Truth Details

Here today is
Michael Cope, a small business owner who runs a dry cleaner and is struggling to get by because of what Kamala has done to his business.
They've destroyed small businesses in this country. Michael, please.
Thank you.
I'm here with the opportunity and the high honor of joining you here today and sharing my small business story with you folks and the American people.
So it's a chain of eco-friendly dry cleaners throughout the Tri County here in West Palm,
and it seems not too long ago, just a few years,
the customer and us, the small business owner, we were able to keep up with inflation. There were resources available to us for expansion,
or if you had a bad month, you know, if there was something you needed to make up for, it seemed like the support was there.
And now, just a few short years later,
It seems like all of those resources
have dried up. The support's no longer there.
We had an expansion plan
about 6 years ago
that we had to pause
because we have to wait for our customers now to catch up with
the inflation,
the supply chain issues still, because we as a small business, we can't double our price points,
although the cost of doing business now is 2, 3 or 4 times what it was just a few years ago.
So we've had to get creative. Our industry, probably 30%
in the dry cleaning industry never survived COVID.
And just recently this summer, I was contacted, my wife and I, by another local dry cleaner here in West Palm, They were asking advice.
So husband and wife had been there for about 35 years, their lease was up, and the landlord was doubling their rent, which would have meant that that's what they'd been paying themselves for probably the better part of 20 years.
So they had to make a decision. Do they hand the keys back, or do we get creative and work together, pool resources?
And so what we did was we figured out the right price point for them but we did their cleaning for them at least until we figured it out and so they were not able to pay their operations,
they couldn't keep that going But they were able to save their business by
strategically partnering.
And by the end of summer, I think I was contacted by about 12 other local dry cleaners saying, can you guys help us also? Because we're going through the same thing.
Thank you.
And it seems now, so
the delta
between
the reality
of what inflation is right now, and what we have in front of us, the reality of that, and the small business owners
capabilities,
that delta is too great.
So unless we affect change immediately, I
fear that in the next few years, if we don't see that change, we might see another 30% of our industry and others
no longer exist.
So I just want to say thank you again Mr. President
for allowing me to share my Go Green Dry Cleaners story
and
thank you.