A LETTER FROM YOUR PRESIDENT… KATHEY BUTTERS

My term as president is already past the half way mark with so much happening the time has really flown.

Please take a few minutes and read the articles within this news-letter. You will discover how hard this all-volunteer board and ODCA members have been working for the dry cleaners of Oregon.

IMPORTANT TO ALL OREGON DRY CLEANERS! What is happening with Goodwill Industries and the dry-cleaning industry? Goodwill is currently operating 2 dry-cleaning drop stores in the Eugene area. They have plans to open their own plant to service these 2 stores and others. Currently this is only being done by the Lane Co. Goodwill but they are working with the Goodwill Industry in the Medford area. What affect might this have on your business? Not only has Goodwill purchased and built in prime locations over the past few years but they have many state benefits. One of those benefits gives them first rights to all state contracts. They also have free community service adds on the radio, a benefit that they are currently using to promote the 2 stores they are operating in the Eugene area. There is no way to really know the long term affects they will have on our industry but ODCA is not going to wait and see. We are currently in the process of exploring the hiring of a person from the Uhlman Group in Eugene. I believe that we need to stand united to protect our industry. Therefore I am asking for the support from all Oregon Dry Cleaners and industry associations in this effort.

Please take a few minutes and read the articles within this newsletter. You will discover how hard this all-volunteer board and ODCA members have been working for the dry cleaners of Oregon.

ATTENTION ALL LADIES, ODCA is hosting a luncheon for all women in the industry, Owner, Managers, and Employees are welcome. Please see the article by ODCA secretary Claire Anchick about this exciting event. Come and enjoy fellowship and fun.

The legislative committee put in tons of hours working on SB463. The bill has passed and been signed by the governor. Gary Campbell's article will give you more information. You can see the bill by logging on the ODCA's website at oregondrycleaners.org and click on the link. Please if you need any explanation on any of the changes to the bill or the role ODCA played in this legislative process, pick up the phone, write, or email a committee member; Chair- Gary Campbell, Steve Young, Michael O'Connor, or myself.

Education Chair Brian Olson and his committee are still working hard. They put on a great spotting seminar in two different locations earlier this year (pictures are on the website) and are now planning for convention. See Brian's article for a preview. The ODCA convention is October 5,6, & 7 at Driftwood Shores in Florence. Mark your calendars now and watch for the up coming information!

The best source for the latest information is the ODCA website - oregondrycleaners.org.
Leslie Kettenhofen has volunteered her time and expertise to create and maintain the website. She is constantly updating, adding and more important improving the site. Her article not only tells you about what the latest information is on the site but she has been tracking the activity and shares some interesting insight. Please take a moment when you are on the site and email her with your ideas, comments or "Thanks for a great job".

Did you miss out on Clean 01? Tammy Thompson fills us in with her article on what happened in New Orleans.

Membership packets have been mailed. If you are a member and did not receive one please contact Michael O'Connor, membership chair. If you want to become a member please log on the website and fill out the application or contact Michael directly. MEMBERSHIP in ODCA is a GOOD BUSINESS DECISION!!

As President of ODCA I would like to hear from you. My email address kbutters@oregondrycleaners.org and my phone number is 503-399-9560.

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Convention Update
by Brian OlsonC.E.D., President Elect, Education Chairman

It may seem strange to be reading about the upcoming convention in the heat of August, but believe it or not, your convention committee has been very busy getting ready for this years event. With convention scheduled for October 5, 6. and 7th, we don't have any time to waste, either.

Our location this year is the beautiful Oregon coast. As you read this, the Driftwood Shores Resort and Conference Center in Florence is busy preparing for our arrival. Located right on the Beach, the Driftwood offers us a chance to do things just a little different this year.

On tap to speak this year, and by request, is Human Resource expert Eric Wilson, President of HR Integrated Solutions, Inc. Eric will share his expertise and insights on just about every aspect of human resources, including employee handbooks/policies, interviewing techniques and the best questions to ask during an interview, (plus some of the worst), temp-agency hiring and employee leasing. Everything you need to know from "Hello" to "Goodbye". Eric promises enough handout and reference materials, (as well as humor), to keep us learning and laughing for a long time to come.

