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Business View Magazine
And if it is something major, we have back-up reciprocal
arrangements with other laundries within a three to five-
hour drive that could temporarily do our service.”
Romeo is bullish on the company’s future growth, as evi-
denced by what has already transpired over the last sev-
eral years. “In 2003, we were doing zero hotels and zero
hospitality. Twelve years later, we’re doing about 30 hotels.
So it goes to show you that sometimes you can start with
nothing and then, over time, you wind up developing a
whole business.” HLS is also continuing to stay on the cut-
ting edge of laundry technology. “Right now, we’re looking
at a couple of things,” Romeo notes. “One capital expendi-
ture is an automated garment system, and another is ex-
panding the use of our RFIDs.” (RFID or Radio-frequency
Identification is the wireless use of electromagnetic fields
to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identify-
ing and tracking tags attached to objects. The tags contain
electronically stored information.)
The company is also eager to expand its territorial spread
as well as its market penetration. “There are still a lot of
opportunities,” suggests Romeo. “The U.S., for example,
presents a potential growth market that we haven’t really
addressed, specifically. But our location here in Ottawa is
45 minutes from Ogdensburg, NY, two hours from Water-
town NY, and three hours fromSyracuse, and right now, we
are servicing some U.S. customers. It’s never been a mar-
ket that we’ve specifically gone after, but it definitely repre-
sents an opportunity. There are other markets emerging,
and we’re going to look at them, as well.” Romeo notes
that the company reaches out to prospective clients via
trade shows, cold calls, and word of mouth within various
trade associations to which it belongs.
When enticing a new customer to sign with HLS, Romeo
stresses the practicality of partnering with a laundry ser-
vice, while adding a touch of humor to his assessment:
“When you’re at home, or anywhere else, one thing every-
one hates to do is laundry,” he jokes. “And when you’re
able to give that to somebody else - they wash it, they
clean it, they process it, and then you get it the next day –
