Green Pink Cleaners Plus, Pleasantville
Abraham Kim has a passion for dry cleaning. With nearly 15 years of experience and owning three stores throughout Westchester, he enjoys helping his customers and offering them highly competitive prices.
Kim is the owner of Green Pink Cleaners Plus on Wheeler Avenue in Pleasantville, which celebrated its grand opening last September. His two other locations are in New Rochelle and Hastings-on-Hudson.
Before entering the dry cleaning business, Kim worked in the fashion industry with iconic brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Polo. He’s savvy enough to know that dry cleaning, like many businesses, undergoes perpetual change.
“Fashion changes every 20 years, but it often goes back to the same styles but with modifications,” he said.
To adapt, Green Pink Cleaners Plus offers more than dry cleaning. Its services include wash and fold, clothing alterations, UGG boot cleaning and free suit and shirt cleaning for customers going on a first job interview.
Green Pink Cleaners occupies the same storefront as the former Pleasantville Cleaners, a fixture in the village for 52 years. Kim modernized the 1,000-square-foot space by installing new lighting and furniture and revising the interior layout.
The Eco-Green dry cleaning strategy that Kim uses is a combination of dry cleaning solvent and water. About 95 percent of items that at one time could only be dry cleaned, can now be cleaned by water, he said. All of this is possible, by using advanced detergents and softening agents and new dry cleaning technology, explained Kim, who is accredited by the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute.
Despite the additional services, about 75 percent of his business is his bread and butter: dry cleaning. Recently he launched free pickup and delivery service. The turnaround for a customer to retrieve clothes is quick, usually within three days. Tuesdays and Fridays are typically the pickup days.
Rising at 5 a.m. daily, Kim visits his three locations before they open to the public, making sure the equipment is working properly and his staff is prepared.
Kim, a hands-on business owner, is involved in all of the day-to-day tasks at Green Pink Cleaners. While other dry cleaners send UGG boots to an outside facility for cleaning, he does the job himself. The cost for cleaning is $25, which is cheaper, he said, than most other dry cleaning businesses.
Standing by his claim to offer the best prices in town, Kim currently charges $1.60 to dry clean shirts, $11 for suits and $5.50 each for pants, sweaters and blouses.
Customers can also get myriad other items professionally dry cleaned, and not just clothes. Green Pink Cleaners is able to clean table cloths and napkins; comforters and blankets; draperies; rugs; wedding gowns; bed sheets and pillow cases; and leather and suede.
Kim plans to offer a number of new services in the near future, such as shoe repair, a shoe shine, sneaker cleaning and handbag repairs and dying.
It’s a business that Kim, a Pelham resident, truly loves, although he is quick to add that running three stores isn’t the only thing he devotes his life to. He frequently takes international mission trips with his church, recently visiting Chiapas, Mexico, to help the indigenous population there.
“There has to be something more meaningful to life than making money,” said Kim, who enjoys the balance of running a successful business and doing work for others.
Green Pink Cleaners Plus is located at 49 Wheeler Ave. in Pleasantville. New customers can receive 35 percent off their first dry cleaning order.
For more information, call 914-769-5143. Also, check out the store’s customer reviews on Yelp at https://www.yelp.com/biz/green-pink-cleaners-pleasantville.
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