94 Business View Magazine - April 2016
Over the years, the drycleaning industry as a whole ex-
panded widely even though it was sometimes faced
with difficult challenges. According to Godfrey, about
half the drycleaners in America went out of business
in the 1970s, when polyester fabric became a popular
clothing material, and in 1994, the solvent Perchlor-
ethylene, which was used by 90 percent of the coun-
try’s drycleaners, was declared a possible carcinogen.
Fortunately, Comet Cleaners was instrumental in test-
ing, marketing, and implementing a new, environmen-
tally safe dry cleaning solvent, manufactured by Exxon,
called DF 2000.
Comet Cleaners also found that it needed to update
its business model in order to stay relevant. Godfrey
explains: “Up until the turn of the century, we were re-
ally more of a licensor and not a true franchise sys-
tem. I saw that the future could be tough on us if we
didn’t become a true franchisor, even though we did
everything from the site evaluation, negotiating the
lease, putting the store in, and being hands-on with
every single person we put in business.” The problem
as Godfrey saw it was that if and when an owner sold a
Comet Cleaners store, the new owner was legally able
to change its name and drop the Comet Cleaners ap-
pellation. “It doesn’t look too good when you have 600
stores, but only 200 of them are currently using your
name,” Godfrey says. “So, we had to rewrite our con-
tracts. We weren’t a true franchisor up until the last
ten years when I bought my dad out.”
