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What can I say that hasn’t already been said? We’ve been celebrating our 20th Anniversary for three months now, and the rest of our team has covered how important our Affiliates are to us and how GreenEarth has grown over the years. With that said, I feel like I’m in a unique position with the company. So let’s talk about how a 21-year-old Canadian earned a role with GreenEarth Cleaning. I learned about an opportunity for employment at GreenEarth through Tim Maxwell, who was my hockey coach when I was starting as a goalie. He saw in me a strong work ethic and the skill set to accomplish the tasks necessary every day. My trust in Tim made me take the plunge and apply for a position for Product Inventory Management. While I still work in product inventory, I took the initiative to involve myself in the eCommerce side of things as well. This gave me a better sense of what’s happening and allowed me to learn how I could improve in my role with GreenEarth. My hard work paid off as I was included in multiple projects and opportunities, resulting in my current title, E-Commerce Specialist. After  almost two years with GreenEarth, I consider myself lucky to work with a great team of professionals. The team at GreenEarth has taught me many new skills and expanded my horizons. In addition to the experience I have gained, GreenEarth has allowed me to pursue my passion for music and a degree in Music Therapy.  I’m forever grateful to the entire team for allowing me to grow as a person and I look forward to my future with GreenEarth Cleaning!

I joined the GreenEarth Cleaning team back in 2009, and I am consistently impressed, even to this day, by this company’s 20-year-long commitment to providing the dry cleaning industry with sustainable and environmentally non-toxic solutions. When I first started 10 years ago, we only offered the GreenEarth solvent, but since then, we’ve branched out to provide a completely optimized System that spans all aspects of the dry cleaning process, including our Prime 3/2 pre-spotter, Sustain detergent, and Activated Clay Filtration. In my time at GreenEarth, I have been fortunate to work with many Affiliates to make a positive impact and help preserve our planet for future generations. Our Members are just as passionate about GreenEarth’s sustainable mission, and to say their advocacy is inspiring would be an understatement. I especially enjoy meeting with the Affiliates I’ve talked to over the phone. It’s nice to finally put faces with names when Affiliates come to our Kansas City workshops. Trying to narrow down a favorite memory isn’t easy, but one that’s definitely noteworthy is the Royals game we attended with members of the GreenEarth Family as part of our 2015 workshop. Watching baseball in a private suite with 50 good friends—what could be better than that? I’m looking forward to all we have in store for this year’s event, happening the weekend of Sept. 21 and 22! If you haven’t already booked your spot, you can register here.

Coming to a country, with less than a hundred dollars, and not knowing the language, to owning a small business. Through hard work, not spending money on useless things, and living with two other families in a small one-bedroom apartment, this was how many Korean immigrants, including my father, were able to purchase their very own dry-cleaning plant. As times change, hard work alone is not enough to get customers to come through the door. Not having an online presence is one of the reasons we are seeing immigrant dry-cleaning operators struggle to grow their business. In an industry where solvent companies are just that, I am grateful to be part of a company that is more. A company that takes charge in helping our affiliates evolve and grow their business to meet the demands and expectations of the new generation. GreenEarth is able to accomplish this by building websites for our affiliates, marketing via social media, delivering exceptional customer service with a Bi-lingual staff to break the language barrier, and providing the only sustainable way of dry-cleaning. This past August I was able to work the California Cleaners Association Expo in Long Beach, CA. Meeting and spending face to face time with so many Affiliates in one place was a great experience. Then Saturday night we took a large group of our Affiliates to BO-Beau Kitchen + Tap Room for happy hour and I learned what it meant to be a part of the GreenEarth Family.

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  Mark Twain.  This quote from a famous Missourian rings true when I look back at my time with GreenEarth Cleaning. It has been over 12 years since I moved with my family from Toronto, Canada to Kansas City, Missouri to work with the team at GreenEarth Cleaning and I still love what I do.  Dry cleaning is a challenging and exciting business.  I have been fortunate to work with many GreenEarth Affiliates big and small to make a positive impact working toward their sales goals. Whether it is starting an email marketing campaign, working with our development team to create their store a new website, improving customer service, or realizing the benefits of our sustainable cleaning system,  I have to say our Affiliates are the best part of my day! I am so proud to work with all of the Members of the GreenEarth Network; the work they do every day is helping to make our planet better.  We could not do what we do without them!  

Only joining the GreenEarth Cleaning team this past May, I am certainly newer than most. Every day that I have worked here, I am constantly impressed by this company’s 20 year long commitment to providing the dry cleaning industry with sustainable and environmentally non-toxic solutions. Before GreenEarth, dry cleaning had been known to be tough on the planet and on garments. But the people here have created a solution that is eco-friendly and gentler on clothing. The GreenEarth process has helped to change negative reality and perceptions of dry cleaning for the past 20 years. I am so proud and delighted to be able to work for a company that always tries to do the right thing. GreenEarth Cleaning’s collaborative culture benefits more than just the company, its employees, and its Members. GreenEarth Cleaning benefits the industry as a whole as well as the earth and environment. GreenEarth is a strong advocate of sustainable solutions that are safer and gentler on the environment. At GreenEarth, we truly are a family. One of my favorite memories that I have from the short time I’ve been with GreenEarth Cleaning is attending the company holiday party. It was really fun to be able to chat with everyone and hear stories about their work with GreenEarth and to hear about some of our amazing Members. I love working somewhere I am part of a family and I know that I can make a real difference in the world, even if it’s only a small difference. It’s clear that the people here at GreenEarth truly believe in the work they are doing.

