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Eight years ago, in a populated state of Jharkhand, a group of school friends in Jamshedpur, embarked on a journey to venture into an eccentric endeavour to provide better garment cleaning services. Over the startup phase, they committed considerable number of errors and faced a lot of challenges. Now, standing tall after all these years of experience, M.K. Pooja, Co-Founder, Synergy Express Garment Care, shares a gist of her journey along with the lists of do’s and don’ts.
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Dry cleaning is a dirty business and unlike any other business it requires a lot of personal attention. There is no substitute to presence, especially when the project is starting off. The experience gained is first-hand and there is no handbook that can give that kind of learning. It requires regular nurturing and is not an investor’s business.
Manpower
As Richard Branson says, ‘if you get the right mix of people working for your company, it will have a far greater chance of success’, similarly, while automation and technicality are a key to running the business, investing in the right manpower gives a quantum leap.
During the initial days, we were always under the assumption that mechanization is the only thing that would take our business to a whole new level, but today, I feel we were too naive to think so.
From fashion to fabric, knowledge to experience in stain removal, the right knack can make the job quite easy.
Market Research
Keeping yourself updated about the industry will always benefit in more ways than one can perceive. Since the garment industry is constantly changing every day with innovative cleaning methods and technology making way for this industry, it is obvious that we are aware of it. We had invested over two years in market study before our store went live and that unquestionably gave us an additional edge over the existing players in the city.
Defined Procedures
Creating a structure in your business for smooth operations which would produce required results is essential. The first year of operations and store management was chaotic. There was constant confusion at the counter. The employees were unaware on how to address customer complaints. It was only after experiencing all of this we decided on creating step by step procedure to take our organization on the auto pilot mode.
Being mindful is the way to working to the top and creating a brand name for the business
Feedback
It should be understood that we are the garment care experts and that is the sole reason why the customer is interacting with us. It is our duty to resolve the issue with least harassment to the client. I feel that in our eight-year journey, every customer has played an important role in shaping Synergy to what it is today. We are constantly focused on feedbacks and that invariably resulted in business growth. I vividly recall that none of the traditional dry cleaners offer ‘Same Day’ delivery and we found that to be a major loophole. But every loophole is an opportunity in disguise. This really helped us carve a niche for ourselves in the market.
