By Marcus Hellwig
Outside, the weather is warm in early summer. Inside, in the Preibisch laundry, there is a yawning emptiness.
Owner Anke Kleinert (53), who runs the shop in Berlin’s Spandau district with her husband, Dirk (53), is sober: “When it’s that warm, only a few customers come. We’re out of breath. We’ll get by in the fall. Then things will get tight.”
Energy costs are rising rapidly. “We need 2,000 liters of heating oil for steam and hot water every four weeks,” calculates Kleinert. Now the price is already at 3400 euros. With the last savings she ordered three more times in a row.
Not an isolated case. “The reserves have been used up,” says Beate Schäfer, President of the German Textile Cleaning Association.
“Before the Corona crisis we had 250 shirts a day, during the lockdown we only had about 50,” says Anke Kleinert. Business has been better since Easter. After all, 150 freshly cleaned shirts would be sold over the counter every day. But the rest of the shirt wearers are probably still in the home office.
Despite this, her laundry sometimes feels like it used to be. “My grandmother founded the company in 1934, we were always a family business,” says Kleinert proudly.
The phone rings. A major urban customer wants to extend his contract. “They want to pay 2.31 euros per smock, but I need seven euros. I have to drop the deal. Frustrating,” says Anke Kleinert.
Anke Kleinert fights for her laundry: “I still have five employees – all on short-time work.” What is she doing all this for? “That is my life.”
