The Business Plan 155Robert Byerly:
Pressed for Success
It wasn’t the prices that bothered Robert
Byerly about his local dry cleaner. As the
principal financial officer at Lomas Financial
Corporation, Byerly could afford to have his
clothes cleaned at any high-end dry cleaner
in the Dallas area. It was the poor service
that upset him. When the cleaner ruined a
brand new $100 dress shirt, no one even
bothered to apologize, so Byerly contacted
the Better Business Bureau.
He discovered that many consumer com-
plaints to the bureau involve dry cleaners and
that their failure to accept responsibility for
shoddy work was what irked customers most.
That information and his own experience per-
suaded him to open his own dry cleaning
store and to promise that his business would
stand behind everything it cleaned.
First he spent a week at the library doing
research. He learned that dry cleaning was a
$16 billion industry made up primarily of indi-
vidual mom-and-pop establishments rather
than local or regional chain stores. He found
out that cleaners generally relied on discount
coupons to build business and that the aver-
age dry cleaner brought in $250,000 in annu-
al sales. When he saw evidence that atti-
tudes and government regulations regarding
the cleaning solvent percoethylene—perc—
were changing, he knew that a business with
new equipment would have a technological
advantage.
According to one business consultant and
author, Byerly’s approach to launching his
business was unusual: “When people talk
about creating or building a business and
what they need, they say money or sales,”
observes Michael Gerber. “They never say
more information, but that’s what it really
takes.”
Byerly’s research didn’t stop at the library.
He took clothing to fifteen of the best clean-
ers in his area, and then hired a marketing
firm to assemble a focus group that could
evaluate his future competitors’ work.
Consultant Gerber applauds this step, too.
“Too many small-business owners have a
technician’s mind set rather than a marketing
mind set. You have to think like Procter &
Gamble. What would they do before launch-
ing a new product? They would find out who
their customer is and who their competition
is.”
Because Byerly wanted to create a busi-
ness that, in his words, “paired five-star serv-
ice and quality with an establishment that did-
n’t look like a dry cleaner,” he also spent
$15,000 on focus groups to critique his
store’s name, appearance, and brochure.
Byerly’s planning paid off. His venture,
known as Bibbentuckers, looks different from
other dry cleaners because it has a slick
exterior with snazzy awnings. The service is
different, too, because Bibbentuckers’
employees pick up and deliver laundry direct-
ly to or from customers’ cars; serve them cof-
fee, tea, or lemonade while they wait; and will
even clean their windshields. The quality of
Bibbentuckers’ cleaning is different, too: A
tiny bar code is attached discreetly to every
garment to record the customer’s prefer-
ences and to allow a computer to track the
item through the cleaning process Each
garment is inspected seven times before it is
returned to the customer. Byerly’s company
automatically replaces buttons, repairs pock-
et holes, and stitches loose hems, and every
bit of the Bibbentuckers service is guaran-
teed.
The first store in Plano, Texas, postedPERSONAL PROFILE 5