After 53 years,

Dixie Cleaners

hanging it up
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

A 53-year-old local business is giving way to rising business costs, a changing environment and Appalachian State University’s expansion.

Dixie Cleaners, operated by Archie Lyons and his family, is cooling off the steam and shutting down the pants presses in the middle of October, taking its last customer orders this week.

The business, located on Howard Street, is selling the building to Appalachian State University.

Dixie Cleaners originally started as Boone Steam Cleaners in 1945, capitalizing on the economic expansion after World War II. The business relocated to Avery County in 1952, when Archie’s father operated the business as Newland Cleaners.

Archie and his brother joined the family business, and it came back to Boone in 1961. According to Archie, the name Dixie Cleaners was adopted at that time because the business was right beside a Winn-Dixie grocery store, a building now owned by ASU and operated as Legends music hall.

“We had to start out from scratch,” Archie said. “The college was small, but it started growing about the same time we got here, and it kept on.”

In those days, the business focused on general dry cleaning and ran delivery trucks. Rising fuel prices not only stopped the delivery portion of the business, it also contributed to the family’s decision to sell the property.

“It’s still basically the same, but what’s changed are the prices,” Archie said. “When we first started out, you could get a pair of pants done for a quarter and a suit done for 50 cents. Now pants are $5 and a suit is about $10.”

The building, which became more difficult to access due to road changes along Hardin Street, was at one time an ice house. In the 1930s and 1940s, ice was stored in the building and delivered for local ice boxes. That business melted away in the 1950s, as electrical service spread across the area and people began buying refrigerators.

When Dixie Cleaners moved to Boone, Trailways Cleaners and Highland Cleaners were the competition, and ASU had its own pressing room. Master Cleaners had just gone out of business.

“The campus was progressing, and we saw the Dan’l Boone Inn go from a doctor’s home to a restaurant,” Archie said. “Dr. Bingham lived there, and he’d take people in to stay a while and get well. With the location the way it is now, it’s hard to get in and out. When they were widening the road, we were basically blocked off for three years.”

The business uses an oil-burning boiler to heat the steam used in the presses, with the machinery built of steel and dating back decades. The family hopes to sell the durable equipment, but hasn’t been able to find a buyer yet.

Archie operates the business with his wife, Joanne, and son Greg, and all expect to find other jobs. Joanne is a former teacher and hopes to resume her teaching career. Greg, who joined the business in 1991, hopes to get a job with the state. Archie isn’t sure what he wants to do yet, but believes he will only stay “semi-retired.”

“We hate to close down, but that’s just the way everything went,” Greg said. “The economy, overhead, it was a little of both.”

ASU had inquired about the availability of the property, and the family had been considering selling anyway, since the bottom line was getting softer.

Archie lamented that small businesses were facing a tough environment.

“It’s harder for families to be in it because of competition with corporations,” Archie said. “It’s hard to compete with their prices and selection.”

Another change that hurt the dry cleaning business was the use of synthetic fiber, beginning in the 1960s.

“Most stuff people are wearing you can wash,” Archie said. “Most people come here just for the pressing.

There’s not a whole lot to it. I know some dry cleaning chemicals get a bad rap, but we never used that many.”

Styles have also come and gone over the years. “The clothes have changed, too,” Archie said. “There’s more wash and wear. We didn’t have problems with dyes like they do now. It’s getting better, but starting in about the 1980s the clothing makers weren’t fixing the dyes as well. The colors were bleeding and they didn’t set well.”

Though materials changed, people still invested in looking good. “Polyester was big in the 1960s, and that had an impact on the dry cleaning business,” Archie said. “But dry cleaning came back with better equipment. Our bread and butter is still shirts and pants.”

Archie said ASU gave him no indication of its plans for the site, which contains little additional land besides the building footprint and comprises about a quarter of an acre.

He also didn’t share the selling price, though the sale was only for the building and not the business equipment.

“We’ve contacted other dry cleaners,” Greg said. “If we could sell the equipment, it would help us out a lot.”
Archie said he has mixed feelings about going out of business. On one hand, he’s been dry cleaning his entire adult life.

On the other hand, business pressures and rising costs, especially for energy, led to declining profits.

“After being in it all this period of years, you can’t really say you’re happy to be selling,” Archie said.

“You wonder if you did the right thing. You’ve been in the business all your life, and you can’t believe you’ve done it.”