Want your dry-cleaned clothing to have that signature Tide laundry detergent smell? There’s a new dry cleaning concept from that household-brand company that can make it happen.
Tide Dry Cleaners is actively seeking sites in the D.C. region, said Elizabeth Lindquist, real estate manager for the concept. She was speaking Tuesday to a real estate industry audience at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ Mid-Atlantic Conference and Dealmaking in National Harbor. There are currently 20 Tide Dry Cleaners locations in the south and Midwest.
Tide parent Proctor & Gamble Co. is billing the dry cleaner as the industry’s next generation; the stores use GreenEarth technology, an “environmentally friendly” process that doesn’t use perchloroethylene, a common dry cleaning chemical that has come under fire in recent years. The stores use Tide for their traditional laundry service, and they add the same Tide fragrance to the odorless GreenEarth cleaning product for the dry cleaning so the clothes can have the signature smell.
The locations also employ vending machine-style kiosks — “think Redbox, but for dry cleaning,” said Lindquist — to allow for pick-up and drop-off of clothes at any time of the day.
The ideal location would be about 3,000 square feet in either standalone space or as an end unit in a shopping center to allow for a drive-through, Lindquist said.
“For the right location, we would consider space without a drive-through if we could have dedicated parking,” Lindquist said. The company hopes to open up to 10 locations in the Washington region in the next several years.
The company hasn’t signed any local leases yet, but the first one might end up in a Kimco Realty Corp. center, given that Tide Dry Cleaners is one of the company’s approved vendors as it phases out traditional dry cleaning operations from its centers.
