The washing and care for down jackets is the main source of revenue for laundry businesses in winter and is also the high-risk part, which causes customer complaints. Any oversight in any link may turn a revenue into a loss and damage the store’s long-accumulated reputation. However, there are opportunities in risks. Upgrading the washing and care of down jackets from simple cleaning services to a systematic, professional care process is key for laundry shops to establish technological barriers, increase customer transaction value, and win the long-term trust of customers.
Precise Identification of Five High-Risk Types
The first step of professional care is not washing, but a precise risk prediction. When receiving clothes, people should quickly make a risk radar chart.
- Coating Fabrics
This is the biggest risk for machine washing. The high temperature and strong mechanical friction easily cause the coating to soften, stick together, and even fall off.
Treatment rules: Low temperature (lower than 30 degrees Celsius) and gentlest washing programs should be used. For fabrics like high-end GTX, staff should inquire about the customer’s laundry history and clearly inform them about the risk of machine washing.
- Genuine fur collars
Water washing easily causes the leather to shrink, harden, and lose oils. If the leather backing is detachable, it is suggested to remove the backing and separately do the professional leather care. If it cannot be detached, staff should choose an extremely gentle treatment for the linen care, and high temperatures should be strictly avoided.
- Artificial fur collars
They are afraid of high temperatures. Drying easily causes fibers to have irreversible curling and hardening, which is catastrophic damage. The best way is to remove them and air-dry them in a shaded area.
- Special spliced fabrics
The leather, denim, mulberry silk, and other fabrics that are spliced on the down jackets belong to this type. Different materials have different color fastness, shrinkage rate, and durability. Mixed washing easily causes color transfer, dye bleeding, and deformation due to inconsistent shrinkage. These clothes must be classified as key monitored items. When necessary, a more conservative manual treatment plan should be adopted.
- Metal accessories and zippers
In the drum, hard zipper sliders and metal buckles are the primary causes of internal damage. They easily scratch or snag the surface of the clothes or other items in the same load.
– Standard procedure: All zippers must be fully zipped before washing, then wrapped with white cotton strips. Or, the clothes must be turned inside out.
- Stubborn stains (oil stains, pigment stains, mold stains)
They should be pre-treated before washing. Staff should clearly inform the customer about the risk that some penetrated stains, like old ballpoint pen marks and mold stains, may not be completely removed. Customer expectations should be managed well, and staff should also ask for written confirmation from customers.
Core Process Control
The water temperature control is the basic science of the washing and care of down jackets. The improper water temperature is the main reason for the shrinkage of the fabrics, fiber damage, coating aging, and color changes. For most fabrics, including cotton, linen, and common chemical fibers, choosing the medium temperature (30 to 40℃) for washing and drying is a safe range. The extremely high water temperature (over 60℃) will speed up the fiber shrinkage and reduction of color fastness.
For down jackets, the highest washing temperature is not over 40 degrees Celsius. Raising the water temperature properly (up to 40 degrees Celsius) helps improve the washing quality of the light-colored clothes or heavily soiled clothes. However, the temperature should not be over 60 degrees Celsius to avoid irreversible thermal damage to the down jackets’ down lipids, fabrics, and functional coatings.
The drying load directly affects the results of washing and drying. Overloading causes many problems.
- Clothes cannot be fully tumbled and stretched. This easily causes incomplete cleaning.
- Hot air circulation is blocked during drying, so that the clothes are hard to completely dry. Odors or even mold due to dampness and stuffiness easily occur.
- The frictions inside increase, and this is one of the big causes of yellowing and color changes of light-colored clothes after drying.
- It seriously impairs the fluff recovery of down during drying.
The scientific loading principle is based on the rated capacity of the equipment. A 20kg washing machine cannot wash more than 16kg of down jackets in a single batch, which is about 10 to 12 pieces of adult down jackets. Also, the load should not be too small. Otherwise, the cleaning effect will be badly affected due to insufficient mechanical friction.
Key Technologies
Down jackets easily clump, and their reduced fluffiness after washing is a common consumer complaint. The main causes are detergent residue, incomplete rinsing, down agglomeration due to improper dehydration, and wrong drying methods.
The systematic solutions are as follows.
- Detergent and rinsing
Staff must use neutral detergent specially for down jackets because alkaline detergents will damage the protein fibers of the down. After washing, 2 to 3 full high-water-level rinses are needed to completely remove the detergent residues. This is a premise of avoiding down jackets from yellowing and clumping after drying.
- Professional drying
Air-drying naturally needs a very long time, and the wet down easily accumulates into hard clumps at the hem under the force of gravity. Using a dryer is the most effective method to restore fluffiness.
- Fabric softening aid
A small amount of neutral fabric softener can be added during the final rinse. This helps form an ultra-thin protective film on the surface of down fibers, reduces static electricity, and makes the down easier to loosen during drying.
- Post-Drying finishing
Even after drying, patting the outer layer of down jackets once can help distribute the down more evenly and help them achieve the best fluffiness.
- Important tips
The care labels of most down jackets say “Do Not Dry Clean”. Dry cleaning solvents (especially tetrachloroethylene) can dissolve the natural oils on the surface of the down and make it brittle and reduce its warmth retention forever. As a result, water washing is the top choice for the washing and care of down jackets. When facing special stains like mold stains and oil stains, staff should use special stain removers to do targeted pre-treatment.
Kingstar Professional Washing and Care System
For the above meticulous and strict requirements for processes, a set of professional equipment that is stable and can be precisely controlled is not an optional choice. It is a required choice. The design concept of the Kingstar washing and care system is to transform the complex washing and care knowledge into a stable and repeatable high-quality output.
- Precise water control
No matter washing or drying, the precise water control system of the Kingstar washing machine SHS-2025P and the Kingstar dryer SDR-2025 can ensure that the temperature can always operate stably within the safe temperature thresholds at all times. This fundamentally prevents catastrophic incidents such as coating melting, down damage, and fur collar hardening caused by temperature fluctuations.
- Bionic gentle care
The Down Wash expert program of the Kingstar washing machine SHS-2025P is not a simple combination of time settings. It is perfectly tailored to the physical property requirements of down jacket care and cleaning.
- Even and complete drying
The humidity control system of the Kingstar dryer DSR-2025 and the timed forward and reverse spinning to stop clothes from tangling can continuously and gently loosen and dry clumped down. This helps achieve the final result of even, fluffy, and plump down jackets.
Conclusion
When a customer gets a clean, fluffy, and soft-as-new down jacket with full accessories, the payment of this customer is not only the laundry fee, but also the extra charge for the professionalism and quality. Kingstar is willing to become your most reliable partner in the journey of value upgrading with our advanced washing and care technologies and reliable laundry equipment. Let’s push the laundry industry forward to a more professional and more respected future development.
