn that into data of where it actually falls in like a 3D graph, which is kind of crazy. So what I'm doing with that really simply is with that cotton swatch, I'm staining it with a variety of stains that people would encounter day-to-day life. For example, waterproof mascara, a blood stain, turmeric mixed with olive oil. So stains that are difficult to remove because in my testing, I want stains that don't come out completely every time.

37:12Because this is for performance testing of specifically laundry detergent stain removers right now. It has to be difficult. The test has to be hard. And so this was wild to me because they basically had like multiple sheets of this. And one of the things was just so no one's worried, you don't prick yourself and put blood onto a sheet to try it. You. We do not. We have found pig's blood, which we use. Yeah, online. I found an Asian grocery supplier had, you know, frozen pig's blood. Okay. And so you buy it, keep it in a freezer far away from everyone's clothes, and sometimes take it out to test, do these tests that you're doing.

37:51Yeah, whenever I post a blood removal video, it's definitely the top comment is, where did the blood come from? Yeah. Which is fair. But yeah, I'm not pricking myself. And is blood really hard to get out? I don't think so, with the right procedure. I think a lot of the stains that people get so worried about are not the ones that are difficult. Like red wine, I think is one of the easiest stains to remove. Really? On most things that are washable, but red wine doesn't scare me. Stick with blood for a minute, though. Like, I always feel like in the movies, you see people, like, murder somebody, and then they burn their clothes.

38:20You were saying they could just send it to Jeeves. Yeah, send it to us. We couldn't get out, you know. Were you inviting custom? I feel like I trapped you. I just invited you to invite custom for murderers, but no. No, we don't do crime scene work yet. No crime scene work. But you could. Like, blood actually lifts out pretty easily. And red wine lifts out, really? Yeah, there's not a whole lot to red wine. I think it's just so stark in color, especially when it's on a light garment. But a little bit of oxygen bleach like hydrogen peroxide, which is also great for blood stains. Because red wine is really just a lot of color that we need to fix.

38:53But then why couldn't you get it out of the green alias skirt? Because the green alias skirt is wool. And we would need to use a water process because dry cleaning, unfortunately, is a great oil and grease remover. But it does not remove blood stains. Oh, so you can wet clean it. And food stains. So we need to use water. But it's probably going to shrink because it's wool. And it's going to shrink. Exactly. So that's the oxymoron. That's the problem. Again, we are given clothes. If I got a red wine stain on my shirt, it's cotton. I could wash it. Easy. But if we're going to look at something that's silk and it's black and it's white and the black could bleed in water, then we're going to have a whole issue of getting that kind of a stain out.

39:28So I guess this kind of answers that question. I'm sorry to use this word in front of Jerry, but fuck, marry, kill. I've heard that word before. Okay, good. So a fuck, marry, kill on stains. Okay. And the kill means you will never see it again. You would love to never see this stain again. Okay. Deodorant stains, blood stains, or turmeric stains? I think turmeric's hard, but it's a very cool process because turmeric usually turns this bright red when you expose it to what needs to be removed. It's a very interesting reaction. So I'd probably fuck turmeric. I didn't think I would say that in my life.

40:09marry bloodstains. It's always great content. And then deodorant is such a wide range of product that sometimes I think deodorant actually physically discolors underarm stains. It literally bleaches it when it interacts with your sweat. So sometimes it's just not fixable, which is very difficult. Okay. So you're going to kill deodorant. Deodorant. And you're going to fuck with turmeric. Yep. And you're going to marry blood. I am. Oh, wow. Okay. Do you have that same assessment? I would. For me, the one that I want to kill is ink. Ink? Ink, yeah. Ink to me is the hardest thing for us to get out because there's so many varieties of ink, and ink is just, you know, crazy.

40:52We got an ink stain from a client, actually a television personality who will remain nameless, who had a seersucker suit that he got ink on, and he tried to get it out at home. Tucker. Tucker Carlson, what are you doing? I'm teasing I know it's not Tucker Carlson and I wish he wouldn't have touched it and he actually we sent it back and it took us like three weeks and it looked good but it didn't look great and I was really annoyed because I wanted to really completely restore this jacket it was his jacket and his pants and if he didn't mess with it we would have been probably would have gotten it out but there's so many ranges of ink right so when you stain something like I for example just got a blue ink stain on a white leather jacket oh gosh Derry's so disappointed at me.

