SIGN OF THE TIMES — Eddie and Jennifer Molina capture a selfie with the iconic B&O Cleaners sign on the day they became the new owners. The Molinas moved to DeLand from Italy, after Eddie Molina “retired” after 20 years in the U.S. Army. He said he wanted to give Jennifer a chance to have a career, after two decades of travel as an Army wife.
A family-owned DeLand business operating for more than six decades on North Woodland Boulevard has been sold, but you can still call the owner Eddie.
Eddie O’Quinn and his wife, Louise, sold B&O Cleaners in July to Eddie Molina and his wife, Jennifer. The deal closed in July, and the two Eddies have been working on the transition.
O’Quinn’s father built the B&O Cleaners building at 1000 N. Woodland Blvd. and opened the business in 1960. The whole O’Quinn family worked there, and Eddie O’Quinn has been working there since opening day.
In fact, he’s still working there, 6 a.m.-5 p.m. five days a week. In a slight concession to the idea of retirement, he has discontinued working on Saturdays. O’Quinn wants to make sure Eddie Molina and his family are well-prepared to keep B&O going for decades longer.
“I told him I’d work with him until he kicks me out,” O’Quinn said.
THE TWO EDDIES — Eddie O’Quinn, left, and B&O Cleaners new owner Eddie Molina compare notes about the 64-year-old DeLand business. Molina initially was interested only in the B&O property at 1000 N. Woodland Blvd., but ended up buying the business, too, especially after O’Quinn offered to stay on to help him learn the ropes.
Both O’Quinn, who’s 77, and Molina, 44, will describe themselves as retired. O’Quinn, with a workweek winnowed down to only five days, is easing himself out of the family business. Molina, who also travels the country with his other job, helping Amazon open warehouses, is “retired” from the U.S. Army after 20 years of service.
Geof Felton, the agent with Prestige Properties who sold the B&O property and business, noticed the similarities in the two men’s work ethics.
“I knew when they got together, they were going to get along,” Felton said.
And, just like that, after two years of trying with two real estate agencies, B&O had new owners. The sale price, according to the Volusia County Property Appraiser’s Office, was $417,500.
O’Quinn was pleased to find a buyer who shared his family’s values and, like the O’Quinns always had, brought their children into the shop to help out. The Molinas have two teenagers.
“It’s good to see another family with the same ethics,” O’Quinn said.
Those ethics are behind some of the services B&O has long offered the community, such as free cleaning for American flags, and free pressing for burial outfits when a loved one has passed away.
The Molinas will continue those services, and will keep the B&O staff of three people in addition to O’Quinn.
“They’ve all been fantastic,” Molina said. “If we didn’t have them, this all wouldn’t work.”
PRESSING MATTERS — Danielle Lebas puts a crease in a customer’s jeans at B&O Cleaners, where she has worked for nine years. In addition to dry cleaning, B&O also offers regular laundry services, with the added benefit of pressing, including as much starch as you like.
The Molinas plan to make some changes, mostly to modernize the cleaners’ equipment and to make the shop more energy-efficient.
Some changes have already been made, including adding technology to improve customer service.
For example, B&O, once an all-cash business, now accepts credit cards. You’ll also get a text message when your dry-cleaning order is ready for pickup. These changes have been embraced by customers, Molina said, especially the addition of credit-card payments.
“I couldn’t believe how excited people were,” he said.
One thing that definitely won’t change is the name, which Molina jokes stands for “best and only.”
O’Quinn said the origin of the name is a little less flashy. His father, Thomas O’Quinn, originally planned to start the business with a partner whose last name began with the letter “B.” The partner dropped out, but the name stuck, O’Quinn said.
Molina likes data, and his new point-of-sale system provides plenty of it, to help him and Jennifer continue to improve the business. For example, the system showed them when customers most commonly dropped off their cleaning orders, prompting an adjustment in the shop’s hours.
Molina glances at the computer-based system and determines that, on average, about 5,000 pieces of fabric pass through the shop every month.
The makeup of those 5,000 pieces might surprise you. There are rugs, furniture covers, bedding, skydivers’ rigs (that’s the pack that holds the parachute), and a lot of jeans, T-shirts and tank tops, in addition to the formalwear and suits that most of us think of dry cleaning.
O’Quinn has seen all the changes, including the rise of sturdy fabrics that encourage people to do their own laundry. Still, he said, people want their clothes to look sharp.
“They have wash-and-wear, but even with that, you don’t have the nice creases,” he points out.
There have also been changes in the neighborhood.
“When Dad built the place, it was an orange grove beside us, and an old wooden house to the south of us,” he said. “We got to watch the first McDonald’s come in.”
That was across the street, where Moe’s Southwest Grill is now.
Look for another change in the neighborhood: a new modern, code-compliant lighted sign to replace the iconic B&O beacon, which hadn’t been operational for years. The Molinas fired up the new sign for the first time — other than testing it — following a ribbon-cutting Feb. 1 hosted by the DeLand and Greater West Volusia Chamber of Commerce.
When you see its bright blues and red glowing against the night sky, consider it a sign of the passing of a torch, to keep the lights on at a 64-year-old DeLand business.
Facts about dry cleaning
—Dry cleaning started in the 1800s in the U.S., when clothing was washed in open tubs using gasoline, kerosene, benzene, turpentine or petroleum, according to the National Library of Medicine.
—As of 2021, perchloroethylene was still the most common solvent used in dry cleaning, the NLM said. To comply with increasing regulation of the chemical, dry-cleaning machines have evolved to use less and contain perc better.
—As of 2023, there were an estimated 28,592 dry-cleaning shops in the U.S., with the number of shops declining about 2 percent per year between 2018 and 2023, according to the research firm IBISWorld.
—The majority of shop owners are of Korean ancestry, according to the NLM.
How the magic happens
You might be surprised to learn that dry cleaning isn’t “dry” at all. The process uses a solvent to clean clothes and other fabric. The items tumble in a machine that looks like a giant front-loading washer.
Dry cleaning has been cast in a bad light because of the environmental hazards of the dry-cleaning chemical perchloroethylene, or “perc.” While many dry cleaners have stopped using perc, it’s still prevalent in the industry.
Today, B&O Cleaners uses a solvent called Intense, manufactured by a company called Seitz. Intense is hydrogen-based, and is considered “environmentally neutral,” B&O’s new owner, Eddie Molina, said.
“We are actually in the process of evaluating another solvent called GreenEarth,” Molina said. “While Intense is environmentally neutral, we still have to report its use to the state and pay hazardous-material taxes and have the waste solvent collected. GreenEarth will eliminate those requirements, as it’s silicone-based and not EPA-regulated.”
So far, Molina said, he and his wife, Jennifer, have heard only positive feedback from cleaners they’ve contacted that use GreenEarth, which is also made by Seitz.
“If we make the switch, we will be the only dry cleaner in Volusia County offering it, so we hope to be able to make the transition soon,” Eddie Molina added.
