MARTINIZING TURNS 60
Led by CEO George Strike for past 30 Years

As Published in Business Opportunities Journal. February, 2009.

(Loveland, OH)--- George L. Strike’s first job was helping the local milkman on his daily deliveries, running cold bottles of milk to neighborhood houses. He was 10 years old and Strike earned 10 cents a day for his before-school job; 25 cents on Saturdays because he could work half a day. It was a good wage in Salt Lake City, Utah at the time.

“For 10 cents in those days, I could see a double-feature at the movie theater, including the newsreels,” Strike recalled.

Strike’s parents, Louis and Christina, were self-educated Greek immigrants. George was the youngest of their four children. Strike’s parents instilled important lessons in their children and Strike took them to heart.

“My parents told me that if you do the very best you can in whatever job you have, opportunities will come for you and they were absolutely right,” he said.

Turning his parents’ advice into his own creed, Strike today is CEO and Chairman of Martinizing Dry Cleaning, founded in 1949 and now one of the oldest and most recognized brands in the $7 billion dry cleaning industry as Martinizing celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2009.

Since taking over the company in 1978, Strike has been instrumental in growing Martinizing into a worldwide brand and today it is the largest dry cleaning franchisor in the United States, with more than 160 franchisees operating more than 550 stores across the United States and in eight other countries and U.S. Territories.

“It just comes down to the basics: quality and service,” said the amicable Strike. Strike’s father was an inventor whose ingenuity helped create significant improvements in the clothes pressing industry. That inventiveness enabled Louis Strike to start Ajax in 1929, a company that manufactured laundry presses and where George got his start in the industry, working part-time as a delivery clerk as a teenager.

Strike inherited his father’s sense of curiosity and passion and parlayed it into a business career that is as interesting as it is successful. His parents endured hardships in the Greek village that they left to come to the United States and Strike says he couldn’t have achieved his own success anywhere else.

After attending the University of Utah, Strike went to work for Ajax, his father’s company. Afterwards, it was bought by American Laundry Machinery Co., the largest laundry machinery manufacturer in the United States. The family continued to operate its own division and within five years, at age 32, Strike was named president of the entire company, a particularly proud moment for Louis Strike since American Laundry had been his chief competitor.

After a decade as president of American Laundry, Strike resigned and in 1973 purchased Hess & Eisenhardt, a leading automobile engineering and manufacturing company that had customized the limousine that John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Hess & Eisenhardt specialized in building hearses, ambulances and other specialty vehicles such as armored automobiles, but Strike helped expand its business even further by adding markets and product lines, including a project with Jaguar, in which the company produced a special-order XJS convertible. “It was a fascinating experience,” Strike said.

In 1978, Strike returned to the family business, purchasing the struggling American Laundry Machinery Co., which included Martin Franchises, Inc. (Martinizing’s parent company) and continued the legacy his father began. In 1987, Strike introduced a new franchise agreement that offered improved support and was more reflective of a full-format franchisor. Three years ago, Strike once again assumed a more active role in the company after son Anthony “Tony” Strike, who had been serving as president and CEO, began focusing more on other family businesses.

Recently, Strike spoke to some graduate business students from the University of Utah and gave them three pieces of advice: 1) An education lasts a lifetime and doesn’t end with formal schooling; 2) Do the best you can at every job; and 3) Follow your moral compass.

“Since we were young, each of us has been able to recognize the right thing to do in any given situation,” Strike said. “It’s important in business that you do the right thing. Most of the time it’s easy, but it matters most when it’s difficult to do.”

Martinizing is holding up well during the current economic climate. The franchise has more than 100 stores to open under Exclusive Multi-Unit Development Agreements over the next few years. Stores opening in 2008 were up from the previous year and it anticipated that 2009 will double those openings since there is an increase in the availability of rental space and at lower rental rates due to the economy.

“We always say our business is recession-resistant and we believe that, but it has definitely been proven in these difficult times, Laesser said. “We’ve had lots of competition in recent years from competitors who had some big ideas, but they’ve fallen by the wayside. We’re a conservative company. We don’t do a lot of flashy things, but we get it done.”

About 30 percent of Martinizing franchisees own more than one store. And while the company guides and directs its franchise owners, Strike trusts them to operate their stores in the way they know best.

“You always like to have a strong relationship with your customers, which in our case are our franchisees, but our relationship with them transcends that,” Strike said. “The franchisor-franchisee relationship is a very strong bond. We view our franchise owners as our partners.”

In many ways, Strike said the current recession has served to spotlight Martinizing’s strengths. It is in times like these, that a company’s strengths and weaknesses are magnified, either positively or negatively. Thus, Martinizing truly does have something to celebrate during its 60th year.

“This difficult economic climate really enhanced our feelings about the future of our business,” Strike said. “The true value of a business really comes through in difficult times. We have a strong, competitive advantage and we’re gaining market share. The outlook for Martinizing is the best ever.”