41:35The pressure must be high, Zach. So, okay, I'm going to tell you what I did. I feel like now I'm going to get in trouble. No, you're not. Zach's like doing some Zen prayers in the corner. You did anything, so yeah. I put water on it. Okay. And a little bit of Aesop hand soap. Okay, and what happened? Because that was there. Nothing happened. Nothing's going to happen. It just made it a little, like the blue kind of smudged a little bit. Smudged, yeah. And then the area around it got a different color to the white. Trying to do anything, cleaning leather at home is fraught with difficulty. It's just not something you can put water on usually.

42:12So when we stain something, what should we do? I guess we should go to your TikTok channel. You should not buy white leather ever again. Because it's not stylish? No, of course it's stylish. Because anything's going to make it look terrible. If you're going to buy leather, I would buy dark colored leather. I bought it at the, you know, like they have that big vintage sale that comes out to New York. And I got it from like, I think it was from Decades or one of the LA stores. Yeah, but all leather is different. Depends how it's sealed, if it's aniline, non-aniline. But I would bring it to a leather specialist.

42:44I think specifically with a light colored leather, it's really difficult to do at home. I feel like such a disappointment. This is very sad. No one knows how to get stains out. It's, you know, we've seen so many issues with clients who try to do home stain removal when they damage goods. But the best thing to do is to do nothing, is to blot it out. If you've got like a wine stain, blot it out, leave it alone. What does blotting mean? You take like a little water and you blot it? No, you just take a clean white terrycloth towel and just blot whatever's on the surface. Okay, how gently is that? Up and down.

43:13We don't want to spread it around. No. Up and down. Up and down. No rubbing. Because you'll damage. I've seen so many silk ties, gentlemen's silk ties and ladies' silk blouses damaged because they'll rub on it. Okay. And then they'll chafe the silk. and then it kind of removes a little bit of the top dye and then it creates like a white area. This is like the same thing we struggle with like if you have a zit. Like do not touch the zit. Yeah. It's the same theory. It's going to be less satisfying at the moment. Yeah. Long term it's going to be better. Long term it's going to work out for you. It's kind of a dumb question.

43:44But what makes a product stain or not stain? Like is there something about like the viscosity of something or the color of something or the chemicals of something that... It's generally the color is what you see when it's left. I mean, for ink, it's, you know, ink is multi-layers. There's a carrier that's using oil or wax. And the problem with ink, like we were talking before, why it's so problematic is because once you remove the carrier, the dye spreads. So when you're left with like a tomato stain, it's really what's left is the color of the tomato or the ketchup or the mustard. With mustard, what's left is the color with turmeric because that's what gives mustard its color.

44:21Oh, there's turmeric and mustard? Yeah. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, so that's what gives it that bright yellow. When you get that really intense yellow mustard, it has turmeric. I assumed it was like a food dye and RFK was worried about it. Well, hopefully it's not a food dye. Yeah, right? Yeah, she has yellow 65 or something. Yeah. Which should be banned soon. Maybe. I don't know. I recently learned that if you ban all the food dyes, then food is going to be a beige color. Like all food, most food will be like beige. Be like rage, you know? Yeah, exactly. It would be like millennial beige, which I'm kind of very sick of seeing that.

44:57All right, yeah. Enough basic stuff. Is there like one magic product that cleans 90 % of stuff? I would say liquid laundry detergent is so incredible at stain removal. It's got just about everything that all those all-purpose stain removers have. Like the Shout or the Oxi. Shout or OxiClean Max Force or all that stuff. Just be gentle with it. maybe a couple drops. It's got enzymes to break down these really big food molecules, which is amazing. It's got surfactants to capture, surround oil stains. So just a little bit of that is going to go such a long way. So instead of buying an extra spritzer, I don't want to screw up any brand deals you might have, but instead of buying a shout spritzer that you spray onto stains, you're saying just use a little bit of dry.

