The Greener Cleaners:
How Ablitt’s Does Dry Cleaning Better
A Conversation between Sasha Ablitt, Owner of Ablitt’s Fine Cleaners & Tailors
and Monica Lenches and Claudia Rucker
Unbeknownst to her, Sasha Ablitt had been on my radar for several months. On one occasion, while talking with my partner, Claudia Rucker, and on another with our sponsor, Marine Schumann, both asked if I knew Sasha and the great work she is doing. Then, I ran into a third friend who used to run a socially responsible business, and he started sharing about her inspiring work. I’ve learned that it’s worth paying attention when something surfaces three times! Introductions were then made, and without much probing, her passion for running a socially responsible business became apparent. Her dedication to cleaning up more than just our clothing is a shining example of what it means to positively impact the world. I hope you, too, are inspired by what Sasha and her team are doing to create A Kinder World of Commerce.
ML/CR: I understand that your education and work history before taking the helm at Ablitt’s was science-based. What motivated you to take over the family business?
SA: After working as an engineer at a large international corporation, I transitioned to Corporate Finance, reporting directly to the CEO in New Jersey. Despite gaining valuable experience and traveling extensively, I harbored a desire to run my own business. When my father mentioned selling his Santa Barbara-based business, I saw it as a chance to return home, raise my daughter near family, and take on the challenge of entrepreneurship. Despite its simplicity as a dry cleaner, I recognized there was much to learn.
ML/CR: What is your philosophy about leadership?
SA: I see leadership as empowering individuals to reach their full potential. It’s like an inverted organizational chart, where the leader supports others with tools, knowledge, and coaching to become leaders themselves. Everyone has leadership potential, but sometimes it needs to be drawn out. Good leadership is nurtured at all levels and involves guiding individuals towards their natural talents. As the business head, I identify strengths, passions, and organizational needs to align them for mutual success.
ML/CR: What are your company’s mission and values?
Our mission is to provide customers with quality dry cleaning they trust and leave everything we touch better than before. And we have three core values that are embedded into our fabric and that support the way we work at Ablitt’s:
1) Service: To our community, our customers, and our employees — full stop.
2) Appreciation: We remind ourselves on a regular basis of how lucky we are. I believe that gratitude is one of the avenues to happiness.
3) Growth: Personal growth as well as growing the company. I believe in the old adage: if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
ML/CR: In what ways does your company demonstrate those values on a daily basis?
SA: We place a lot of value on growth, both professional and personal so I’d like to focus on this one. We have chosen to embrace the open-book management approach to running business as espoused by Jack Stack in his revolutionary book “The Great Game of Business”. Fostering a culture of business literacy through personal finance, budgeting, goal setting and more, we highlight the ins and outs of running a business, while encouraging personal and professional growth. Weekly huddles and departmental games facilitate open discussion of financial performance, promoting goal achievement and appreciation of teams and co-workers.
To further bolster our commitment to employee learning and evolution, we recently hired a Director of Strategy and Leadership Development. This role focuses on aligning personal and professional goals, fostering leadership, and enhancing teamwork and collaboration. This position is in itself a manifestation of our values, and by investing in it, I expect we will take our leadership model to a whole new level. I am excited to see where this goes!
ML/CR: Dry cleaners aren’t known for being socially responsible. What are you doing differently to help the environment and our community?
SA: First, Ablitt’s champions reducing its environmental impact by offering free pick-up and delivery service, significantly mitigating/reducing the 200 individual trips to our facility daily. Our service prioritizes efficiency and reliability, earning customer loyalty over time.
Second, it’s important to acknowledge that the history of dry-cleaning has a toxic legacy. At Ablitt’s, we use two alternative solvents — GreenEarth (silicon based) and K4 (a plant derivative) — for our dry-cleaning. Perchloroethylene (a nasty dry-cleaning chemical) has been rightly phased out of most of our industry, and volatile chemicals have been outlawed for use by dry-cleaners in California. And while many cleaners are still using petroleum-based cleaning solvents, I like to stay away from oil products altogether, which is why I chose alternative cleaning solutions.
When I came back to run the family business, the thing that bothered me the most about our impact on the environment was our use of plastic. Everything is bagged! So, I deployed a two-pronged strategy to reduce and reuse onsite plastics. First, we invested in reusable garment bags for sale to our customers. This was a no brainer. All customers also have the option to request ‘no plastic’ on their orders. Despite these efforts, we were still using a lot of plastic. So, I formed a relationship with the Trex company to repurpose our used film plastic into sophisticated wood alternative decking products. From these two seemingly small steps, our plastics recycling efforts took off.
All of this has culminated in the creation of a popular, public-facing effort called Planet Protectors, a registered nonprofit 501c3 organization based in Santa Barbara (planetprotectorssb.org). Planet Protectors has over 1,600 local community members that collect plastic from friends and neighbors, and over 14 volunteers to run recycling events twice per week. We’ve recycled 40,000 pounds of film plastic since launch. Interestingly, we are the only film plastic recycler in Santa Barbara County. This program has taken on a life of its own, and I’m very proud of it! We’re now looking at a number of potential partnerships that would allow us to scale this project even further in the future. I’m excited about the opportunities that lay ahead.
To learn more about Ablitt’s Fine Cleaners visit ablitts.com or you may contact Sasha Ablitt directly at sasha@ablitts.com.
