For more than 70 years, Victor’s Cleaners and Launderers has been a family-run success story right in the heart of downtown Huntington.
By Benita Heath
HQ 55 | SUMMER 2005
For seven decades, Victor’s Cleaners and Launderers has been a familiar part of the Huntington scene, growing and prospering over the years because its family owners had what it took to succeed – perseverance, talent and a willingness to work hard.
Now the family’s third generation is expanding the business in new directions.
The family’s story is familiar yet fascinating, one repeated over and over as countless immigrants made their way to America’s shores in search of a new and better life.
It was 1911 when brothers Nicholas Lambros Svingos and Aristotle Lambros Svingos took their place in one of the dozens of lines in the noisy bustle at New York’s Ellis Island. The world seemed crammed inside those cavernous halls and the two young teens heard more languages than they knew existed.
It had been weeks since they left their home on the island of Tenedos by the straits of the Dardanelles -the island where legend has it that the Greeks went into hiding after dropping off that gift horse at the gates of Troy.
Excited, no doubt a bit overwhelmed by it all, the brothers walked up to the immigration officer. Unfortunately, their pluck was more polished than their English and the officer couldn’t for his life figure out what they were saying their names were. So he made it easy on himself:
“He looked at my father and said, ‘You’re Harry,’ and to my uncle, ‘You’re Nick’ and he made their last name Lambros,” recalls Lambros Svingos. It wasn’t until Harry got his citizenship papers in the 1930s that he was able to take back the family name.
How his father and uncle were re-named at Ellis Island is one of many stories Lambros Svingos shares as he sits with two of his children and talks about one of Huntington’s longest running businesses.
Before locating at its present address at 729 6th Ave., Victor’s had many homes and many reinventions as the Svingos family made its mark on the Huntington business community. Now the third generation has taken over as two of Lambros’ five children – Telly and Joanna – are in charge.
It’s a family where camaraderie and respect is practically tangible in the room as the younger Svingoses listen to their father’s stories and learn that they don’t have as strong a grasp on the family history as Dad does. “He’s going to be 81 on Friday and he has a better memory than the both of us,” Telly says.
“When the brothers first came here, they went out west to work on the railroad as water boys,” Lambros recalls. “At that time America was the place to come to make your fortune and then go back home. But they never left here.”
The brothers soon tired of life on the railroad and came back east to Huntington where Nick opened a restaurant on 9th Street and Harry bought an existing business called Victor’s Hat Shop, also on 9th Street, that cleaned and blocked hats and shined shoes.
The current patriarch of the Svingos family was 11 years old when he started helping out his father in the shop. And in those days, “helping out” meant being there seven days a week.
“Father was strict but personable,” Lambros says. “He was good-natured, but you didn’t step out of line.”
The only concession was on Sundays when young Lambros got to knock off at 3 in the afternoon. Otherwise the routine was the same: from 7 in the morning until 11:30 at night with time off only for school.
“We had to shove them out the doors so we could mop the floors at night. That was the kind of crowds we had downtown back then,” he recalls.
That kind of work ethic is something Lambros has made sure his children understand. By the time Telly was 10 he was shining shoes after school, and during high school Joanna took care of alterations.
“I wanted them to know what it was to work and earn an honest dollar,” Lambros says. “I was a little strict.”
“That’s an understatement,” Telly laughs. “He instilled in us a great work ethic.”
“In Dad’s day it was easier to find people to do hard work and it is hard work,” Joanna says. “The idea that you own your own business and come and go as you want is a myth. When you own your own business, you have to be here all the time.”
In 1950, Lambros bought his first dry cleaning machine for the shop, then located on 810 4th Ave. Before that he had offered dry cleaning services for his customers through a wholesale dry cleaner.
“We were jobbing out our cleaning and had to go pick it up. If we had our own machine, it would help,” he says.
So he went up to Batavia, Ohio, to check out a machine called a Majestic that would handle up to 35 pounds of clothes at a time. He liked what he saw and paid $3,000 for a machine that today would cost 10 times that. Almost immediately the shop’s business dramatically increased.
“We could do better work and give better service,” Lambros says.
At that time Victor’s was located where the city parking lot now is on the comer of 4th Avenue and 8th Street. Business was good and growing but parking was a problem. So he put a bid on the cleaners Marlin Riggs had on 6th Avenue. He had heard rumors that Riggs was thinking about retiring and thought the location would be what his customers were looking for.
On Nov. 11, 1974, Lambros bought the business’s present location. Today, Victor’s offers customers dry cleaning, laundry, shoe repair, hat blocking and alterations, all under one roof. In a single day Victor’s will handle, on average, 1,000 articles, whether it’s laundering a man’s dress shirt, dry cleaning a wedding gown, blocking a hat or revitalizing feather pillows.
That translates to 125,000 shirts, 300 pillows and 200 wedding gowns a year. Even Marshall University’s Marco gets his mascot costume cleaned at Victor’s.
In total, Victor’s 25 employees process a quarter of a million pieces of clothing and other items a year.
And along the way the business has spawned a legion of loyal fans.
As one long-time customer says: “I’ve been going there for 10 years and they have never once been late, lost a shirt or made a mistake. That says something.”
Over the years, Victor’s has frequently diversified its services.
“My father saw that diversification is the only way to survive,” says Telly.
By the end of summer Victor’s will undergo yet another transformation as the family takes over the property next door. At that time the Riggs name finally will come down as part of an overall facelift of the two buildings that will tie them together.
It’s all part of the philosophy of service that has kept the Svingos family in business.
“If you don’t improve or progress, you stand still. You can’t become stagnant and stay in business,” Telly says. “If you take care of business, it will take care of you.”