45:44I still use those sprays because they're are so convenient and maybe a bit more, maybe their levels of enzymes are a bit higher and concentrated because their functions are different. It says 3X or 5X. But if you're at the laundromat and you didn't pre-treat a stain, you're like, okay, I have this red wine stain. I need to wash it now. I can't go home. I need to wear this blouse tomorrow. I would work in a little bit of that liquid detergent and powder too. You could just mix a little bit with water, same thing. And that's one of the big disadvantages with pods is you You can't pre-treat stains.

46:16If I could only have three garment cleaning products in my world, so you said liquid laundry detergent, what else would I have at home? A powdered oxygen bleach. Which is like OxiClean? Yeah, OxiClean. Okay. And what would you say the third one? I would say, well, I would like a spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide. What? Yeah. Yeah, I love hydrogen peroxide. I mean, to me, it's one of the best things you can have at home. What is the spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide? Well, just pick up hydrogen peroxide. It's usually in the, if you go to a drugstore, it's going to be in the first aid section. And what do I put it on?

46:50My bloodstains? Bloodstains. It's a great, it's basically a liquid version of OxyClean. Oh, interesting. But you can spray it on like yellow underarms and let it sit. The thing that needs time, oxygen bleaches need time. So that's one reason why we don't advocate using chlorine bleach. Chlorine bleach is really bad for the environment. It's also bad for us as people. It's also bad for fibers. It breaks them down. Oxygen bleaches are great, but they're very slow-acting. So you could take hydrogen peroxide, spray it on a stain, but you had to let it sit. Do you have a thought on how much a garment should cost to justify dry cleaning it?

47:27Yeah, I mean, say you're saying. You wouldn't bring your Ferrari to a Ford dealer. Exactly. If you spent$10 ,000 on an evening gown, I would like to think you should bring it to a place that specializes and has lots of experience cleaning similar things. So I think it's a sliding scale of what you deem worth it. If it's something that your grandmother passed down to you and it is really fragile, but it only costs$100, and it may cost$100 to service, that I think would be worth it. Would you ever put Tide on a couture gown? Tide? No. No. Never? Never, no. We wouldn't, you know, when we've done couture, we've done a lot recently is, you know, most of them are being done by hand.

48:11Right. Using, you know, cleaning products that are professional grade and with a lot of care and a lot of love and a lot of time. But there's never a time where, like, because you were saying Tide gets, like, 90 % of stains, but you would never use it on, like, a fancy item. No, we're talking, when Zach was talking about using Tide, it's on washable garments. Washable garments only. I mean, not something like, you know, something that came off the red carpet from the Met Gala. Yeah. A lightning round. We'll do some very quick questions. I know we're going to let you guys go. Okay. So what is the word martinizing?

48:41Martinizing? Martinizing was a brand of dry cleaning. It's just, it was just a brand. It was a franchise. One hour martinizing was really big in the 60s. Okay. It means nothing. Various people have told me that I have to ask you about martinizing. Yes, they say it was a brand. Okay. It was kind of like Q2. Okay. Okay. Do you think you'll ever have your own brand? I don't think so. Clawsnacking? No, I don't think so. No. Cheeks is a great name. Yeah. It's got a really good reputation around the world. It works really well for us. Okay. Is one hour dry cleaning too fast, too slow, or just right?

49:14It's impossible. Okay. Well, you can do it, but it's terrible. Yeah. Is it like 99 cent pizza? Well, I mean, it used to be able to process was quicker in the day when you had two different machines. But really, like, the cycle for dry cleaning is over an hour. Yeah. Yeah, it's way too—even same-day services is too quick unless you're in an emergency situation. Fabric softener is a thing. Is fabric hardener a thing? Fabric hardener, like starch? Starch. Sizing. Ah. Yeah. Yeah, you can add a little bit of body to something with a starch or a sizing. I don't recommend it. Cheer, joy, gain, fab. Why are all these brands so happy?

49:52It's a great question. All of those are fabric softeners, and I think they're just trying to maybe exude this comforting. I mean, Comfort's a brand, too. Just this very soft and wholesome vibe. Now, fabric softener's not our favorite. I would really only use it for, like, sweaters. Yeah, I could see by how your dad looked at you when I said fabric softener that you had a vendetta against fabric softener. We have issues with fabric softener. Fabrics used to be much rougher, and they were much more valuable then when cotton was really uncomfortable. Yeah. So that's why our previous generations really loved fabric softener.

