Ablitt's Fine Cleaners & Launderers was founded by Neil and Sue Ablitt in 1984 when they returned to Santa Barbara after a decade of living in Mexico, and later Canada, while working for Caterpillar Inc. Starting with a boiler, a flatwork ironer and a vintage drycleaning machine, Neil and Sue worked diligently, building the business on a shoestring.
It's not like they were completely foreign to the drycleaning business. Neil's grandfather had started the family's first drycleaning business, Admiral Cleaners in Portland, Oregon in 1905. Neil's mother grew up in the business and when she married his dad they started their own cleaning business, Gordon's, in Seattle. In 1949 the Ablitt's moved to Santa Barbara and bought St. Paul Dye Works located at 14 W. Gutierrez St. Neil was raised in the business but upon graduating from high school he moved away to go to school as the other siblings had done. The senior Ablitt's sold the business, but kept the property. Twenty years later Neil and his family returned to do what the family had been doing for generations: start another dry cleaning business.
Things changed in January of 2002. Sasha, Neil and Sue's youngest daughter returned to Santa Barbara with the intention of buying the business and transferring it successfully from one generation to the next. She saw advantages in carrying the torch from one generation to the next. She had grown up in the business and knew it well. Her education didn't hurt either, having earned an Engineering Degree from UCLA, and an MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School for International Management. She left her carreer of 6 years with Allied-Signal/Honeywell in order to return to Santa Barbara. During her time there, she published a technical paper and filed a patent. Her last assignment there was a fast-track program in Corporate Finance. This allowed her to visit all types of production facilities across the US and the world.
Sasha is a fourth generation drycleaner, but the first in the family to pass on the same torch.
Old History starts in Seattle in 1930
Ancient History starts in 1895 in Roda bei Ilmenau