Snedicor’s Cleaners moves to pick-up and delivery exclusively

For full story from WHMI Livingston radio station click here. 

A local business that’s been in the community for over a century is changing their business model and adapting with the times.

Snedicor’s GreenEarth Cleaners has been in Howell for 104 years, and in Brighton for nearly 40. While they were deemed essential and could have kept their storefronts open throughout the crisis, owner Jim Gilligan said that with so few people out in public in March, it made more sense to close the storefronts and continue as pickup and delivery-only. Those storefronts won’t be re-opening. Instead they will be going all-in with pickup and delivery, exclusively. Gilligan says this writing’s been on the wall for a few years, and when the pandemic came into being reality, it really showed a new layer of how much safer pickup and delivery can be.

Gilligan told WHMI people are now accustomed to this type of service, and he expects this model to become more prevalent. He said Amazon has written the book and there’s no turning back with the way people expect services and products being delivered to them. Gilligan suggested that any business that can provide a delivery service should take a hard look at doing so in this business climate.

Snedicor’s could have remained open during the shutdowns as an essential business, but keeping an employee at the store for a slow trickle of customers didn’t make sense. Now, Gilligan says, rather than having an employee waiting for a customer to come in, they are in a van going to the customer.

Gilligan said he definitely has feelings about leaving brick and mortar locations behind, but his optimism “for the future outweighs that.” One-third of their revenues had already been coming from pickup and delivery and so switching to that model full time, he says, was really not a big deal and has gone pretty seamlessly.