When we ask Joe Izzo, general manager of Johnsons Apparelmaster in Basingstoke, England, why this plant is achieving healthy growth, he compares the current management’s approach to the way this commercial laundry southwest of London operated under a previous owner that has since gone bankrupt.
 
“We were taken over by Johnsons,” says Izzo, regarding the current operator’s purchase of the plant in 2001 from another launderer. “We were Sketchleys before.” The plant had opened in 1978 and provided a growing uniform rental service through that company. But in 1992, the Sketchley Basingstoke plant entered the linen supply ...