Have you ever scratched your head and wondered what all the fuss is about drycleaning on the Internet? Sure, we use our computers everyday. Some of us have web sites and some of us even order supplies on line. But hey, we are buying a "product" not a service and since drycleaning is a service, we just don't worry too much about those dot com businesses taking our customers away. But what about PurpleTie.com? They came into the market strong. They took a lot of business away from hard working drycleaners. Success was theirs. And they failed. What happened? How does it affect each and every one of us? Are we at risk from the dot coms now, or will we be in the future? Sid Tuchman, President of Tuchman Training Systems served on the Board of Directors for Purpletie.com from it's beginning. He had a unique and unparalleled view of what really happened to Purpletie. Sid will stop by on his way to the International Drycleaners Congress in Sidney Australia to share his story. He has some strong opinions on what we can expect from future Purpleties, as well as the state of the industry.

Also on tap, an update from DEQ. This is your chance to get an accurate, up to the minute report directly from the people charged with administering the regulations. In addition, Clean Air Permits soon to be imposed on those cleaners that have failed in their record keeping responsibilities. Just how much will these permits cost and who will be required to obtain them?

All this, plus the Allied Trades product update, Golf Tournament, our Banquet, and the General Membership Meeting, and lots of surprises. It promises to be a tremendous weekend so plan now to attend. Watch your mail for your registration package or check out our website at www.oregondrycleaners.org.

Brian Olson owns 45th Ave Cleaners in Portland, he is President-Elect of ODCA and chairs the Education Committee. You can contact him at 503.244.9707 or Email him at BOloson@oregondrycleaners.org.

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Clean '01
ByTammy Campbell-Thompson, Vice-President, Treasurer

This year's Clean Show was held in the exciting city of New Orleans! Clean '01 included more than 500 exhibitors, on-site equipment demonstrations and 40 hours of education seminars presented by associations such as the International Fabricare Institute and the Coin Laundry Association. New Orleans also provided plenty of great food and festivities in the lively French Quarter!

Clean shows are a great way to improve your dry cleaning or laundry business by learning about the latest products and innovations in the industry. Throughout your time at the show, there are also several opportunities to network with other dry cleaning operators and suppliers.

Alternative solvents were a major focus at Clean '01. Cleaners were invited to attend an open discussion panel sponsored by IFI, where participants discussed solvents such as GreenEarth, Rynex and CO2. Some of the solvents could even be seen in action at live demonstrations.

Point-of-sale computer systems were also another big buzz at the show. Over 25 companies were displaying their computer systems-all trying to reel you in to test out their systems! Definitely a unique opportunity to really see which system works best for your plant!

If you didn't have the chance to attend Clean '01, I urge you to make plans to attend Clean '03 in Las Vegas. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to improve your business with the latest and greatest products! Also, as members of the Oregon Dry Cleaners Association, take advantage of the ODCA seminars and conventions. You'll find that you can learn a lot from your fellow dry cleaners and suppliers!

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Calling all Stain Removal Technicians

Were you one of the many who attended one of the Oregon Dry Cleaners Association sponsored "Stain Removal Seminars" this year? The ODCA hosted these IFI workshops on April 28 at the Double Tree in Portland and again on May 19 at the Red Lion in Medford. Both Chris Allsbrooks and Loraine Muir, our instructors, pointed out how impressed they were with the knowledge and enthusiasm of the students. Your customers should be impressed too!

Those who participated should have received their certificate from IFI. ODCA urges you to frame them and hang them in your plant for your customers to see. They show that you are a professional and continue take advantage of the latest in technology, as well as the science of Fabricare. They make you and your respective plants look good to the consumer, as well as going a long way toward elevating the image of the industry itself.

If you have not received your Certificate, contact Brian Olson at 45th Ave Cleaners as soon as possible. He can be reached at 503-244-9707 or by email at bolson@oregondrycleaners.org. Your certificate will be sent to you as soon as possible!

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Womens Luncheon

Invitations will soon be going out for all the women involved in the dry-cleaning industry. Whether you are an owner, manager, presser, counter person or in the allied trades you are cordially invited to attend.

The luncheon will be held August 25, 2001 ath the Excelsior Inn in Eugene. The guest speaker will be Mary Pennicooke speaking on "Creating Harmony Between Your Business and Personal Life." Mary Pennicooke is a personal life coach and the owner of Life with Passion Coaching Services. As a life coach, she assists her clients to find thier truth and follow their heart. Mary works with clients all over the country, in person and or in weekly phone sessions. Mary believes that each of us already know all the answers we seek. Through her coaching she will assist you to gain access to your own voics inside.

Networking with your peers, good food, and a thought provoking speaker should prove to be a most enjoyable afternoon. Look for your invitation and a RESVP will be require for all attending. See you there!

For More Information Click Here.

