Valemont Group is a focused operator looking for one established and profitable dry cleaning business to own and run for the long term. We invest behind the people, the equipment, and the routes that keep a great shop great.
The story you hear is that dry cleaning is dying because casual dress and remote work cut piece counts. The story is half right. The other half is where the opportunity lives.
Yes, the formal piece count is shrinking. Knits replaced suits in the office. Pressed shirts are not what they were ten years ago. That part is real. It is not coming back, and the shops that built their entire identity on that work will struggle.
That is not the kind of shop we are buying.
What is growing is everything else. Wash and fold is one of the fastest growing service categories in America, projected to grow at over thirty percent annually through 2030. Pickup and delivery is the new norm. Commercial accounts at restaurants, hotels, and clinics keep deepening. Premium garment care still has its place.
The dry cleaner that adds wash and fold, builds a route, and signs commercial work is in the right place to win the next decade. We are buying the right place, and most of these shops are family operated by founders quietly thinking about succession.
No rebrand. No gimmicks. These are the levers that actually grow a dry cleaning business, drawn from operators on our board who have done it themselves in markets like the one we are buying into.
Door to door service is the single largest growth lever in modern garment care. It wins back the customer who switched to washing at home, raises average ticket, and adds a recurring relationship the corner counter cannot. Route economics compound with density.
Wash and fold is the highest growth segment in the category. Layering it on an established dry cleaner unlocks new revenue with the same plant. Commercial accounts with restaurants, salons, gyms, hotels, and small medical practices smooth out seasonality.
Real point of sale. Real customer relationship management. Text based pickup and ready notifications. Online order entry. The basics most shops still do not have. Done well, they raise retention without raising headcount and give the operator real numbers to manage.
The unglamorous work that defends margin. Smarter machines, scheduled maintenance, leak and pressure checks, energy audits, and centralized supplier programs cut utility cost and avoid the lost weekends that cost real money. Maintenance is the discipline that compounds the most.
The pressers, the counter staff, the route drivers. Wages that retain the team. Training that compounds. Leadership that respects the craft. Every operator we admire put their people first, paid them better than the market, and watched the customers stay too.
Acquisitions go sideways when buyers walk in with a binder full of changes. We walk in with one job: keep the team, keep the customers, and stabilize. Real improvements come after we have earned the right to make them.
The first hundred days are about the staff and the customers. We honor the relationships the prior owner built, raise wages where it is deserved, and protect the standards that drove the reputation in the first place.
Then we invest. New equipment for uptime. Modern POS and CRM for retention. Pickup and delivery routes for revenue. Wash and fold and commercial accounts where the demand justifies the lane. Nothing flashy. Things that compound.
Real labor planning. Real maintenance schedules. Transparent unit economics. Boring, durable operating discipline applied to a category that has rewarded the lack of it for too long.
A hands on founder owner. A CFO with twenty five years of experience scaling service businesses through public company chapters. Three industry directors who have run, grown, and supplied dry cleaners and laundromats for decades. Counsel from O’Melveny & Myers, accounting from Miller Cooper.
Engineer and operator. Founded and exited a multi brand e commerce business as principal before turning to acquisition. Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Olin College, ranked Top 2 nationally by U.S. News, with concentration cross registered at Babson College in finance and entrepreneurship. Owner operator from day one.
Twenty five plus years as CFO of Nasdaq listed companies. Most recently CFO of Blink Charging, where he led $300M in capital raises. Earlier as CFO of NV5 Global, helped take the company public and grow market capitalization from $25M to $1B while supporting more than thirty acquisitions. CPA, University of Florida and Barry University.
Three decades of operating leadership across dry cleaning and garment care. Started in his family’s shop and has run retail, commercial, and Department of Defense plants. Former GM of The Laundry Company in Tampa, where he hit a full year sales budget by February. Four DLI certifications. Author in The Reclaimer.
Co Founder and CEO of Clean Laundry, a fast growing retail laundry chain. Founder of the international Duds ‘n Suds franchise that operated in 30 U.S. states and licensed master franchises in Canada, Ireland, the U.K., and Southeast Asia. Vistage Best Practice Chair. Four decades of franchising and operating leadership.
Founder of Queen City Laundry in Cincinnati, which he grew from a struggling neighborhood shop into a thriving operator with several locations. Founder of Laundromat Millionaire, the leading consulting and education platform in the category. Co Founder of LaundroBoost, a digital agency built specifically for laundry operators. Two decades of hands on operating experience.
If you have built a profitable dry cleaning business and you are thinking about your next chapter, we want to talk. We are respectful of what you have built and direct about what we plan to do with it.
If you operate a dry cleaning business or represent one, send a note. Conversations stay confidential. We respond personally and quickly.
Valemont Group is acquiring an established and profitable dry cleaning business. We have a strict buy box, so when the fit is real we know quickly and we move quickly. We treat sellers and staff with respect, and we close cleanly.
