Friday, January 4, 2008

By JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Joseph Hallak's eyes lit up when he heard the new Hermes store at The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack was open. "I'll have to stop in and introduce myself," said Hallak, a principal at Hackensack-based Hallak Cleaners.

"Retailer relations" is a key part of Hallak's business strategy. The company, which specializes in cleaning $10,000 evening gowns and restoring $20,000 handbags, courts high-end retailers such as Hermes who then become Hallak's best source of referrals.

Being the dry cleaner of choice for finicky Manhattan fashion boutiques such as Chanel, Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, and men's wear powerhouses such as Turnbull & Asser and Burberry, has helped the Hallaks to build a business of more than $5 million in annual sales and projected growth of 10 percent to 15 percent a year.

The company last year invested close to $500,000 in improvements at its Manhattan and Hackensack stores and its dry-cleaning plant in Hackensack. Hallak expects to invest another $500,000 this year in improvements to its 12,000-square-foot Hackensack plant, including an automated assembly and bagging system.

The Hallaks, who have been in the luxury cleaning business for 40 years, discovered early on that when a customer spends thousands on a dress or handbag, and then has a spill or a rip, she goes back to the store where she purchased the expensive item to ask: "How can I fix this?"
 
Joyce Hamrah, an owner of Hamrah's, an upscale women's clothing store in Cresskill, said customers often bring wedding gowns or vintage designer handbags not purchased at Hamrah's to the store and ask the store to find someone who can clean or repair the item.

"They do fabulous work. They really rehabilitate things," Hamrah said of the Hallaks. "They make them look new," she said.

The Hallak brothers, Joseph and John-Claude, who run the company, visit retailers "to put a face on who we are," John-Claude said. They believe making that connection tells the store managers that the garments they send to Hallak's will get personal attention.

The company's retailer relations program has included such efforts as thank-you gifts on holidays other than Christmas -- for example dropping off pumpkin-shaped cookies at Halloween -- and hosting lunches for store managers.

"But ultimately, you have to be doing a good job for them or they're not going to use you," John-Claude said.

The Hallak family got its start in couture cleaning almost by accident, said Joseph. Their father, Joseph Hallak Sr., had opened a dry-cleaning store in Manhattan in the '60s and was struggling to survive when a customer taught him a lesson he never forgot -- that affluent customers will pay a lot more for quality and service.

"A woman came into his store with a fur and asked him how much it would be to clean it. He wanted to get her business, so he said $15 -- this was the '60s, remember. She started to walk out, so he asked her, 'Too much?'

"She said, 'If you only charge me $15, you don't know what you're doing.' "

The company's prices reflect the high-end clothes it specializes in. A designer suit will cost $35 or more to be cleaned and hand-pressed, and a hand-finished laundered shirt can cost $17.

And, Joseph Hallak said, a $500 handbag repair is worth it when a handbag costs 10 or 20 times the repair price.

"When you get a Birkin bag that comes in and the woman has had it for seven years and it looks destroyed and you can make it 95 percent better, they're ecstatic about it," he said, referring to a popular Hermes handbag. "We're not getting people who have $75 handbags."

"We're a designer cleaner," said Joseph. "Just like you have designer garments, we are the designer cleaner."

COUTURE CLEANERS

 Name: Hallak Cleaners

 Locations: 172 Johnson Ave., Hackensack (store and plant); 1232 Second Ave., New York

 Specialties: Leather cleaning and repair, reweaving, hand finishing

DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD
Head seamstress Josephine Kouyoumdjian replacing sequins on a designer gown at Hallak Cleaners.