• . The national association believesone in six dry cleaners will close, while the Dry Cleaning and Laundry Institute estimates that the industry will shrink by nearly 30 percent.
• Casual attire, work-from-home trends accelerated during COVID pandemic

It's not just Neighborhood Cleaners that felt the sting of the last year and a half.

Patel from the National Association of Dry Cleaners says revenue was declining before March of last year, but that they also had seen a decline in business for several years. Experts in the field from business owners to industry organization leaders credit the downturn in business to many things, including the 2008 financial crisis, increasingly casual office dress codes, smoking bans in bars and restaurants, and fast fashion made from cheaper, machine-washable materials. Taken together, the result is a rapidly changing market that sometimes feels out of control

With the rise of fast fashion brands and the growing trend of younger professionals dressing more casually, the pandemic accelerated something already in motion,.

Amid such trends, dry cleaners have been left out to dry.

Use the concepts offixed and variable costs to explain why 30% of dry cleaners would close but the other 70%, also operating at a loss are able to remain open.