PHILADELPHIA — Early on Christmas Eve 2024, things were going well for Arway Linen & Uniform Rental Service.
The local company that had launched in 1979 with a handful of products and a few employees was growing in terms of food and beverage clients and its customer service level.
The company was growing so much that in early 2023, it bought a location in the Port Richmond section of the city to expand its operations with a state-of-the-art facility.
The two-year renovation project was nearing the halfway point, and the Arway Linen team was enjoying Christmas Eve celebrations.
But later that night, managing partner Mario Stagliano received a phone call that changed everything—fire alarms were going off at the plant.
American Laundry News spent time with Stagliano to learn more about the fire and its aftermath and how Arway Linen set about to keep processing linens — without missing a day.
What’s been your method/strategy to keep processing goods? How have you kept your customers?
In the beginning, we were still figuring out all the processing and stuff. This is really maybe the second week since we’ve been operating in this facility that both shifts are being somewhat efficient.
We’ve made a lot of tweaks and things like that to their equipment because this is a hospitality plant. As you know, hospitality and light soil and heavy soil, it’s a completely different mix. Their tunnels were incompatible with our product mix. The chemicals weren’t right, so we had to make a lot of adjustments, but I feel we’re at a good spot.
With that said, going back to your original question, we just had to buy almost a year’s worth of inventory to keep our customers served and to mitigate our revenue loss. Pinnacle Textile, our main supplier, they were like, ‘Listen, whatever you need, grab it.’ That’s what we served our customers with for the first couple weeks until we were able to produce enough to get our drivers out the door.
It’s starting to get better. Day by day, it’s getting a little better, but the production aspect of things has been challenging. The quality hasn’t been there quite like we’ve been able to serve our customers out of our own facility. We’re taking it day by day, one call at a time.
I’ll tell you something funny. I just saw the January numbers from 2025, and I compared them to 2024. We still did like $45,000 more in revenue in 2025 than we did in ’24, all while giving credit and making adjustments. It’s crazy.
It’s like, given everything we’re dealing with, somehow, we managed to grow.
What has your customers’ response been to all of this?
Obviously, they’re sympathetic for as long as they can be. But, after being interrupted with us being short on some stuff and not having as good quality on some stuff, there are challenges there. But we’re working through it and asking people to hang on.
Luckily, we have good relationships with all our competitors in the market, so if a customer is calling one of the competitors, they’re letting us know, go to this place, call that guy. They’re not going to take any business from us like we wouldn’t take from them.
I feel like I’ve developed these relationships in the past handful of years since I’ve been here at Arway as an owner and at a high level, and nobody is interested in taking any of our business, all things considered.
Going back to how the customer is working with us, they’re working with us the best that they can. They accommodate the best they can. If we didn’t have something available, like a purple napkin, they took orange. They took whatever we had.
We’ve come a long way, for sure, but customers are …. Some of them are great. Some of them are taking advantage, like ‘I need all these credits,’ just because they can, and we’d be willing to do it so they don’t leave and handle it later kind of thing. We haven’t lost a customer yet, so that’s a good thing.
By design with my partners, I’m handling 100% of what’s going on here. We have a good core management group that shows up every day, and we rock out and we get it done. We work with the company here that’s allowed us to operate in their facility.
We’re making tweaks and we’re making strides every day, and I’d like to think we’ll continuously get better while we’re in here. And then, we have to transition into our new facility after. State-of-the-art, brand-new everything.
What’s the time frame for the transition to the new facility? What are your future plans?
The build itself, given the size of the project, it will take us two years to renovate and fit out. It’s a big building, 60,000 square feet, high ceilings, rail system, all of that equipment.
The other building on the premises will be used for storage until we figure out what we’re going to do there.
We’re excited about that, but in the meantime, we have to serve our customers. We have to do the best that we can with that building, equipment and staff that’s not ours. We just have to survive, and we will.
With the couple of acquisitions we have coming on, another 60,000 pounds a week, I don’t think we can do it all out of here. I looked at a couple of other locations that can help us out, similar to this model here that we’re doing.
So, we might have to spread it out over a couple of different laundries to serve everybody, but I really want those acquisitions to go into the new building with us. The more business I go into that building with, given the margins, given the efficiencies, it’ll be helpful.
What lessons have you learned through this?
One, do your best to have some sort of continuity plan in place for anything — flood, fire, etc. If I can give advice to any other owner-operator, understand that a continuity plan is meaningful. You never know when you’ll need it.
Obviously, make sure you’re properly insured, as we were. But I can see how, in a situation like this, if somebody skimps on insurance and they get a lesser premium or something, that can be hurtful to how they move forward.
Your sprinkler system situation, do your best to ensure that your stuff’s working. We thought we did by having the annual test done every year per city code.
Those are the main issues, I would say, for any advice I can give about having things in place.
Any final thoughts to share?
We’re a resilient bunch. We believe in our model, our team, our business, and it was going to take a whole lot more than this to stop us from what we do, and we’re looking to do, moving forward.
Like I said, haven’t lost a customer, managed to grow year-over-year — we made it work.
We burned down the night of the 24th, and on the 26th, we had a place operating, and we’ve been tweaking. It’s been a challenge, but we’re getting there. We haven’t really missed a beat. It’s been a crazy time. I haven’t been sleeping much, and we’re running multiple shifts. It’s an hour and a half away from my house.
It’s a lot of challenges, but we’re making it work, and we’re going to make it work.
Click HERE to read part 1 about Arway Linen’s first steps after the fire.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
