Print edition: 
David Coyle doesn't mind you knowing how many pieces of clothing his company, In The Bag Cleaners, has lost this year.
"I think we've lost four garments out of over 2 million pieces cleaned and pressed," he said. "You can put that in there. The quickest way for a dry cleaner to lose a customer is to lose something."
Coyle has been gaining customer share steadily since opening his first In The Bag Cleaners in Wichita in the fall of 2000. Today he owns 15 locations in Wichita, Derby, Newton and Andover.
That's about 20 percent of the 72 cleaners he knows of in the Wichita metro area. Coyle estimates that he has over 65 percent of the market share.
"Which means people like what we're doing, or we have good locations," Coyle said.
Dressed for work in a nicely pressed business shirt, khaki shorts and tennis shoes, Coyle looks like a slightly older version of the college student he was when he first took a job at a cleaners to earn "book money." He often takes his golden retriever, Baley, to work with him.
He seems to have every bit of data pertinent to his company on the tip of his tongue: His 84 employees have "over 400 years' experience" in the cleaning industry; In The Bag handles 60 comforters a day; about 3,000 customers regularly use the delivery and pickup option.
He also seems to be always on the lookout for ways to set In The Bag apart from competitors, whether it's creasing the sleeve of every business shirt or — his latest move — offering customers free chocolate chip cookies and bottled water at all his locations.
Coyle grew up in Cleveland, studied economics at Arizona State University, then moved to Kansas City to take a job with Pride Cleaners.
"It was all I knew when I got out of college," he said.
After running its most successful location, he transferred to Wichita to manage Best Cleaners, owned by the same parent company as Pride.
"One day I woke up and said, 'I can do that,' " he said of owning his own business.
He started by buying an old Lee's Cleaners at 32nd and Rock. He opened another storefront each year for five years. He also offered citywide pickup and delivery, and kept all the cleaning operations at the Rock Road location.
"Our philosophy was that the hot production centers should be separate from nice retail facilities," Coyle said, adding that a centralized location also helps with quality control.
Five years ago, having outgrown that Rock Road facility, he bought two 10,000-square-foot warehouses at 19th and Ohio and turned them into production centers.
In April 2008, Coyle bought Wichita's 13 Best Cleaners. Coyle closed five of the Best Cleaners because they weren't performing or overlapped with his existing stores, which gave him a total of 14 stores, plus two unmanned "self-service" locations at the Koch Industries campus in north Wichita, where customers drop off and pick up their clothes.
Last January, Coyle bought three Royal Cleaners stores, keeping one open at 21st and Tyler under that name.
He also branched out into restoring clothes and other items damaged by smoke and water by becoming a franchisee of the Certified Restoration Drycleaning Network, or CRDN, in 2009. His agreement with the company lets him operate across Kansas except for the Kansas City metro area.
Coyle said he made the move as a way to keep employees and increase revenue in the midst of the economic slump. The restoration business also uses some of the same processes and equipment as the cleaning business, although it's housed in a separate warehouse from that used for In The Bag. Today, the CRDN accounts for about 20 percent of his revenue.
Coyle credits his 84 "team members" for much of In The Bag's success. He strives to create a family atmosphere for them, whether it's inviting them to his home for an annual picnic or building a 40-person tornado shelter next to his warehouses to ease the fears of his staff.
The work is repetitious — employees generally do one chore all day — and, at least in the summer, hot. Pay incentives are offered "across the company," Coyle said. At the Ohio Street facility, the workday runs from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. so that pickups are ready when customers stop by In The Bag locations after work.
Coyle said he's never had to lay off people because of a lack of work, "which is important to me."
He said his production facility is the biggest of its kind in a five-state area, with a computerized system that nearly guarantees clothes get back to their owner.
Coyle doesn't appear to be done expanding, although he declined to elaborate on his plans for the future. Suffice it to say he's not out of ideas for growing In The Bag Cleaners, or intimidated by the prospect of doing so.
"Running one or two stores is totally different than running 13," he said. "I like going out and motivating team members and looking at the big picture."
"I'm always looking for good opportunities."
