Providing service from the inside out is the secret of Key Club Cleaner`s success.
Owned by Mark Lorts of Homewood and Bruce Belke of Plainfield, the 30-year-old business on 95th Street in Chicago provides service for the metropolitan area`s major theatrical productions. Currently, the pair is keeping the ”Aspects of Love” cast in clean apparel.
About 12 years ago, Lorts took over the business from his father-in-law, Dave Goodman, who, with Hank Dobkin, founded the cleaners. Belke joined Lorts, a friend from college, after leaving the greenhouse supply line.
”Dave and Hank got the cleaning for the first auto show,” Lorts said.
”Things snowballed from there.”
Today approximately one-third of the cleaner`s business comes from theatrical productions, including those at the Arie Crown Theater, the Auditorium Theatre, the Shubert Theatre and the Goodman Theatre.
”We mostly get our business by word of mouth,” Lorts said, as property masters for one show pass the word to another.
That`s how Shellee Wells, senior photo stylist for Playboy Enterprises, heard of Key Club Cleaners.
”I originally found them when I was looking for a mermaid costume,”
Wells said. ”I called around and got this fluke lead suggesting I call Key Club because they specialize in cleaning costumes around the city.”
That fluke did the trick. ”I called them. They told me the Shedd Aquarium had costumes that they cleaned and picked up. I contacted the aquarium and it worked out,” she said.
For Lorts and Belke, the show backstage can be as interesting as the one onstage. ”After the show of `Les Miserables` one time, one of the performers was doing a little skit for one of the stagehand`s birthday. It`s totally different because we get to see what the person is really like, not just who they are in their role,” Lorts said. But Lorts said he still has to buy his tickets just like everyone else.
More recently, Key Club Cleaners has branched to cinematic cleaning jobs in Chicago, including ”The Babe,” ”A League of Their Own,” the soon-to-be- released film with Madonna and Tom Hanks, and ”Eye for Eye,” starring Scott Bakula, who stars in the television show ”Quantum Leap.”
To increase business, Lorts said, the pair started calling on movie sites themselves. ”We call down to the Illinois Film Board in Chicago, which has the locations of films being shot in the area,” he said. ”From there we do our own footwork. We never really got into it until a couple years ago. Last year, we did five movies.”
Time is their primary challenge. Often the pair will pick up costumes for a show at 11 p.m. and will have to return the cleaned costumes by noon the next day. ”The clock is a important factor. We`re always working against time,” Belke said.
Some of the fancier costumes present special challenges. ”Many costumes have beading or extra trim. We have to treat those more delicately,” Lorts said. ”It takes more time but our service is getting it back the next day.” In the course of their work, they have had a few close calls. ”We were on a real time crunch one time and one of my employees had bagged the order for `Eye For Eye,` ” Lorts said. ”She put it with the regular stuff. I took the rest of the costumes there. A little while later they called and said they were missing something. I had to run it down there on location because they were shooting.”
And unlike many people, Lorts and Belke find themselves working many holidays. ”We`ve worked overnight, New Year`s Day and Christmas Eve to meet deadlines,” Lorts said. ”We had to clean the `Nutcracker` (ballet costumes) on Christmas Day because they had to have it the next day for a performance.” According to Belke, the most interesting costumes they do are probably those for the Playboy Lingerie catalogs. ”There`s not a lot of clothes but we do them over and over again,” he said.
After her initial contact with them regarding the mermaid costume, Wells said she has stuck with Key Club. ”We have a lot of specialty items that we use in photo shoots,” Wells said. ”They`ve been wonderful. It`s been a really good relationship for us.”
She remembers the extra effort by the cleaners. ”We`ve sometimes had to have things cleaned that day. They`ve always managed to come through,” Wells said. ”In 3 1/2 years, they`ve never lost a garter belt.”