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From the Computer of the Webmaster!
By: Leslie Kettenhofen

The OregonDryCleaners.org web site had been up and running for over 6 months now and has been indexed by most of the major search engines. Putting up a site on the web doesn't mean people can find you. There are a lot of things going on in the background of a website that determine where and how your target audience will find you. The first thing that must be done is keywords and a description that is embedded in the HTML (Hypertext Mark up Language) of a site. These are things a viewer can't see but is visible to the spiders that the search engines send out to visit your site. I've spent a good amount of time hand submitting our site to each major index. They then send out their spider or web crawler to visit our site and index each page. They continue to visit as people search for us and each time they index pages and pick up the new ones we've added. What they see is a description of what our site does: Oregon Dry Cleaners Association: Oregon's Trade Association for Dry Cleaners, ODCA offers solutions that help member businesses provide expert garment care. As well as list of keywords that people might search for: dryclean, dry-clean, dry clean, clean, drycleaner, dry-cleaner, dry cleaner, cleaner, wetclean, fabric care, fabricare, garment care, stain, trade associations, Oregon, removal, fabric cleaning, stain, spotting, education, perc, silk, rayon, shirts, laundry, pressing, wedding gown, sequins, fabrics, martinizing, French cleaning, care label, care labeling, Stoddard, CO2 cleaning, wool, acetate, acrylic, cotton, mohair, cashmere, leather, suede". As I add pages, I also add Key words and descriptions, so that a specific page will be indexed with a description as well.

We are getting a lot of visitors both within the industry and from the consumer. Our Internet hosting company provides a detailed set of logs to show us whom, when and what page visitors are looking at. By looking at these statistics we can see what areas of the site we should develop. What keywords or descriptions might need to be added and how we can better serve our members and consumers.

Lets take a look at our 30 Day logs for June.

By looking at the figure above we can tell that our home page received the most requests with 166 views from 148 Unique Visitors. We can also see the average time a page was viewed. And our most requested pages received 722 hits. By examining this section you can also see that the consumers took time to read the main consumer page before moving on to look at the resources available to them. Where most people arrived at the home page and moved on to another sections right away.

Top Referring Sites show's us how people are getting to us. 193 People arrived on their own, which means they already knew the URL (Uniform Resource Locator - Our URL being www.oregondrycleaners.org) from reading our newsletter or some other source. The next referrer is Google with 43 people doing searches and coming to visit us. National Clothesline sent us 7 visitors from their association page.

This chart gives us an idea what people are searching for. For example someone searching on Alta Vista was searching for "Colorado Dry Cleaners Association" this obviously wasn't someone looking for us but 3 of their search keywords matched so they pulled up our site. However someone searching for Tammy Campbell Oregon or Plaza Cleaners most likely pulled up exactly what they were searching for.

For those of you who have submitted your Dry Cleaning Stores information. People can now search for you and pull up your Store...... To test how this is working go to www.google.com and type in the following as separate searches and see what pulls up. (45th Ave Cleaners, Plaza Cleaners, Bobs Dry Cleaners & Laundry, Sparkle Laundry and Dry Cleaning, Towne & Country Cleaners and Laundry) Each one of those will pull up several pages on our site as well as whatever other sites these businesses are listed on! And they pull up in the top 5. This is exactly what you're trying to achieve in an Internet presence. Most people won't search past the top 10 results so if you're any lower than that no one will find you. This is why being part of a larger site can do so much for your business.

For Example: When searching for 45th Ave Cleaners or Brian Olson you will pull up his site on www.oregondrycleaners.org, as well as his Officer page on the ODCA site and several interview's he's given to local newspapers etc. If someone is searching for a Cleaner in Portland or wants to find out more about 45th Ave Cleaners this provides them with useful information and paints a very positive picture.

This is a benefit of being a member or the ODCA, you can submit your information by email, regular mail or our online form. And I will set up a nice little mini-site that reflects your business. If you already have a web site submit your URL and we will link to it.

I’d also like to encourage all members to fill out the following form and get it to me at the address’s listed below:

Your Stores Name ________________________________________

Your Name_______________________________________________

Store Location_____________________________________________

Phone Number____________________Fax Number_________________

Email Address_______________________________________________

Website URL________________________________________________

(If you don’t have a website fill out the rest of the form)

Tell us about your store: Hours, Services, Specialties etc:

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Click here to Submit your Store Information Online

.

Mail to: Leslie Kettenhofen

P.O. Box 3044

Florence, OR 97439

Email to: Webmaster@oregondrycleaners.org

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