[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 24299]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                         TRIBUTE TO JOSE AGUIAR

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOSE E. SERRANO

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, October 6, 1999

  Mr. SERRANO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a young and 
successful entrepreneur from my congressional district, Mr. Jose 
Aguiar. Through his dedication, discipline, and success in small 
business, Mr. Aguiar can serve as a role model for millions of 
youngsters in the United States who dream of succeeding, like him, in 
the world of business.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute and 
wishing continued success to Mr. Jose Aguiar.
  The following article, which appeared in the October 4, New York 
Daily News, describes Mr. Aguiar's career in more detail.

                      DRY CLEANER'S KEEN TO EXPAND

       Dry cleaning is Jose Aguiar's business, but cleaning up is 
     his goal.
       The 37-year-old president of Kleener King, a chain of dry 
     cleaning stores in the metro area, is poised to expand by 
     opening a central facility that will handle all the cleaning 
     from his growing number of stores.
       ``I'm at the cusp,'' the Bronx businessman said, adding 
     that he will use a $6.1 million loan from the Upper Manhattan 
     Empowerment Zone, the Bronx Overall Economic Development 
     Corp., and the Empire State Development Corp. to help spur 
     his company's growth.
       Growing from a small outfit to a chain of 20 in his native 
     Bronx and in upper Manhattan didn't happen overnight.
       In 1982, Aguiar dropped out after two years at Columbia 
     University--where he was majoring in economics--to run his 
     parents' business with his mother, Carmen, after his father, 
     Jose Sr., became ill.
       He held on to his parents' original location, Joe's 
     Cleaners on Creston Avenue in the South Bronx, but soon sold 
     the branch on University Avenue about a mile away.
       ``I didn't know how to manage one store, let alone two,'' 
     he recalled.
       After several years of working as a spotter--the person who 
     pretreats all the stains--he started getting scared about his 
     career prospects.
       ``I felt I had no future,'' he said, especially since some 
     of his former Columbia classmates were moving on to plum 
     positions in the business world.
       A turning point came in the mid-1980s, when Aguiar went to 
     an industry trade show.
       ``It opened his eyes and created a big appetite,'' said 
     David Lewin, the owner of Ipso of New York, a dry cleaning 
     equipment company. Over time, Lewin became a mentor as well 
     as an investor in Aguiar's business.
       ``It all starts with one store,'' Aguiar recalled thinking.
       He prepared a business plan and set about securing loans to 
     fund an expansion, but scores of sources turned him down.
       ``They said, `Grow it to a $10 million company first' or 
     `Dry cleaning is not interesting,' '' he said. ``But I don't 
     give up that easily.''
       After rounds of talks, he secured millions in a combined 
     loan from several economic development groups in Manhattan 
     and the Bronx for the centerpiece of his strategy--a $2.5 
     million centralized cleaning plant, which he persuaded the 
     Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and city economic 
     development agencies to jointly sponsor because he promised 
     to create jobs.
       The plant, in the Bathgate Industrial Park, will employ 
     more than 100 Kleener King workers at peak operation.
       As his company grows, Aguiar credits his parents for his 
     perseverance. The couple moved to New York from Puerto Rico 
     in the early 1950s, and opened Joe's Cleaners in 1956 with 
     $5,000 in seed money.
       His father insisted he work every Saturday starting at 6 
     a.m. and after school, except when he played for softball and 
     football teams.
       Aguiar said some of his earliest memories were in the 
     store. ``I was a dry cleaning baby,'' he said, recalling 
     photos of him sitting on a dryer or atop a clothes bin.
       Thirty-five years after his parents' start, Aguiar was 
     crafting his plans for Kleener King.
       In the early days, the company was pulling in about 
     $250,000 in revenues. This year, that jumped to about $2 
     million, and he hopes it could grow to about $10 million in 
     four years.
       Working seven days a week at the business has been his 
     routine since his mother died in 1993. Unmarried and without 
     much family in New York, he works well into the evening 
     before trekking home to Bayside, Queens.
       ``Kleener King is my life,'' said Aguiar, who for the past 
     three years has been a guest speaker at Columbia University 
     on entrepreneurship and who vows to attend business school 
     one day.
       In hopes of pursuing that dream, he's trying to get credit 
     for his professional experiences to help achieve the 
     equivalent of an undergraduate degree.
       ``I've learned a lot on my own,'' Aguiar said.





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