50:27and that's trickled down, but now like a brushed cotton is so soft, you don't need to make it softer. What about when you have old clothes? Actually, I just bought this pair of like vintage army gear and it was very thick and wonderful, but it also smelled like mothballs. That is the bad thing about life in the world. So do you guys, do you actually just - Those are tricky. Those are hard. They're getting out that sort of vintage smell. I call it that vintage funk. I mean, if it's launderable, if something's washable, that'll usually do it. I mean, you know, it may take multiple washings. I mean, again, it may even be washed with a detergent with fragrance, and that may be objectionable to you as well.

51:04But multiple washings should get rid of that vintage clothing and that mothball smell. Do you guys wash your own clothes? I do. I think Zach sends this to the laundromat, but I do my own laundry. I find a lot of value in my local wash and fold guy because my building charges$3.50 a load. I'd much rather give Ivan$40 a week for him to do it as opposed to Hercules$20 and waste my own time. But I do all of my nicer T-shirts, bathing suits, things that I really want my personal touch on. What is the one thing that's impossible to clean right now that you wish you could come up with a cleaning solution for?

51:43Garments that are made of leather and suede and cotton and contrasting colors and with where luxury designers just make our lives miserable. I mean, if that's one thing I could change is for luxury brands to be honest about how things can be cleaned. But mixing, like I said, you know, we had a whole run of off-white cotton hoodies with a brown leather patch and the brand will go nameless. but the brown leather patch bleeds and it's impossible to clean. Why do you have to take pleather into a leather place? I don't think you do. Don't really need to. Really? Pleather can be wiped down. Most pleather, if it's got a shiny finish, it can be wiped down at home with soap and water or like even Fantastic or Windex.

52:28Windex? Or something of that nature. You don't need to really do anything. That makes me not want to wear leather ever again. Well, pleather. We're talking pleather, not leather. Pleather is just plastic. Pleather is vinyl. Pleather is plastic. Or faux leather or whatever, or vegan leather. Yeah. Depends on the finish, but it's plastic. My almost last question. Why is there so much plastic? Is there any way to get rid of all the plastic that exists in the dry cleaning facility? I would love that. Earlier you said my goal would be to get rid of all the plastic. We would love to. A quick sidebar.

52:53We do a lot of gentlemen's shirts and they like them folded. Yeah. We want to get rid of the plastic. We found a translucent paper bag. We thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Our clients hated it. Okay. Old habits die hard. Okay. Plastic. is it's like demanded by consumers because they want to see what's inside the bag. Yeah, and we haven't found a better way of packaging dry cleaning. We do use some zipper garment bags for clients, but again, those are also, the non-woven bags are made of plastic also. Okay, last question for you guys. What is a dumb question that you've had that you haven't been able, I've asked you all my dumb dry cleaning questions.

53:26You're not dumb. No, but things I didn't know, like things I couldn't Google, things I just have thought in my mind, but never had the, you know, audacity to ask out loud. Do you guys have questions like that? Things that you... All the time. For example? I wonder about when you see construction sites and there's these women that are outside selling food out of a big, you know, thermos thing, whatever, you know, a big cooler. They're all over the city. I want to know where that food's coming from. Are they making it at home? Is there essential commissaries or a ghost kitchen somewhere? Because the product they have, it all seems to be pretty similar.

54:00Yeah. So where does this food come from? The same thing about the food guys on the street, the fresh fruit guys. Yeah. Are they businesses or is this a massive company who's supplying fruit that's on the edge being sold on the street? Yeah, so just like dry cleaning is a black box to us. Fruits are a black box to you. Well, I just want to know where this food's coming from. I'm really curious because they all have similar pork chops and rice and various aqua frescas. It would be so interesting to find out if it's like a massive company, mammoth corporation. Yeah, in Long Island City with a big kitchen.

