Clean Collars and a Lot of Name Dropping Give Nu Look Cleaners (Pant) Leg Up on the Competition

Business: Nu Look 1 Hour Cleaners
Location: 4418 Powder Mill Road, Beltsville, MD, 301.937.6441
Date of incident: Pretty much every Saturday

Quick Hit
Nu-Look Cleaners, shoved back in the corner of one of the least descript, but highly, highly trafficked little strip malls in Beltsville, is a bastion of consistently genial customer relations, proving that the race really is given not so much to the swift, but to them that endure.

The Run-up
As my loyal 13 readers (up from last month’s 12, thank you very much) know, this channel is typically devoted to the reporting of incidents (as opposed to the type of general account I embark upon with this one) where customer service is at the core, whether the service was commendable or contemptible. There are several reasons for that, not the least of which being the dramatically decreased likelihood that a disgruntled merchant will sue me if I'm simply penning an account of a factual occurrence, and citing my sources, as opposed to dolling out subjective reviews of folks' business operations. But this divergence from the reporting norm has been burgeoning for some months now, as the folks at my new cleaners, aptly named Nu Look, have continually impressed. (I jettisoned my last cleaners, just up Powder Mill Rd. from Nu Look, because the necks of my white shirts consistently came back gray, and they either didn’t understand my incessant complaints in English too well, or chose to relentlessly ignore them. I hated having to leave them, mainly 'cause they gave my kids lollipops; but I just got tired of being suckered.)

Nu-Look’s proprietor is a gregarious big Greek with a moderately graying goatee, George Stratigis. His 76-year-old mom, who worked the place when George’s dad owned it (1968-1987) until he retired and passed it on to his ambitious son in his 70s, is by George’s side as a constant reminder of the legacy he’s obliged to uphold. This sweet, devoted Catholic lady, who can usually be found seated at the seamstress station to the left when entering, looks like she’d just as readily cook you up a hot Souvlaki plate as hem your slacks.

What's In A Name
You’d be hard pressed (pun fully intended) to find a friendlier business in our coverage area than Nu-Look Cleaners. I keep waiting for George to trip up and not remember a customer’s name who walks in the door while I’m there. Most of the time he doesn't even need to take a customer's receipt in order to retrieve his or her garments. He has sometimes had mine waiting at the cash register, having seen me pull up, before I can even get inside. When I first witnessed this name-recollection phenomenon I took it as a warning sign that business wasn’t so hot and there were only a dozen or so customers keeping the place afloat, and therefore George knew them all. But the bloated racks of plastic dangling from the anaconda-like racks winding from front to rear of the cavernous space quickly disabused me of that notion. And not only does he call each of us by name, he’s got questions! “How’d your daughter do at the track meet last week, Johnnie?” “Mr. such-and-such, how was Florida?” “Ms. Such-and-such, do you know my customer Mr. B who attended that other HU?” (I let him slide on that one.) George’s face-name recognition is just uncanny. I think it was only my second or third trip there when he had mine down. Granted, when you’re a cross between Denzel and Jerry Lewis you’re more apt to leave a lasting impression on a fellow, but still…

George, a sports junky, like me, is loving this time of year. When I make my usual Saturday stop in there tomorrow he’ll undoubtedly have the boom box tuned to whatever NCAA March Madness game is in progress. While he exchanges my dirties for my cleans, we’ll opine about the prospects of local teams Maryland and Georgetown, he’ll gently boast that he had VCU over Duke the whole way, then another customer will come in behind me (yes, whom he’ll greet by name), and he’ll send me off with a booming, “take care!”

Just the other day there were Girl Scout Cookies for sale on the little table in the corner by the front door, the space George often reserves for wares proffered by other neighborhood entrepreneurs. Early this winter one of his female customers had convinced him—pretty easily, I’m sure—to let her stack her hand-made, exotically-scented, under-door, cold air stoppers there. If there had been an Elmo-themed one, I would’ve picked it up. And George has enthusiastically agreed to support the sports teams at the local high school, High Point. That is if the school’s booster club can ever get its act together. But that’s another blog entry—the utter ineptitude in the administration of our public schools—one that I am desperately trying not to pen.

But George’s civic sensibilities and home-spun conviviality would be all for naught if Nu-Look didn’t also get my shirt collars exquisitely clean and have everything ready on time. Had that not been the case they would have merely been the fourth in the litany of Beltsville cleaners I tried out. I didn’t even mind it one bit when my favorite pink tie got separated from the rest of my batch once. George came right out and told me the neck-piece had gone missing and asked that I give him a couple of days to find it. “I’m pretty sure it’ll turn up.” If it didn’t, he promised to replace it, “no problem.” He had me almost wishing it wouldn’t show up, so I could score a new silk Armani, but it did a few days later, stuck to another customer’s bundle.

When asked, George told me that’s just the way he was taught to treat people in general, and especially when the people represent the lifeblood of your business, your family's livelihood. He attributes his penchant for remembering the names on the tickets to the tutelage of Charlie Weller, owner of Weller’s Cleaners, which is still located on Fenton St. in Silver Springs, for whom George worked during his teen years. And, of course, dear old dad left a major imprint on George during the 40 years he had him under his wing before he passed about six years ago. George’s work ethic, infectious ebullience, and propensity towards the people have served him well in all of his professional endeavors, which have included working for his dad in the shop George now owns, as an assistant deli manager at a local Giant grocery store, and as a builder of homes and restaurants all around the D.C. area.

No Beef Here
So you can skip right down to the epilogue for this post.

Epilogue
So, like my barber, touch-free car wash, dentist, and parakeet vet, once I find a good thing—in this case a cleaners who really shows a special appreciation for his patrons—I stick with ‘em. So, next time you’re languishing in one of the inevitable traffic tie-ups on that stretch of Powder Mill Rd., stop into the 7-11 for a cup of bad java and then stroll the 40 feet down to the other end of the complex to witness George in action droppin’ names. It would probably help, though, if you planned ahead and actually threw your soiled “dry clean only” garments in the car beforehand. Otherwise, that would just be, well, weird.