Tide Dry Cleaners® Captures the Top Prize for Excellence and Innovation in Retail

CINCINNATI, Nov. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- From a highly-competitive pool of over 80 applicants, Tide Dry Cleaners® has been selected by The Hub Magazine as the Ultimate Hub Prize Winner in the 2011 Hub Prize competition, and recipient of the coveted Hub Cup trophy. The inaugural edition of the Hub Prize competition celebrates best-in-class excellence and innovation in the retail experience and environment.

Tide Dry Cleaners® is an innovative expansion to the iconic Tide brand, leveraging the brand's 65-year heritage in cleaning to delight consumers with a greater level of service and performance in dry cleaning.  Tide Dry Cleaners currently operates in six retail locations in Kansas City and Greater Cincinnati, with many additional outlets currently under development across the United States through a network of individual franchisees and entrepreneurs.

"We are both honored and humbled to be awarded the 2011 Ultimate Hub Prize," says Aaron Eisel, Director of Marketing, Tide Dry Cleaners. "We feel very strongly about this business and the impact we can deliver for our customers, and are thrilled to see such positive recognition from The Hub Magazine, its subscribers, and its highly-distinguished and experienced panel of judges."

The Hub Magazine is a business and marketing publication (online and print) that showcases innovation and breakthrough ideas, and the people behind them, in retail and shopper marketing.  The publication is targeted at the top marketers in America's largest companies, and in the six short years since it was launched, it has secured a strong and loyal customer and subscriber base.  

The Hub Prize Competition emerged as a natural extension of The Hub Magazine's focus and dialogue, celebrating the many ways that retailers, brand marketers, agencies, design firms, technology companies, research firms, consultants and others make the retail experience excellent for customers, both online and in-store.  The judging for the competition is conducted by a panel of 25 independent experts and thought leaders from corporations, academia, and marketing/ad agencies.  Competitors were graded on criteria including: innovation; the shopper insight and emotional connection; how much the initiative improved the retail experience; and business results achieved.

As the top winner in the competition, Tide Dry Cleaners has now been highlighted and showcased on the Hub website at: http://www.hubmagazine.com, in addition to being prominently-featured in a special supplement to the November print and online issues of The Hub Magazine, along with 35 other Gold, Silver and Bronze winners.

The Tide Dry Cleaners business model is a natural extension to the Tide brand, following extensive P&G research and interaction with dry cleaning customers that confirmed that they were not satisfied with their current dry cleaning experience, often citing poor customer service, inconsistent cleaning performance and unsatisfactory clothing appearance as outages. Tide Dry Cleaners has responded to this consumer feedback by setting a new standard in dry cleaning.  Each location offers convenient, 24-hour access, a clear pricing structure, and many locations can also include drive-thru valet service.  

Tide Dry Cleaners also brings industry-leading innovation and breakthrough cleaning technology to its customers. Through its partnership with GreenEarth®, and utilization of other P&G fabric care cleaning solutions for wet and dry cleaning, Tide Dry Cleaners is able to deliver amazing cleaning for a wide range of garments and textiles.  

"Our close relationship with consumers and our focus on consumer-driven innovation has allowed us to better-understand the needs of the dry cleaning customer," says Eisel. "We're proud to offer a new dry cleaning experience to our customers, and we look forward to bringing Tide Dry Cleaners to more people throughout the country in the near future."

Tide Dry Cleaners Cleaning Benefits:

• Tide Back-to-Black™: Helps get even more life and wear from all-black cotton garments with an infusion of color.
• Tide ColorGuard™: Helps keep colors where they belong - in your clothes.
• Tide SpotLift™: Stain removal technology for a deep down fiber clean.
• Tide FreshScent™: Finally, dry cleaning with a crisp and clean scent.
• Tide Restore™ for Colors: Helps bring faded colors back to life.
• Tide Restore™ for Whites: Helps whites stay bright.

Rising Tide®

Tide Dry Cleaners is actively seeking passionate entrepreneurs for franchising opportunities across the United States.  For more information on these opportunities, or to learn more about the innovative Tide Dry Cleaners business, please visit http://www.tidedrycleaners.com.

About Tide®

For 65 years, Tide has been caring for the clothes of American families and helping to provide the everyday miracle of clean clothing. Please visit http://www.tide.com for helpful product information, practical tips on laundry care, special offers and promotions, updated fabric care articles, and an interactive Stain Detective, which provides official Tide stain removal solutions.

About Procter & Gamble

P&G touches and improves the lives of about 4.4 billion people around the world with its portfolio of trusted, quality brands. The Company's leadership brands include Pampers®, Tide®, Ariel®, Always®, Whisper®, Pantene®, Mach3®, Bounty®, Dawn®, Fairy®, Gain®, Pringles®, Charmin®, Downy®, Lenor®, Iams®, Crest®, Oral-B®, Duracell®, Olay®, Head & Shoulders®, Wella®, Gillette®, Braun®, Fusion®, Ace®, Febreze®, and Ambi Pur®. With operations in about 80 countries, P&G brands are available in more than 180 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

About P&G FutureWorks

P&G FutureWorks is the "Entrepreneurial Engine" for Procter & Gamble.  As an important and integrated Corporate New Business Incubation Unit within P&G, we have responsibility and resources to create and operate businesses, from idea to scale-up, which involve new categories, new business models, or new capabilities for our Company. By connecting with best-in-class innovators and external partners, our scope has expanded beyond P&G's strategic core businesses into new channels and domains.  Franchising is one of those key domains, resulting in the successful launch of both Tide Dry Cleaners® and Mr. Clean Car Wash® through Agile Pursuits Franchising, Inc. (APFI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Procter & Gamble Company.  For more information on P&G FutureWorks and our current focus areas, please visit our newly-launched website at http://futureworks.pg.com.  

About GreenEarth® Cleaning

GreenEarth was founded in 1999 by three experienced dry cleaners, Jim Barry, Ron Benjamin and Jim Douglas. GreenEarth technology is licensed by more than 1300 dry cleaners worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.greenearthcleaning.com.