54:31Yeah, exactly. And you think you're just buying from this mom and pop. Exactly. Okay, Zach, what about you? I always find like goosebumps fascinating. But specifically like, I feel like with music it comes up a lot when I've heard a song live and then I play it back a week later. It's just a very physical reaction to something that's very, I think, emotional. I just feel like goosebumps in general maybe are very primal but seem to be kind of infesting my mind a little bit. Oh, I love that. But also, has a piece of clothing or experience at Jeeves ever given you goosebumps? I don't know about goosebumps, but you were with me in our workroom when I got that suede Celine bomber back, which was I filmed myself hand cleaning it about four or five years ago.

55:21That was my first video on TikTok that really grabbed people's attention. and to see it come back was really cool for a full circle moment i think a bit of like uh that's a snapshot in time right where i was like really throwing everything at the wall and it wasn't working and things worked and now we're here and i think that's just really cool to kind of see that garment again yeah i remember like it was the day that we came in to film some of the b-roll for this and it was a like it was a cool looking jacket but you have you were in awe of it yeah i mean it's a regular client and it's just so cool to see that they again like were happy with their service so they sent it back and it still looks really good but the client's wearing this beautiful piece because you know i love when people are wearing really expensive garments but truly wearing it and staining it and damaging it and making it stink because I think that's what, I think people forget that clothes are functional.

56:20So it just makes me really happy. Well, thank you guys so much for spending time with me. I appreciate how much you shared and all your wisdom and demystifying the black box that is dry cleaning, but also sharing your journey. I'm so happy that you guys get to work together and that you are managing director of this, you know, brand that you saw. Oh, it's great. I mean, the fact that Zach and I co-own the company, it's an amazing, it's been an amazing journey. I've been doing it for 40 years. Yeah. You know, I never thought that I'd be working with Zach, and every day is a pleasure to get up and, you know, be able to work with my son.

56:49It's, you know, great. And also, like Zach said, it's great for me being in the business for so long. There are garments that I've seen that I've cleaned for one generation, and I'm getting to clean it for a second generation as well. Oh, that's great. Which is, that to me gives me goosebumps. Well, I love that you fulfilled your dream and that you didn't know that story. Yeah, that was really cool. The chief story. I love it. It's a good story. Well, are you going to pass down all your, I mean, I don't want to talk about death, but let's talk about death for a second. Are you going to pass down all your clothes to Zach?

57:16You guys have very different styles. I don't know if he wants my wardrobe. We have a little bit diverging tastes. One of my most complimented sweaters is this vintage J.Crew turtleneck that I absolutely love. Yeah. Yeah. There's a piece in pieces. I always wear a sweater. My dad passed away a few years ago. I always wear a sweater from him. So I love it. Thank you guys so much for doing this. I so appreciate this. Zach and Jerry, you can find them at Jeeves. You can find them online at JeevesNY. You can find them uptown in New York. And you can find their book, The Laundry Book, which is the definitive guide to caring for your clothes and linens.

57:49It's fascinating, especially like the chapter on hangers and what kind of hangers to use for what kind of products and how to store your clothes. It's amazing. Like, I feel like it's really high expectations. It was a fun book to write. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure. We love being here.

58:09I love conversations with people like Jerry and Zach because they are such experts in their field. It is a topic that so many of us take for granted. Like we go, we drop something off, we see a label, we do what we want with it. But I love the care they bring to their work, their industry and their artistry really. And I also love their relationship and how honest they were about the fear of working as a father and son duo and the joys that have come out of it. And I love that. Zach got to learn about his dad's kind of first dreams of Jeeves New York in this interview. Anyways, I hope I will be seeing them a lot more.

58:43I'm taking them this incredible vintage Carolina Herrera dress that I just wore to a wedding in France, danced my ass off and got stuff at the bottom. I was going to put Tide on it and try to do it myself at home, but I'm not going to do that now because of all of the warnings that they gave me. I don't want their judgment. I want their love. That's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I'm your host Naima Raza. The show was produced with Greg Ott and Annalisa Cochran and Wonder Studios. You can find Smart Girl Dumb Questions wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube, Apple, Spotify.

59:10Please be sure to leave us a review. Tell us what you think. And you can send me an email to naima raza101 at gmail.com.

59:55We'll be right back.

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