High-tech Naples dry cleaning business presses forward on a big year

Naples-based Platinum Dry Cleaners got some big news in November, when it was named a Top 10 finalist for the 2024 CINET Global Best Practices Awards at the Texcare International Show in Frankfurt, Germany. 

Presented by the Comité International De L`Entretien du Textile (CINET) — the international umbrella association for the professional textile care industry — the awards honor innovation, sustainability, entrepreneurship and overall best practice excellence.

When voting was complete, Platinum Dry Cleaners took the No. 8 spot in the Large Professional Textile Care division out of 17 finalists. It’s the latest honor brothers Craig and Chris Bamberg have received since taking ownership of Platinum Dry Cleaners in 2019. The company received national certification as an affiliate of America’s Best Cleaners (a distinction that’s difficult to achieve in the industry) in 2023 and was named a 2023 Business of the Month by the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce and Collier County commissioners. Its owners were also finalists for the Florida Small Business Development Center at FGCU’s Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2023 and 2024.

“It is exciting for the company,” says Craig Bamberg, 60. “But ultimately you can’t put the company up for any type of award unless you have a staff family that can back up what these awards are all about. The application for the [CINET] award was basically a love letter to the staff that works here.”

That staff of 40 has helped the company weather the pandemic and multiple hurricanes. Some have shifted into new roles after the business invested in new equipment and technology, like a Metalprogetti Giulietta machine that automates the task of bagging and labeling customers’ orders.

“The Metalprogetti machine has just been a godsend,” says Craig. “It automated some of the mundane features of bagging and gave us an opportunity to move properly trained eyes into different areas. So it didn’t result in a loss of employees, but we just properly right-routed those employees.”

Platinum Dry Cleaners has two physical locations and eight delivery vehicles running 12 delivery routes that cover more than 2,400 square miles. “In the post-pandemic reality, we live in an Amazon and DoorDash world,” says Craig. “People want to order from their phone and have things picked up and dropped off in their driveway. Delivery was robust for us pre-2020, and it is gangbusters post-2020.”

Technology is coming into play there too, as the company has fully transitioned from paper manifests to electronic manifests that connect drivers to both the company’s physical facilities and GPS for finding customers’ homes. There’s also a Platinum Dry Cleaners app that allows customers to schedule pickups from their phones. “It’s all become part and parcel of what we do, and it also leads to very good jelling of the human staff here as well,” says Craig.

The company plans to invest in some new delivery vehicles in 2025. Otherwise, it’s looking forward to shifting into a post-pandemic, post-hurricanes, post-presidential election business climate.

“We’re anxious to see what a brand new season is going to bring,” says Craig. “We’ve felt, like a lot of other businesses in the area, that we had started to get a very good recovery going post-Hurricane Ian…If this season is like it was last season, it’ll feel like we’re all gaining traction and moving forward.”