A dry cleaners is closing its doors in two weeks time, eighteen months after opening their first branch outside of London.
Jeeves of Belgravia has decided not to renew their lease on the London Road premises due to the economics of sending all the garments down to London and collecting them three times a week.
Manager Ben Dunkerley said "It is a shame. I have worked in the village for 18 months and really enjoyed working here.
"It is a shame for the village as I know there is a need for a specialist dry cleaners in the village and it will leave two empty shops next door to each other."
Jeeves will close on Thursday 14th February at 3pm. All uncollected garments can be collected from their sister company Johnsons' Wilmslow branch at 43 Alderley Road.
Comments
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How could it ........... sending their garments to London to be cleaned, then returned.
A no-brainer, as they say !
The utmost care and attention to detail that Jeeves pay to the garments is unmatched and this is quite rightly reflected in the price they charge. Jeeves does not display those hideous notices 'We cannot be held responsible for damage caused to buttons, zips, belts or buckles' which so many others (illegally, I should add) display because Jeeves know well that they are ENTIRELY responsible for everything left in their care.
Does your dry cleaning business fold a silk scarf BEFORE they press it? They absolutely should not, else they'll create unsightly creases that nothing will ever remove. Do they know the difference between the treatment of silk chiffon, silk shantung, silk taffeta? Does the cleaning still smell of fumes after it's returned? Are your whites slowly but surely coming back yellow? Jeeves does not need telling, explaining or directing, and they will mend your clothes (hems, buttons) at no additional cost while cleaning them. I'm not affiliated to Jeeves, I'm just a customer but I can only add to Ben that you'll be missed by those of us who know that comparing Johnsons to Jeeves is like pretending that Burger King is the same as Heston Blumenthal. Some people just have no palate.
Jeeves only ever gave your items back when they were fully inspected, also another lovely touch was they fixed up all your buttons as part of the service so your garments came back as good as new.
Comparing Jeeves to other dry cleaners based on price misses the entire point. If you have expensive clothes Johnsons or Timpsons is just not an option and you need to pay more to get the service you require.
Steph if you come across another decent dry cleaner in this area who is as good as Jeeves please let me know!
Sarah, you obviously do not know about the working model of these two companies. There is method behind the madness. Johnsons acquired Jeeves (which was established in the early 1960s) about a decade ago if I remember correctly. They did so for two very specific, and intrinsically connected, reasons: to increase their very small London footprint and to shed their image of not-so-fine, provincial dry cleaner. The acquisition of Jeeves was therefore seen as a coup by industry insiders but the companies have continued to operate as separate businesses, precisely in the same way in which the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy group owns Donna Karan, Givenchy and Marc Jacobs, to name but three, with all three operating (and being) separate businesses that follow their target operating models, target very different customers and are driven to their own specific bottom lines.
The model that Jeeves follows as a company is one of high efficiency centred in one single cleaning warehouse in London to which all garments picked up from customers' homes or dropped off at all Jeeves storefronts end up for cleaning. No cleaning takes place in any Jeeves branch, it all happens at the hub of their operations. This also permits Jeeves to have branches in extremely central locations in London without having to worry about required square footage, for example, nor special licence which is necessary to run a business that utilises volatile agents.
When Johnsons decided to close in Alderley, suggesting to its other company, Jeeves, to open a branch in its place was the obvious route to take, except they did not consider the customer base. What they thought would be merely 'migrating customers' from Johnsons to Jeeves would not migrate at all. Some realised the advantage in using Jeeves for their own reasons (as I and Dom described above), but others had no necessity nor inclination, call it what you will, to do so (as others have said above). Jeeves continued therefore its method of doing things, shipping everything to the London cleaning hub, which rapidly became unsustainable. They expected more costumers to make the system pay outside of London but unfortunately for us it was not to be.