Over the course of the past 20 years of my involvement with GreenEarth Cleaning I have seen and heard a lot of cool things from a wide variety of sources. But just when I thought I had heard it all, I got a text Monday morning that caused me to drop what I was doing and call a longtime Member of the GreenEarth Family. Let me provide some context to why calling an Affiliate (something I do every day) was a little different that day. Rewind to June of 1999. I was at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto, Canada, when Jim Barry, Ron Benjamin, and Jim Douglas attended the International Drycleaners Congress and gave a sneak preview of their new offering that was being rolled out later that month at the ’99 Clean Show in New Orleans. I jumped on board after that Clean Show and assisted with the first 29 GreenEarth Affiliates in our “Affirmation Site” program, which involved testing over 26,000 waste stream samples before we officially began selling to the dry cleaning industry. Just think about that for a moment—those first 29 Affiliates paid their license fee and then became the guinea pigs for testing of their still bottoms, cartridge filters, and wastewater for us to openly report to government regulators and other constituent groups. That’s quite a leap of faith. We were told by industry salespeople that our first “customers” were actually more like missionaries preaching to the industry about their experiences as they began their journey as a GreenEarth Affiliate. Pretty cool. Our list of “missionaries” is too large to introduce here without doing an injustice to those that aren’t mentioned—top-notch operators from all the way up north in Minnesota to southernmost Alabama, from East Hartford, Connecticut, to Fresno, California, and almost every town in between. They were the kind of people that would welcome other dry cleaners into their plants to spend a morning watching them run loads and pre-spot. They would allow other cleaners to bring in garments from their own shops in order to see, feel, and smell the difference after cleaning in GreenEarth. Pretty cool. When the International Fabricare Institute awarded GreenEarth Cleaning the Technology Trailblazer Meritorious Service Award in 2007, we were honored to accept it on behalf of the more than 1,000 GreenEarth Affiliated Members around the world at that time. Many of those members had become comfortable being interviewed by local and national media surrounding their commitment to the environment in garment care. They told us that GreenEarth had given them a platform to become “disciples” for the cause of sustainable garment care. Along the way, we heard from garment technologists employed by major retail brands that requested our assistance in getting trim components as abstract as alligator skin, LED lights, glass crystals, electronic diodes, and UV-proof coated textiles tested in order to expand their offerings to the ever-evolving needs of the consumer. Some of those technologists remain raving fans of GreenEarth as they moved from various companies within the fashion industry and bring their experiences with gentle aftercare to the boardrooms and quality assurance labs of their new employers. We have received calls from landlords informing us that their bankers had “championed” that their dry cleaning tenant needed to convert to the GreenEarth Cleaning System in order to insure their property financing long into the future. Pretty cool. I have viewed garments worn by celebrities at award shows, such as the Grammys and the Oscars, that were cleaned by GreenEarth Affiliates after the big event. And I know of a couple princesses that entrusted GreenEarth Members to preserve a couple of the most iconic wedding gowns ever created. Very cool! So when I received that text Monday morning that GreenEarth had just got a shout-out on The Howard Stern Show, I needed a little more explanation of the scenario for me to feel comfortable. I was told that after a discussion on a previous show about how to care for expensive jeans, Howard read a letter that he had just received from a fan that recommended GreenEarth as the best way to care for denim—or any fabric that needs to be cleaned, for that matter. Somebody took the time to write Howard Stern about GreenEarth Cleaning—why was I not surprised?

As a new member to the GreenEarth team, it’s still quite exciting to think about the fact that I work for one of the most successful environmental leaders in this industry. As we all know, dry cleaning hasn’t necessarily always had the reputation of being good for the environment, so I’m proud to be a part of a company that is pioneering the way toward sustainable garment after care and a healthier planet as a whole. As an employee working out of Toronto, one of my favorite memories would have to be when we hosted an Affiliate Workshop up North! Not only did it strengthen connections but it was exciting to hear about all the ways that we provide an amazing service while focusing on having a positive impact on the environment. My first experience within the GreenEarth Network at the 2018 Fall Affiliate Workshop in Toronto, Canada really displayed the collaboration that is integral to being a part of the GreenEarth Family.

It’s been my good fortune over the course of my 45 year business career to have been involved as a founder/owner with seven different businesses in seven different industries. And one of the lessons I’ve learned is that a business is not about tables and chairs and buildings and computers, rather it’s all about its people. And in the service business, this is even more true than in manufacturing or technology companies. It doesn’t matter what the CEO says should happen. What matters is what happens when the customer interfaces with the company at the point of service. We’ve been blessed over our 20 years at GreenEarth to have had people who care about our mission of providing our industry with better tools to serve the retail customer. And to provide a dry cleaning system that is safer and gentler for people, their clothes, and our planet. I am so proud of the people who have joined our team and the very real commitment each has to serving our GreenEarth Members and, in turn, the customers our Members serve every day. Combined, GreenEarth is a Network of those who are committed to doing the right thing – something that’s becoming more and more rare in our society of “me first” rather than serving others. I trust the next 20 years allow us to remain in the same place of service!